Ends, Beginnings,Thoughtful Moments

For some reason I keep reading the 4th part of T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets
(MY brown highlights are thoughtful reflections about time, space, resolving difficulties, cold, warmth, living and the dead)

Little Gidding (where was a former 17th century monastery)

I  
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?
              If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
              If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.


II
Ash on and old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
       This is the death of air.
There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
       This is the death of earth.
Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
       This is the death of water and fire.
In the uncertain hour before the morning
     Near the ending of interminable night
     At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
     Had passed below the horizon of his homing
     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
     Between three districts whence the smoke arose
     I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
     Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
     And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
     The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
     I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
     Both one and many; in the brown baked features
     The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
     So I assumed a double part, and cried
     And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
     Knowing myself yet being someone other—
     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
     And so, compliant to the common wind,
     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
     Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
     I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
     My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
     These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
     By others, as I pray you to forgive
     Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
     For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
     In streets I never thought I should revisit
     When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
     To purify the dialect of the tribe
     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
     To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
     First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
     Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
     He left me, with a kind of valediction,
     And faded on the blowing of the horn.


III
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.


IV
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.


V
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

With thanks 

Feelings expressed

A kind friend has responded to my need or anyone's need to express feelings. It is so apt.

    They are real and it is only in giving in to them that you can begin to deal with them.

I think acknowledging feelings and mood by watching / listening to what happens internally, can bring one to a level of acceptance of what is truth and reality. Then, when they, the feelings, have been externalised and not suppressed with the stiff upper English lip, one can begin to treat the cause of the thoughts, which in actual fact, are I believe, the feelings.

I remember.
Whilst having responsibility for children's well-being in the school environment,  I often used to ask them "How do you feel?" and "How do you think the one you have been unkind to feels?  I used to sit the children together when they had hurt each other and get feelings out into the open... even angry ones, which seemed to help find a resolution towards understanding and forgiveness, so that, usually, they made up with a hug!  I nearly always asked the ones who could not express themselves to draw a picture. That helped too. I was heavily criticised for this during my last 3 months at school.  The new manager in that time, possible goaded by those below me who were unhappy with me, said it was a punishment to keep a child in from their playtime and make them draw a picture.  I never saw it like that. They were allowed to cool down, have time out, and had a choice to write, draw or leave a blank page! Then, if there was time they went back to their playtime or sometimes wanted to help me prepare the classroom.
It wasn't as easy as I make it sound! Discipline in schools became a contentious issue.

It was a pity that this method did not apply to the adults in the school, including me.  It might have stopped the endless mindless chatter, gossip and dissatisfaction with others.

I never really learned about relationships with people because a) I FEEL that my parents never taught me nor modelled positive behaviour and b) that as an adult, I was always REACTING to events, circumstances. I regret that. I knew I had to be more proactive but TIME never seemed to be on my side.  Always as a working single parent, I was struggling to climb out of the abject poverty we had been in and make a better life, a middle class life, a life of opportunity, a life of fewer struggles. Since early retirement and in the last 3 to 5 years I've read a lot about emotions / feelings, people and relationships on the internet.  Some stuff I dismiss but I try to learn something from all that I read. There are a lot of troubled individuals in relationships and one feels for them.  There is also some wonderful insight and info on behavioural models to emulate.  It would be easy to blame emotional matters on our parents but I don't.  Mind you, I DID.  Yet, I haven't blamed them for about 20 years, ever since I forgave them in my mind. They did the best they could after the war. They probably never learned to be self-aware. They had their own struggles in the face of adversity which was probably better then than now for younger families. My mother, now in her 80s, certainly cannot understand why I am so emotional.  She has been very wronged in her life. She  had to become hard and abrupt to stand up to my father's depression and who knows what else. He is not here to ask and now I woudl talk to him but not then, not 15 years ago. I am very sad about that!
Although my emotional outpourings have been an absolute pain, I am grateful for them.  They have brought me to a better place in my mind, heart and soul, despite blips!!!!!!

I've been cautioned in the past not to write about personal matters but it does not concern me.  It is who I am. I've been wronged in my life and am  thinking that the blogger fraternity is comprised of all sorts of very interesting folk and we learn from each other.  The internet = a library!

Some days..

It's a hard life......  Words and music by Freddie Mercury

I don't want my freedom
There's no reason for living with a broken heart
This is a tricky situation
I've only got myself to blame
It's just a simple fact of life
It can happen to anyone
You win - you lose
It's a chance you have to take with love
Oh yeah - I fell in love
And now you say it's over and I'm falling apart
It's a hard life
To be true lovers together
To love and live forever in each others hearts
It's a long hard fight
To learn to care for each other
To trust in one another right from the start
When you're in love
I try and mend the broken pieces
I try to fight back the tears
They say it's just a state of mind
But it happens to everyone
How it hurts - deep inside
When your love has cut you down to size
Life is tough - on your own
Now I'm waiting for something to fall from the skies
And I'm waiting for love
Yes it's a hard life
Two lovers together
To love and live forever in each others hearts
It's a long hard fight
To learn to care for each other
To trust in one another - right from the start
When you're in love
Yes it's a hard life
In a world that's filled with sorrow
There are people searching for love in ev'ry way
It's a long hard fight
But I'll always live for tomorrow
I'll look back on myself and say I did it for love
Yes I did it for love - for love - oh I did it for love

Restless in France lives with Love in heart, spirit and soul,
despite absences of  Love,  for Past matters not, in the NOW of  Today.
Love emerges from Hope. Hope is born of Love. Therein is Alpha and Omega.
Love like a plant can die but new Love springs eternal as new seeds are sown.

A Tale of Two Duvets

Today is the day when duvets will be cleaned at the launderette as a treat because although they are not dirty as such they have not been cleaned for more years than I would like to confess.  This has been for a number of reasons,  too lengthy to mention.  However, with a second comfortable bed with its own duvet in another room and with warm weather forecast for the next few days, it’s time for transporting two bulky luxury king size feather duvets.

I had already discovered that at the launderette in the larger town, 30km journey, the cleaning of one duvet would cost me 32e, Nearer , 7km journey, it would cost about 26e. Without procrastination, I head to the launderette at a nearby market town, 8km, because in the past I received courteous and helpful service. Being petrol conscious, the drive could incorporate a visit to the market to purchase vegetables, fruit and fish because I am TRYING to keep to a diet.

On arrival, I enquire cheerfully about the price and am told 40 euros per duvet.  Oh dear! With an um and ah I decide to go ahead, even though, perhaps, I could buy a new one, appreciatively lesser quality, for a little more than 80 euros!  He is going to wash the duvet rather than chemically clean it and is telling me that the feathers will bulk together. I understand!  I ask him why he is not going to chemically clean it ... but I do not fully understand, yet he says it would still be wet. Then having filled in his form and taken my name I ask when they will be ready.  I have not yet paid!  He announced September 15^th, which is in 20 days!!!!!!!  I exclaim that this is far too long as I am expecting visitors and the weather might change but NO… the monsieur is not for turning!  I decide this is an unacceptable period for an unacceptable amount and tell him nicely that it is not possible and go to gather up my duvets.  As I do this, he surprises me. He BANGS his hands down on the counter and screws up his form, throwing it across the room behind him!  I quietly say “Ooh la la monsieur, Ooh la la”. As I exit the door I call breezily “Bon journée.”  
What amazed me is that:

Le monsieur was working at his crossword page when I arrived and clearly was not pressed at Le Pressing!  

What is it about a very teeny, tiny proportion of French people who appear to not wish to accommodate a service for their business!!!!!!!!

This happened with a local restaurant recently. We arrived at 20h30 and were refused service because although they were only three people, they had been working since 8am, were tired, plus the proprietress said they had run out of food as it is almost the end of the season and close at 21h!   It is still hottest August!!!!  However, at least they sold a take away pizza as this seems to be about all my 4 year old grand daughter who rarely sleeps wanted to eat!!!!!!!! 

At that restaurant I expressed surprise, saying that I thought custom is important for the survival of a business!  We would have spent at least 60 euros but it was their loss and ours too!
I made an omelette! 
LESSON OF THE DAY
In our region of France decide to eat earlier in the evening and book a table!  I know that but it was difficult to impress my family with this idea. Now they know!

Effusive

A very dear friend describes me as effusive, verbose, and that I have outpourings.
Being wordy necessitates declaring emotions.  I am emotional.  My face/body language are easily read to gauge the level of happiness that I have for myself, others or a situation.  
It's how I am and has taken me a lifetime to accept.
I haven't always been able to verbally express myself  because I lacked vocabulary and was afraid of people's reactions and comments. The brain used to clog up!
Hence it is why, I write down thoughts and feelings to get them OUT of my HEAD, where, if they were to stay, confusion would reign. It's better than allowing them to fester inside my head and heart.
Over time, outpourings onto paper appear to bring sense to life or I then forget about the subject!
I am banned from writing overly much to friends and family who often deal with this by ignoring me, in effect silencing me and not writing back! They have sometimes said that I am mad and of course I am working on that!

I write personal STUFF in a journal.  I try to keep one journal book and date the entries/postings.  In the past there have been two or three on the go at the same time and not always dated so if I were to revisit them the chronology would be muddled.   Any reader including myself would be muddled reading the struggles that I vent!!!!! Ho hum!  


Often people have not described who I am or what I am except with reference to the sometimes zany, crazy, off-the-wall behaviour, when often I allowed their words to hurt me.  I can see that it was not their words that hurt but the way that I thought about what they'd said! I have also had lovely comments and sometimes used to cry because I did not know how to receive compliments! Sad!

To be described as verbose, or effusive is perhaps negative but because it identifies HOW I AM,  I see it as positive, supportive and defining.  My expression of  feelings and opinions in script or verbally helps me understand and feel more confident.  It is how I am.

 
 

Delight

A French lady whom I had not met for 18m interrupted me as I looked at refrigerators. She was radiant and as I like to get people to talk about themselves, she talked about her husband and his project and she was in raptures.  I loved listening to her.  Then she asked about my house and my friends and so it went on...all the time I kept hearing her use the word 'ravi'.  She was delighted to see me and I could see she meant it.  I was also delighted to see her.  I hope that we can meet up again for I am very fond of her.  She's cultured and funny but serious and correct. 
Nobody in my lifetime, to my knowledge has ever told me, they have been delighted to see me!!! Nobody has ever come rushing up to me so pleased to see me quite in the way that she did!!! Wow..... I like living in France!  I know this report sounds rather arrogant but the incident made me feel full of self-esteem.

Yesterday

Yesterday......
PART ONE
oh George, oh Paul, oh John, oh Ringo, oh The Beatles, oh how I used to weep between screams and smiles of joy, of sentiment, of being on the edge of a cliff of musical, magical, majestical mystery.
PART TWO
Yesterday ....... was a stormy day... in more ways than one.

Yesterday, I sat on a bench under the hands of horse chestnut trees, whilst rain penetrating through leaves dropped drips, one by one, onto my blue-grey rain mac and in my hair, as I sat and studied  lightning across a river valley, watching rain fall against the backdrop of trees. Birds stopped song and flight as rain fell and when the clouds abated, the feathered friends struck up their tunes and were seen to fly from place to place, for it was not yet 9 o'clock in the evening.

Yesterday, I sat under the leaves of conker trees and smelled the damp bark. I leaned against the tree and wished to hug the strength out of it.  I witnessed conkers lying on the ground from last Autumn.  I looked up into the canopy of green and felt protected.  My wistful melancholy whimpered at my soul like a French nightingale with all the joys and happinesses of Spring and Summer but solitariness seethed towards a wonderment about people and existence.

Yesterday, I sat wishing I had my camera, purse and tissues, for I had nothing except my self and what I wore. Then CLOCK. I see before me a Toyota MR2 sports car with a GB number plate... ah ha .. English people are here.  Ah ha, and what is this, as a Porsche Boxster S parks alongside it. "Bonsoir" le monsieur dit a moi. "Bon soir Monsieur" je dit.  "Hello".  He discusses the weather and who they are visiting and asks me something where I reveal a twist in the day but reveal nothing more than the wistfulness of a stormy day.  I ask if he has seen me before, for he is quite friendly! He offers to bring a glass of wine as he clutches his two bottles of red to the place he is going to.  Of course he never arrives. Why would anyone in a thunder storm want to return to a wet bench under trees with two glasses of red in his hand when he is the age of my son?
But oh, I dreamed that he would..for a person to talk to and not to talk about me... oh no... for as I have been told I am as mad as a biscuit and I am told that I dream fancifully.
There I am in a film set ... rather as Bathsheba in the storm. I see Troy with Fanny as the rainstorm flooded the earth and spoiled the crops and yet made characters strong to allow love to win through tragedy.    Oh such a fanciful imagination in search of company and more than that... normality.

PART THREE
Wishing to maintain privacy, just let me say that the following day I was feeling so good that after almost 3 hours of mowing grass, I walked far into countryside at a pace, descending and climbing a circuit of stone steps, lanes, streets and pavements about the village and its environs.  I courageously knocked on a door to see if I could discover this person to explain that I do not normally sit in rain and thunder storms. These English people were so kind and not at all phased...so French really... we showed interest, discussing all manner of things French and English, their lives and mine. They fed me a most amazing 3 course meal followed by coffee.  I hope I can return the conviviality.

PART FOUR

Yesterday... I was told by an English person that I look French...oh oh oh... MY MY MY! J’ai arrivé.
I do actually have ancestors who are from Nîmes et de Nantes. How good do I feel!!!!!!!!

Life is looking up!!!!!!!

It's Saturday and I peel myself out of my warm, warm, bed.

I peel myself out of my warm, warm, bed.
Some may think it terrible but I think it was necessary to go to bed with clothes on, apart from my denim workday jeans and coat.  My hat soon fell off as I lay in bed with my head on the pillow reading horizontally and sideways, reading glasses being pushed off by the pillow.  Hunkered down with an ikea soft muslin-type shawl around my shoulders (the shawl is probably for a baby or child).  I am like that now as I need to be warm and loved in the cold and yet I can love myself when I am warm.  I laugh out loud. I am happy even though conditions are extreme.

This morning I peel myself out of my warm, warm bed.
Not so much shiver but feel the BLAST of cold air as I lift up the edges of the three duvets... I shall go and check these out for tog ratings ...normally the two is sufficient!   
{I think that the use of is, is better than the use of are but I am ready to stand corrected}
I feel the blast and snuggle down, check the clock of which the alarm rang 45 minutes ago.
Now to get up, for a friend is coming to help make a bathroom!
I stand at the side of my bed and an expletive emanates forth from my person.
I jump.  Star jumps.

I have peeled myself from the warm warm bed.
Get the coat on first, and light the fire. I chuckle.  How ridiculous is life!
A huge log has not even burnt in half.  Maybe I left the dampers open and yet one would have thought the log would have burnt through. The glass is relatively clean but I clean it anyway with newspaper and white vinegar, rake the ashes and leave most on the waffle bed, sprinkle with waste paper and kindling wood in a teepee fashion, replace the huge oak log which I temporarily and dangerously removed ..it was cold to the finger touch.. but as the air reached the underneath up-turned,  it was becoming to gently breathe in air and exhale smoke.  Now, all is in place as I push the door to, and whoosh the flames go, for the draft of the air has caused combustion from the heat in the cinders to the paper to the kindling sticks and to the oaken wood.

I need to attend to ablutions (from the Middle French/Late Latin abluere = to wash away) and put on the outer lower garments. I'm looking in the mirror and laughing, to see my face wrinkling and so I laugh more because now I can laugh when before I would have just grumbled.
Better to see amusement in life, better to get through it!

You see, it is 10C in my room and I am not in my warm, warm bed. 
I proceed to the kitchen where an icier blast hits me whilst I pour icy water into the kettle and return to put on a purple-soft, muslin scarf and my Nepalese red hat.  How I remember the "123 learning to read" books about The Red hat, Yellow hat and Blue hat families!!!!   Oh dear, I've disturbed the  blackbird as I peer out of the kitchen window. Bird seeds in a tin are taken outside and put onto the temporary, flat, terracotta tile, balanced on the snow. The soft, soft snow has a hard crust.  Break it and find the flurry of snowflakes sticking together. It's not the snow for making snow sculptures!
I came to the computer to find the correct time... I come to my blog and write... I like writing... I am beginning to like jotting about the moments of a real life....and thoughts, random as they come.
I have just opened the steel, cold gates, having heaved and shoved the wooden ones into an open position, the wooden ones hanging heavy on their hinges dropped on their hinges, scraping the drive heavily.  If I don't get them open I won't be able to get out!   Though I have a back gate.  The daily alarm has already occurred.
A telephone call rings twice to let me know he's leaving: "Get out of your warm, warm bed".
(I am not an early riser, unlike he who has been awake since 3,4,5 or 6 o'clock in the morning)
It'll take him 20 minutes or so in my car.  
He's coming to work on my bathroom.  How I love him for his kindness.  Imagine the dedication and commitment to helping me as his friend despite all our failings, errors, human weaknesses, ability to share joy and security, to annoy and irritate, to create aggression and anger,  passivity and passing of war and peace and all the memories.
An angry person cannot rationalise.  He or she has to be left to recover their inner harmony because it is their anger and their pain, their projection, their difficulty that they cannot say what is wrong and cannot meet their own internal needs without the storm. The angry person needs space... maybe a moment, an hour, a day, 3 months, a lifetime even.  Meanwhile everyone and everything in their path is ruined, even themselves with the anger or frustration turned in against their Self. 
I have been uncontrollably angry.  It was when I did not love myself and had poor self-esteem. My kids made me angry. Work made me angry. I tried to deal with it and then became passive and am now dealing with the consequences of passive-aggressive behaviour.  I am not blaming anyone or criticising anyone. I am facing up to what IS.
My dad was regularly a very angry, hostile man and yet you would never have thought that by his social demeanour.  Some people would never have known the ugliness of my past behaviour and for that I am deeply sorry. Anger is fear, frustration, needs not met and requires an honest, painful telling of the truth even though it may hurt.  It needs strategy for coping with.
Whatever the colour of anger and how it is transmitted I never wish to be angry again. I never want to receive anger from those who have purported to have loved.  Anger is not Love.  I never want to see Anger and Castigation being given to me nor someone else and I never want to hear it being projected onto me or anyone else.  If it starts I have to laugh or just walk away.
Too much thinking.
Stop now whilst I get my tea and toast.
Get on with living. The past cannot be undone but it can be learned from, in my warm, warm bed.

The best that one can do

I'm doing the best that I can:
with exterior morning temperature more than -9C with a 'feels like' -14C according to the metéo locale.  My brand new mercurial thermometer is below the -12C that it shows.
The indoor bedroom temperature is at +9C.
The door is open to another room where the woodburner has almost no red glow and there it is +11C.   The next room, the kitchen has +7C.
Outside in the Municipal where I put the electricity heater on to protect the toilet and water pipes from freezing as they nearly did..... it is +13C... not quite warm enough to have a shower but if I were to put the more powerful electrical radiator on perhaps it would be warmer over there!   I will measure that another time.
I have to confess that last night I slept with all my layers of clothes on minus coat and scarves, with abandonment of the hat at some time... accompanied by two hot water bottles and with three efficient duvets, feeling cold at 6am but getting up at 7am.  All I had to do on waking was to just put coat, hat and scarves on and I was ready for the day, to light the fire and try to get warm.  Star jumps are brilliant for raising the body temperature as also is playing the piano.
I never trusted the digital thermometer. My friend and I had three between us and last year we did a quality control on them. They all read differently both for the interior and exterior communication between digital technology.  Back to ancient barometers and thermometers it is!
So glad I bought this small device yesterday. It is comforting to know. Where I used to live previous to this house, I used to have the horrors in similar extreme weather conditions when I went to the wetroom or bathroom because both rooms were often less than +10C. One made a quick visit to return to the splendour of the 'too hot living room' where the woodburner warmed the room better than toast and where I felt claustrophobia.  I can't complain! We did the best that we could.
I've read that gas connectors can get frozen up so I don't know if that is the case or that I have run out of gas in the cylinder for the gas hob. I have read that it is best not to touch it if at all uncertain. So am I suffering unnecessarily? I am not suffering for I have the electric oven which also has a grill.    So the day before yesterday I put the all-metal frying pan under the grill... warmed up the oil, cracked in the eggs, splashed over the oil, and popped it back under the grill and in a jiffy I had fried eggs (instead of an omelette that I wished for) and wedge potatoes (previously cooked) instead of my chips.
Today I popped about 8 small potatoes in the oven whilst I went to La Presse..... where le monsieur has a shop selling newspapers, magazines, food, postal items, and a bar where he needs to be trained that I like HOT chocolate drink, and trained that I like VERY HOT chocolate drink, and after that with a bar of crunchie chocolate bar, I had a coffee and I sat by the fire and read in French the book I purchased which has the definitive historical guide about my village. A pleasant read for almost an hour... where some old boys came in for the apero before lunch plus an Englishman I've seen before who speaks impeccable French. I only knew he was English because he let slip a few English words with English accent. Here I was, the old girl, sitting by the café-bar fireside, with my Haute-Savoie / Nepalese red hat with flowery tassels and my black woollen coat and my brown silk and woollen scarf over all the rest of my attire.
So here I am... doing the best that one can!
And over there, wherever you are .... you, he, she, they are doing the best that they can.
It is all anyone can ever do.
To be truthful to who we are.
I am trying so hard not to tell lies, not even to my self.
I received someone's irritation and more today, but it was really about someone else and yet it was projected on to me.  Later I heard someone else's anger, but not at me, not about me, however, in that context I could help the person because the 'she' was able to do anger management control whereas the 'he' lets it damage himself and everyone and everything that comes in his path. Shame.
As far as I know, I don't get angry anymore and yet I know that in the past I have been angry with my SELF and my family and even my best soulmate.
NOW that I am older and distanced from being a parent and a grandparent because they are far from me, I realise that some of the anger I had was borne out of frustration, having very little constructive and positive ME time, though there were times when I was alone. Usually it was consumed by work or study or poor relationships and having few, if any, people to advise me, support me in a proactive manner. My cousin was always supportive even in the direst of emergencies. She would bring the medicinal Armagnac, give me one small dose, sometimes two, a hug, wise words and disappear to her own family.  I had a female friend who took the children to give me space.  I have regrets but they have to be released. I was responsible then for my sometimes poor parenting as well as for my good parenting but I am not responsible now for them.  I think my children do not hold it against me.  I did the best that I could.
What is the purpose  of causing pain to one self?  One would not wish to hurt another person so why get angry with anyone or the SELF?

Oh how I loved them and still do. Great for dancing and getting warm!
Paul is doing the best that he can!

Fire and Ice

I woke up this morning, eager for the day, 

things to do and happy to say

that I am burning almost the last log of 5 steres.

Ho hum.

The winter has been mild and 'we', the 'Royal we', made savings 

and now pay for it later.  

It is the Law of Life. 

I complain not,  until,  I view my other woodburner
which at about 11pm last night I lit to warm up the icy rooms where lie oak parquet.  

Trees stand in winter so why did I do that when I am not there and cannot afford this year to keep the two fires alight night and day.  

It is an L shaped house - ground floor only - a veritable bungalow
with two large cavernous empty attics.  

Digression! 

On the hearth is a brown liquid which stops before it spills over the edge. 

 Behind the dead fire is evidence that treacly stuff has gone below the glass.  

I have emailed the Monsieur and sent photos but no reply. It is Saturday.  Monday I am sure they are closed. Tuesday I will be calling in! Monday I will call my insurance company. 

I cannot understand. 

Only two weeks ago the fire was blazing for a good 12 hours
and le chaleur was impressionant a mes amis. 

Pourquoi ????? For what indeed!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am concerned that I shall only feel secure if the whole job is refait!

          Meanwhile just outside the door of the same room hangs an icicle.  My very own! 

LANGUAGE:

le chaleur = the heat or warmth
impressionnant = impressive
Le travail devra être refait  = The work will have to be redone.

A thankyou tribute to my lovely daughter

It was thirty four years ago today

I was struggling to make my way,

With sliced oranges in a preserving pan

Making marmalade for me and my man

So may I introduce to you

My daughter naturally true

Miss Happiness was her name

And for that I'm glad I am to blame

For calling her Felicity

'cos with speed and velocity

She arrived into this wonderful world

A beautiful pink baby pearl.
ohhhhhh
Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
It's wonderful to be here
It gives me such a thrill
She's such a lovely audience
and makes me feel so good
I don't really want to stop the show

but I thought you might like to know

I am happy just today to say

a very very Happy birthday.

And so it was that I started at about 5h in the morning, stage 2 of my special motherly recipe for making marmalade which involved cutting finely by hand the seville oranges, sweet oranges and lemons on that second day of making the best marmalade in the world!  At about 7h or later in the evening it was jarred.  And so, I was free to give birth for I was elephantine and if I sat down could not get up again.  I too was jarred with stirring and jangled because I was having this baby.  I refused to go to the hospital earlier because of frightful experiences with what happened when I gave birth the first time with my dearest son,  and so I waited until I was sure that those waves of pain were the real thing.  When I arrived at the hospital at about 20h30 I told the nurses “I am having a baby”.  I remember the look on Matron’s face as she smilingly and kindly spoke “Of course you are”.   Why else would I be arriving at a maternity hospital like a beached whale?   However, I insisted urgently that I WAS HAVING the baby!  It was a small cottage hospital. Nonchalantly, they allowed me to go to the toilet unaided, whereupon the waters broke, I collapsed on the floor yet had the good sense to pull the alarm cord and so they came running in their uniforms. Within a few minutes at 8h53pm the darling Felicity was born!  Miss Happiness.  I felt that I was lucky to now have one son and one daughter. It was my wish come true.

She hasn’t always caused happiness to either herself or others, being a very challenging person, but the worry was well worth it because I now feel a great affinity with her, and the more we see each other, as we get older, the more we seem to get on well together.  But of course I cannot speak for her.  I praise her for her ability as a mother in coping with a parenting situation that is very different to my experience as a mother, as was my own experience different to the trials of my own mother.  I respect daughters.  I respect  mothers.  I respect what supportive father's do too.  Being a conscientious parent is not the easiest of jobs and it IS a job,  it is a career and as mothers we work hard for the heartache of pain AND joy that sons and daughters bring to us.
My daughter has a wealth of ideas and self confidence. She has many creative talents and abilities.   We come from a family where the women appear to be late developers.  I am hoping that in 2012, or whenever, she will find a way to use her skills, interests and talents in a way that brings more confidence, success and happiness.  May doors open for her.    Happy Birthday, my lovely one.

28 January 1978 Top of the Pops chart
Number 1 was "Stayin Alive" by the BeeGees
Number 20  was "What's your Name?" by Lynrd Skynrd

First Wednesday Wonderful Eats for Tiling

This album is Emotional.  This track, based on a true story,  often makes me cry or feel sentimental. I suppose it's poignant; a girl who left home when I never had the courage until I transferred to college at 18 yrs of age, officially becoming an independent adult. 

 

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band alias The Beatles  - She's Leaving Home - 1967

Well, today is a wonderful Wednesday because grey floor tiles are laid in the bathroom but not without angst. The packs of 7 tiles are very slightly different in size and we are talking about millimetres, which sounds not a lot until they do not marry up with straight lines!  The last one has had to be adjusted and it's lucky not to be in pieces!

Lunch was a fine roast rolled shoulder of lamb from the local fields.  I have to say I rather excelled myself without much effort and reminisced about ditches and lunchtime dinners!
Yesterday I sautéed two leeks and threw in the frozen mâche, added the potato stock and seasoning and left to cool for a soup base. However, today, into the covered casserole dish went the soup with the seared lamb, studded with slivers of garlic, on top of it, surrounded by large chunks of butternut squash, 2 onions with their skins on, (laziness create deliciousness)  and around the top slightly pre-boiled potatoes (Cherie darling), and into a cold oven at the hottest of temperatures.  This is a kind of French roasting. the moisture permeates upwards, tenderising the meat. I roasted for about 1¼ hours and then took out the meat "to rest" before slicing into thick pieces.  The potatoes and squash were taken out of the dish and put onto the hot metal tray in the oven to crisp up for about 10 minutes.  I made a sauce from the liquid in the casserole dish adding a little flour to thicken and a touch of seasoning.  To serve I put a spoonful of the leeks and mâche onto the plate with the slice of lamb on top and around it the squash, potatoes, and one onion which I had removed the skin of.
For dessert... I'd accidentally cooked the Bramley apples for too long in water and no sugar until they were mushy. I'd made a thick batter mixture with flour, egg, milk, sugar (no weighing here!) and then espied a tangerine going 'home'   so I cit it in half and chopped up the eatable portion and threw that into the batter, then poured the lot over the apples and baked that in the oven I suppose for about 40 minutes ... but had turned the heat down a wee amount!  You can smell when it is ready! 

Wonderful Wednesday

Wonderful Food

FRENCH LANGUAGE:

mâche  nf  =  lamb's lettuce

Today's Choice

Reasons to be Cheerful Part 3 buy Ian Dury and the Blockheads 1980

WARNING for sensitive souls: There are expletives in the lyrics.

It's becoming a delight to find the songs and music of words that come into my head when I talk/ write to myself or others.  This one, for me, is about being happy with who we are and not striving for perfection. It's very appropriate for me and maybe many people.  Ian had an untimely death from cancer of the colon.  A loss.  Read more here.  I'm doing my best to find happiness in music so that I don't get dragged down. GOT TO MUCH TO DO!  I like the ending of this video - makes me laugh! 

Backtrack - May to July 2010

Between May and  July 2010  although I was energised by the owning of a property, evidently demonstrating vim, vigour and enthusiasm for renovating and wallpaper stripping, sanding down woodwork, clearing out junk, digging and filling trenches, rubbing down large beams, baking bread on a building site, helping to organise what might have been the start of a Midsummer ritual in my garden, after 7 weeks of what could be perceived as almost a kind of trauma about what I had done in buying my house, I decided to have a break and Do Something Different. So at the end of June and the beginning of July I decided to visit family and friends instead of or in addition to the months of March and November. Reflection and Meditation were necessary.

It was gloriously wonderful weather in England. Sunny days with privet blossom, scabious flowers and poppies by the wayside, cereals growing golden in their English gated fields surrounded by English oak trees and hedgerows. Yet though the beauty in the East Anglian fields was very marvellous I missed the French stone walls and lanes.

November 2011

 

NOVEMBER 2011

She walks along the village street where houses made of stone

hide and then reveal an ancient proud chateau

rising high to meet the sky.

She greatly wonders with surprise at this edifice vast and tall

and whose immense imagination

laboured to create such a visual foil.

She marvels at the awesome sight where none have lived since ancient times

and stands to stare in disbelief

like a visitor for the very first time.

She continues walking downward strokes a cat along the way

until she comes to her favourite place 

a mirror for antiquity, a pretty water way.

She stands to listen better

To the silence of the river

As it travels ever lower

Listens to the talking river

Hears the water chattering over

The weir babbling drops together

As thoughts and smiles of laughter

Walk precariously by the river

Broken branches stepping over

Rocks stones and mosses gather

In awe hearing mighty water

Like a child of Hiawatha

Alone with Mother Nature

Golden brown and fading ochre

Cling to trees as Autumn cover

Carpets leafed grey-brown-a-flutter

Scuffle shuffle smell and wonder

River winds around the corner

Of the silhouetted verdure

Forgets her other culture

City life and social banter

Forgets crowds and people chatter

Remembers though the fun and laughter

Remembers holding hands with youngster

Throwing stones in ocean water

Splash. Allow the sea to chase her.

Remember. Arm in arm. A lover.

Hear the buzzard screel and the caw of crows

Marvel at musky damp beneath her toes

Emanating from stones and leaves

Mother earth and moist wet trees

The sight of vivid verdant emerald

Of grass-bright-green moss-cushions-gold

Wonder the source of this wild French river
As Azerables joins the Gartempe and ponder

The damp wet beauty and olfactory aroma.

Evp November 2011

Peace and Understanding

Peace is essential for living. Not only do we try to remember those who without dignity died fighting in the most dire conditions that you would not even expect an animal to endure but also we try to remember that they died struggling for peace, understanding and acceptance of the differences between different lands, cultures and peoples.  Sometimes perhaps we should try and forget past aggressions and wars so that inner peace within us has an opportunity to develop and bring harmony to the world as well as to our inner soul, our family and friends. 
For many years I upheld the Catholic faith to the best of my ability which was never good enough and I knew that.  But what is perfect? Before that I had my own beliefs which I continued to believe with modification and despite loving much of the Catholic faith especially the songs and hymns which I used to play every day on the piano, I never became a Catholic in the 23 years that I worked within the Catholic environment.  Two more years and I would have been eligible for a Papal medal if the secretary was awarded one after 25 years service to the establishment!   I made mistakes but I did my best not to be hypocritical (yet I think I probably was) and I did my best to keep the peace and to teach children that respect between people is a gift and is something to be valued in our attempt to acknowledge that people are very much the same despite differences in appearance, faiths, beliefs and much more.
When my father died this is the song that came spontaneously and which I sang all alone in a Church in Spain where there was no other family member except my daughter.  He saw terrible atrocities in the war and told me about some on the very last day I ever met him. It was as if a burden had been lifted for him because he said he had never ever told anyone this part of his story.  His only sibling sister was dying and he knew he would never see her again.  Tragically, he died soon after from a traffic accident and lost the power of speech.  He made his own decision not to burden anyone. 
This is the song I sang spontaneously today just after 11am on 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2011 as I sat in my garden listening to the clock strike the hour, as I sat and with my own reflections with hands covered in dirt and imagined those who fought in trenches, those who fought for the Fair Winds of France and England to bring freedom from fighting, to give those who came after Peace.  Each verse is repeated but Peace is replaced with Love, Joy, Hope.

Peace is flowing like a river,
Flowing out through you and me,
Spreading out into the desert,
Setting all the captives free.

On another note:
Today I was speaking to a friend about the larger pansies which compared to the diminutive ones seem to have a disappointed attitude as they bow their heads.