The days are merging into one, folks. I don’t know when one day starts and the other ends. They are all beginning to look the same. I know it’s torture for my mother, who is the one going through this incredibly dark and confusing time, but it’s torture for us too. To see her like this, to hear the heartbreaking things she says, to be on the recipient end of her frustration.
I wake up, I haul myself out of bed even though I don’t want to face another day like this. I sort my children out, leave them with family members, then go and see to my mother all day. When I return late at night, my kids are often fast asleep, and I am dizzy, exhausted and starving.
It’s a tough phase of life. I have never experienced anything like it before. But it will be okay.
The earth is crawling with life. Simply heaving with it. Crawling to microcellular level. Even life is crawling with life. Our very infrastructure is bacteria.
If you get a telescope out and skim the surface of Mars, you would see no life. Remnants of what scientists say might have been, could have been life, but never life itself.
The Mars rover leads a lonely, long existence.
And in this life, we are often lonely. Some of us are. We seek connections with other people.
Some connections are entirely benign, and enrich our lives.
Especially if you live in a country where the sun is consistently shrouded by cloud.
Clouds of shroud.
Covering its beaming face.
When the sun comes out all and sundry scuttle from their hidey holes.
And it drains energy.
So lobster arms and legs sprawl, blistering, in the heat, empty cans hanging loosely from fleshy claws.
And people are truly, then, running on empty.
And when the sun sets, and the ashen dregs of barbecues are ground into the floor under hardened soles, the cold night air surges again, and the stars pop out to twinkle, one by one.
Sometimes in life you have to trek through figurative mountains.
Right now that’s what I am doing, swimming through a thick tide and to be honest there is no end in sight. No shore to reach for. I will say though that there are posts, and each post is promising me, when I hold on to it to catch my breath, that there will be another one soon, that there is hope to look forward to.
But no shore yet. No end in sight. No light at the end of the tunnel.
The thing is, though, I am so certain that it will come. It can’t not. It can never always be like this. This is temporary, help will come, this will end!
That’s what gets me through these dark, dark days.
It’s not the skies flying rapidly by, changing colour with each hour, month, season.
It’s not the sun, revolving around the earth.
It’s not the moon controlling the tides.
It’s not growth, not the blossoming of petals after stark, winter dormancy.
It’s not appreciation of the world in all its forms.
It’s not peace.
Not world connectivity, cultures drawn together, happiness spread.
It’s beans on toast when the skies are grey and the world is cold. It’s steaming beans trickling over warm toast with butter melted on top, and a fried egg, sunny side up, on the corner of the plate. Some mushrooms pile up in another corner. Maybe a little bit of feta too. It’s a mug of delicious hot earl grey with a teaspoon of sugar and a glug of milk, because it’s the weekend and I am indulging. It’s fluffy socks, crossed under the table, as the delicious breakfast is downed slowly, every bite savoured, all washed down with the sweet, flavourful tea. It’s a day stretched out, wonderfully empty, with no assignments or chores looming ahead. A pile of exciting books by a freshly made bed, crisp sheets, a soft dressing gown. A pretty, glowing lamp in the corner of the living room after a relaxing walk in the cold evening, cheeks red, nose cold. It’s falling asleep to the gentle patter of rain on the window panes, all relaxed and ready for the hectic week ahead.
The trees whisper secret songs through the breeze, but it takes a hard and strong wind to create a true symphony.
Their leaves are each a small instrument, thrumming against each other as the air surges between their branches. Swaying to and fro, back and forth, to and fro, and the thunderous sound of a million cheers filling the air, taking over.
If you close your eyes for just a moment, you will feel like you are flying. Your heart will swell along with the currents, and you will put your head back and let the sound wash over you.
I have always loved that sound. It is a sound that transports you to another world. The voices of the earth and humanity become distant memories in the background, life recedes in the face of this magnificent phenomenon. They are in harmony, and they speak to each other, telling one another things we can never imagine.
The wind does not roar, the trees do, in a deafening welcome.
John Atkinson Grimshaw – A rabbit hunter on a riverside road.
I have had to travel back to the UK due to my mother’s illness. So my posts are backlogged. I am here now, it’s a grimy, grim place, I am realising. But I am here. I am shaken by my mother’s regression, and determined to help her, and to ensure my kids are not missing out on education or experiences.
I am here now.
Making the most of life, because it’s always going to offer me something with jagged edges, isn’t it. We must carry on.
Still posting every day in November, it’s how we keep sane. What did they used to say in WW2? Keep calm and carry on.
If I were to choose a sandwich to eat it would be on freshly baked sourdough sliced bread. Crisped up using olive oil on a cast iron pan. Thinly sliced beef under lashings of a sauce made with mayo and some chilli and finely chopped pickles. A fresh, barely ripe, almost crispy sliced tomato, and slices of cheese that when melted become stretchy and delicious.
I have seen better days folks. Sometimes it’s best to be isolated in a time of great tragedy or pain. Even though I am surrounded by people, nobody can help me. Nobody can ease this pain. All we have to do is to go through it. And wonder at how this test will make us stronger.
Lady Zelda was ferocious. I mean that in the most literal of terms. Her face, as red and ripe as new tomatoes spotted with dew, was lined with the wrinkles one can only achieve after years of frowning at the most insignificant of matters. A frown at the maid servant because the fire was too cold, a sullen purse of the lips because the beef was overcooked and for goodness’ sake Dorothea, you know better than to let my tea steep for more than five minutes!
You do realise, of course, that Lady Zelda was quite capable of carrying out these tasks herself, as she was not so riddled with consumption as she claimed to be. She suffered from a bad case of poor humour, as her doctor wryly told her nephew, a certain Dr Robert Smith.
Lady Zelda’s eyes were little, and shrewd. They were a vivid, piercing blue, startling in their brilliance, and certainly not diminished by her age. They added something strange to her surreal face, giving her the air of one about to explode. Lady Zelda was like the deep breath before the plunge, Laura would say. Laura was Lady Zelda’s great niece, from the lineage of Lady Zelda’s brother, Lord Edwin Darlan Smith, who was the late father of Lord Smith. Tom, or Master Thomas Laurence Norton, as he was generally known around these parts, told Laura on several occasions that that her great aunt Zelda was nothing but a besquatting, ribbetty, groany old toad. Mary, Tom’s younger sister, silently agreed with him, but because she and Laura shared a special friendship, she would never voice her opinions on the matter, and stoutly stood by her friend against her brother’s unkind and disrespectful words.
In a nutshell, Lady Zelda was not a particularly pleasant woman to know. She might have been, in her heyday, but to be quite frankly brutal about the matter, there didn’t seem to be anybody from that particular time period left to say anything to the contrary; and that is where the Smiths left it.
The Smiths, of course, being of the lineage of Lady Zelda Smith, of Milton Manor, by the Rooks, a small, insignificant town a good twenty miles from the nearest city, housing approximately 800 residents and a number of animals. Everybody knew each other, of course, being such a small, close knit community, and everybody therefore knew that young Amelia Fox of French Way worked for the tiresome old lady. Which is why, one sunny afternoon, when young Amelia rushed into the Post Office, wringing her hands, tears streaming down her perfectly sculptured face, Master Williams at once said, ‘Why, Amelia, dear, has the old bat snuffed it at last?’
Ocean Bream 