Money Mysteries

19th June 2012 Tuesday

It’s still light and bright outside when I go to bed with a cup of vegetable bouillion and my laptop.  Feeling headachy and blocked up with the cold I brought back with me from Wales.

Probably something to do with spending the day trying to understand our finances. My husband explains it all perfectly but it’s wonderful to have my sister there asking all the  right questions - so when the time comes - the time when he may not know the difference between an annuity and an ISA  - then it won’t just be me who has to remember. And there is still the mystery of a regular payment of £32  - but he does’t know what it’s for..... 

After my sister leaves I sit for a little while in the garden and feel the sun on the tops of my feet - burning my skin, burning out my terror of being poor, of being left alone. It’s nearly the longest day of the year......

A Whine

18th June 2012 Monday

The thing is...... if you didn’t create your own family and so you can’t be a grandma and your parents are dead, and your husband is fucking off into dementia, your pussy cat is on chemo, and you didn’t create meaningful work, what is a girl supposed to do now? Or rather a nearly sixty year old woman.

No replies please. I know the answer. Sorry, Michael of the Slum Drummers in Kibera.....I  can't find it in me to be grateful tonight.....


Mind you, if you haven't tried roasting small beetroots with wedges of sweet green garlic, in a swamp of olive oil all tucked up with leathery bay leaves and fresh thyme  - then you should......

Dropped Stitches

7th June 2012 Thursday

Our lovely South African vet says it’s a miracle. He can’t feel the lump in the pussy cat’s abdomen that was there before. He says it’s very unusual for it to disappear so quickly. But  he has to keep taking the tablets or it’ll come back. I think our pussy cat has his own plans. Tonight he’s at the cattery sleeping on a heated pad. At least I hope he’s sleeping in this howling gale, tearing branches off the trees.

On the way back from dropping off the pussy cat in Honiton I drive past the entrance to the grave yard where my parents are buried. I haven’t been there since 18th January. At the grave next to theirs are six floral displays  -  recent fresh flowers  - and an eight foot long word - GRANDAD - made of hundreds of white carnation heads. I stand with an umbrella over my parents simple oak cross which is stark black in the rain. I throw away the six dead roses in the pincushion vase and pull up a buttercup sprawling across the concrete plinth. I hate thinking about them in the ground under my feet even though I know that’s not where they are. 

Tomorrow we are leaving for Wales for a family holiday - gathering in the same beautiful house by the sea that we did at this time last year. A different combination of us this time - some of us were missing then and some of us are missing now. After that holiday my niece who is a poet, wrote wonderful words for us - she gave it a title - For my extraordinary family on the auspicious occasion of uncertainty. 

The first lines are -  

A prayer for this family

As we gather on a Welsh hillside

That we will stay woven together like a bright rug,

Knotted tight in places, loosened with wear and care in others.

I always cry when I read it. And tonight I feel the knots in our family are loosening, feeling their empty spaces like dropped stitches falling through my open arms. Loving them all so much, uncertain how to welcome new life.....

Cake and Clay

6th June 2012 Wednesday

Lovely shared pre-birthday lunch for my sister at a friend's house - we are three round a table laid out with a bounty of salads and stuffed peppers, grilled asparagus, walnut bread, apricot and cherries  and vases of wild flowers.

Just being in their company, being heard and accepted and laughing a lot ,soothes my anxious heart and I leave feeling calmer and lighter. When I’ve baked another cake - with all the ingredients - roasted ground almonds this time - I feel more in control of preparations for going on our family holiday on Friday. I’m cooking for eleven people on Saturday and I don’t want to forget anything.

My husband comes home with a big smile on his face. The gallery at Otterton Mill have accepted five of his ceramic models. I feel a bit smug as I suggested four of them which are some of his  more realistic creatures but still with his own wonderful quirkyness about them. He says they put on a hundred percent mark-up at the gallery so the price has to double. He thinks no one will buy them at that price. But I think they will. It feels like a new opening for him - a confidence boost.

You don’t need words in your fingers. His clay creatures speak for themselves. 

I Have Music In Me

5th June 2012 Tuesday

This is how it is here on the second bank holiday of the Queen’s diamond Jubilee.....

I wake with an acid stomach -  the thought of my day which is ordinary and easy fills me with dread.  The pussy cat squeaks for breakfast so I can’t stay under the duvet.

I read my lesson for the day in A Course in Miracles. I love the language but despair of ever going a few seconds beyond my guilt.   My husband chops up rhubarb while I get dressed.

I’m horrible to him while we walk up and down the aisles at Sainsbury’s. He pushes the trolley too slowly. I feel sick at the check out at the size of the receipt. Back home we unpack the bags. He says he doesn’t know where the crisps live. In the cupboard he opens twenty times a day.

He walks in the rain while I start cooking for when we go to Wales. By mistake I leave out most of the ground almonds in the chocolate cake I make. I’ll have to make another one.

The pussy cat digs up the pansies I planted yesterday. I cut some holly branches and lay them over the border but don’t think it’ll deter him.

Later I watch on iplayer the film Gary Barlow made of the song he recorded for the Queen’s Jubilee. It’s moving and beautiful. I can’t get them out of my head -  the African faces of the children outside Nairobi - their clear sweet voices and the young blind man, Michael, who plays in the Slum Drummers of Kibera one of the biggest and worst slum townships in Africa. He says, 

I have music in me. And no matter what you are going through, you have to stay strong , you don’t have to break down and give up, you have to keep focussing on what you want to do. 

I wasn’t going to blog tonight. I wanted to give up. Thank you, Michael, for the music in you which blasts out the smallness and the pettiness in me.....reminds me there is a song in me too....if you can I can...

Filling The Hungry Gap

3rd June 2012 Sunday

This morning we follow a marked trail through a pine forest, rain drops dripping through scented branches. No plastic flags - red white and blue -  in sight. I’m distracted  - my mind keeps veering off to the ant’s nest I discovered yesterday in a big container on the patio. The pot is disintegrating and we need to move the ants. I don’t want to kill them. Their intricate pattern of tunnels, some lined with strings of white eggs - a thousand seed pearls in the black soil -  is a work of art.

In the end we do destroy their home, scoop them out with a spade and fill three bags of anty compost which my husband wheels down to the allotment. I plant up some big pots with pink daisies, trailing begonias, lobelia and pansies but the cold wind brings in the rain so I abandon the task which I find unreasonably stressful. I wish my mother was with me to help me decide what combinations to plant. I always seem to buy too many of some things and not enough of others. Meanwhile the slugs are having a field day on the zinnias and the pussy cat is peeing on the little geraniums.

I only have half an hour to make supper before a dear friend arrives. Luckily I know the flavour of the veggies will speak for themselves and will only need a scrunch of salt and a glug of olive oil just before serving.  A supper to celebrate the end of the ‘Hungry Gap’ - Cornish new potatoes  - earthy white pebbles. A bunch of carrots - slim as ladies’ fingers. A fistful of broad beans - tender emeralds. Young spinach - flat, wilted spear heads. And a whole bulb of sliced green garlic spicing up a fresh tomato sauce I found in the freezer. All perfect companions for chunky cod fillets, baked in paper with lemon and marjoram.

Followed by a square plate of ice cold cherries - my first this year.

Later we wave our friend goodbye and when I say to my husband that I need chocolate he offers to go and buy me some. To try and fill my own hungry gap - which feels more like an endless ants tunnel. But sometimes you need chocolate to temper the salt of sorrow.

Black and Gold

1st June 2012 Friday

A dear friend describes her vision for me - a black wall -  two clear lines of gold light defining a door way - the light behind the door which I could push open - any time soon.

Black and gold like the ears of the Egyptian god Anubis. My husband has recently made a beautiful clay model of him for a dear friend’s birthday. He’s sleek, serene and majestic.  In Egyptian mythology he accompanies souls on their journeys through the underworld.

Today I practised a little bit - in the darkness of my underworld - letting in a shaft of light when I changed my mind about something. I wasn’t sure I wanted my husband to see a series of films about bereavement - films made by people who had lost or were losing loved ones they had cared for for many years.  I was afraid he would be upset.

Then I saw how much I try and protect him, and how that can become control.  So we watched the films together, along  with the people who made the films, and their friends and supporters, people who share something of their experience. People like us. They were moving and sad and uplifting and courageous. 

Nothing to be afraid of when you listen with the black and gold ears of love.