Partytime!

Life is strange and full of coincidences.
It was a spookydooky occasion when disguise was appropriate.
This last week I delved into unopened boxes packed extremely efficiently ten years ago and other boxes packed four years ago, some not quite so well. In fact some stuff just packed into the box muddled! Within the last four years some boxes have been opened and strewn in a muddle in my attic when I had searched for something but lazily or in a hurry didn't re-pack the boxes correctly. Likewise the books boxes... I keep discovering more books which need to be assigned to their place!
The coincidence is that I found silver jewelry that could be worn to the party which hadn't been seen for aeons. I found masks used at Hallowe'en events once in France with the kiddies group I used to volunteer with and previous to that at fantastic Hallowe'en parties in England at my neighbour's house! Out came the red scarves, masks, feathers but no hula-hula skirt.  I could have worn that red sequined Monsoon top that I re-discovered exclaiming "WOW"! It had been forgotten, only ever worn the once when I discovered a thread of sequins required replacement. I think I wore it to a Hallowe'en masked ball some 17 years ago, or maybe I bought it because it was fabulous at the time and still is!... ...  ... and another wow, I found art prints from that evening, needing as ever, to be framed! So many memories have been opened in the last week that have made me laugh and tell a story to my Workawayers from California who commented that if only they have such memories and identity when they are my age then they will have known that they have lived!
Sex Pistols played 'Anarchy in The UK' and The Clash played 'London Calling' whilst almost 40 yr olds and some over 50s and moi 65 danced in smoke machine mist...whilst kids galore laughed and danced in the cloud.  It was wonderfully warm for an al fresco bonfire party and fireworks. Evidently Surrey was the warmest place on record in England for October 31st - 22.5 Celsius at about 4pm time!

Cinderella disguised as The Red Witch made it home before the pumpkin arrived and she didn't lose a slipper, malheureusement! English jacket potatoes finished in the bonfire embers plus grated cheddar and baked beans was soooooo good! There were English sausages plus mulled wine... called vin chaud en France! Toffee apples, ghostly cakes, skeletons, bats, cats, and ugly, scary faces made it all fantastic. Great Party. Great friends!

Twelve years ago

... today, I became the owner of half a former English inn ... it was 400 years old, behind which, were old Tannery buildings, some had been demolished but others were renovated as storage, garage or workshop. I employed my best friend to renovate which he did exquisitely!  That house was my pride and joy apart from the fact traffic vibrated the living accommodation on the second floor in the loft space!  The pavement in front of the house was not really wide enough for a wheelchair or pushchair. One could almost reach out and touch the buses! I have some regret leaving that beautiful home which was haunted and I only discovered that in the last week.  The stained glass window on the front door was my design, representing the town and common, painted beautifully by my friend's daughter. One of our cats, Little Feat, used to greet Neal Powell, an author, almost every time he walked through the back yard. He adored her when she rolled over his brown polished leather shoes.

I must find photos of interior and exterior. It is one of my jobs to trawl through a lifetime of photos, paper, framed and unframed, and those on CD and on iphoto........ help!

My house was by the river, not far from Elizabeth Jane Howard's island. I always thought she was a most beautiful woman but when I lived near her I was too busy to read her novels. I enjoyed the recent BBC radio 4 serialisation of The Cazalets, always thinking that I could hear “her” speaking, then to my surprise I discovered that much was based on her own experiences.  I could sympathise and empathise with her somewhat Bohemian lifestyle, failed marriages, affairs of the heart, passion, mooning over men, mistreatment yet she'd had a good life …such ambivalence is there in love and passion. I know bohemian but not all her traumas, thank goodness!

I had the enormous privilege of meeting her in her kitchen. I remember being served tea and cake,  being in awe of her very simple lifestyle which reminded me of my grandmother, being allowed to wander onto her very own island. What joy to be on that piece of land that I had coveted and marveled at just a few years before, when, not knowing the future, I had stood on The Common and decided that I wished to live "over there". Unwittingly, unknowingly, I completed my dream in 2002.  It was several years later that the memory of the incident returned. 

What a wonderful thing for her to have lived where she lived and to have written from her heart.

What a wonderful thing for me that I met her... just the once and I can write from my heart.  She was a great authoress.  In Memoriam.

Being a Mother

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.