national identity

Fast Asleep at Crewe

Ocean Bream musings, The Story of Lenny, travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Folks, I am moving. House, city, garden. Moving away.

I’ve lived in Crewe for 9 years. Fruitful? Yes. Both my children born here, in the same hospital, probably the same room. Same midwives, nurses, same women administering the BCG vaccine because they have foreign blood.

When I first moved here I thought I would only be here a year. Two max. I planted tulips, hyacinths, peonies which are only just about to bloom, and I won’t see them blooming. Beautiful climbing rose bushes from David Austen and two others from somewhere else which are all healthy and doing so well – I will not be here to see them bloom. But I hope someone else can enjoy the scent and colour of them for me. I planted three hydrangea bushes – one of which was mercilessly beheaded by an uninformed brother in law. A cherry tree which is only just bearing fruit, and an apple tree which bore me three apples and didn’t blossom at all this year.

I was ecstatic to discover Crewe mentioned in T.S Eliot’s poem ‘Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat’ – more on Crewe and its heritage later – it’s now just a sad little forlorn and broken down town filled with people who are the shadows and ghosts of their respectable ancestors. Sad but true. Brutal? This country brutalised its people. Flying Scotsman versus Japanese bullet train – the world is leaving this once-great country covered in dust.

“You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.“

Not all doom and gloom. April was shower-less but we still have our usual May explosion of frondescence and ambrosia. This country comes alive in the spring, and opens doors to a truly glorious summer. Bees and butterflies and flowers galore.

But I choose to leave. Why? Why not. Never stayed anywhere solidly for a long period of time. I roam this earth like a nomad and stranger, and while deep roots, according to Tolkien, are not reached by the frost, my deep roots are internal, non-physical. My family, my friends, they remain the same. But my furniture and home can be discarded.

Home is where the family is, after all. Let us hold on to that.

Goodbye, Crewe!!!

I have MANY thoughts on Crewe, having lived here for 9 years, and I want to elaborate on them soon.

Watson, Harry; Crewe Number 1 Platform, c.1960; Crewe Heritage Centre; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/crewe-number-1-platform-c-1960-103038

Buy Your Deal

Ocean Bream musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

My husband had a day off on Friday so we decided to let the kids burn some energy at the trampoline park, which is attached to this huge Outlet complex, containing all the famous outlet shops. Like Nike, Hugo Boss, Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Armani, ET CETERA ET CETERA. My boy had been asking to go for several weeks, so we decided now was the time, since it was a weekday and not likely to be busy.

We were supposed to arrive at 10am. So we left at 9am, thinking that it usually only takes us 50 minutes, so we’d have ten minutes to park up and take our shoes off.

That did NOT go to plan. It took us 45 minutes to get off the motorway, and when we finally nosed our way off at a snail’s pace we realised why.

Every single car in the traffic jam was slowly inching its way into the designer outlet. By the time we got in, we had missed 1hr and 15mins of the 2 hour session.

D said, ‘well, that’s our lesson to never go out in December, this Christmas shopping madness is just ridiculous!’

‘But it’s not December,’ I pointed out.

It felt more than just Christmas shopping madness, though. It felt manic. Insane. Apocalyptic.

As I paid for the trampolining session, the lady at the till said ‘you only have 45 minutes to jump today are you still willing to pay?’

My jumpy five year old who had been so incredibly patient in the two hour traffic jam and just so keenly wanted to jump was beside me, so I said, pretty firmly, ‘we’re happy to do that! We’d have been here earlier but there was shocking traffic getting off the M6!’

‘Ahh yes, everybody’s come for the Black Friday offers,’ she replied, giving me my receipt.

Sorry what?! This is the UK! What Black Friday?!

Apparently that’s what it was folks. Black Friday is clogging up the UK roads on a weekday, and people seem to be taking time off work to hit the shops and grab a deal.

An AMERICAN holiday, right? But it seems like it’s financially beneficial for the UK to adopt it also.

I don’t know what it is, but I have no interest whatsoever in these big red deals anymore. You just can’t tell what is real and what is fake, and everything seems like curated NOISE to distract you from the truth. From what’s real. Tangible. Slow your brain. Slow your life. I don’t want to buy your shit anymore. I just want to breathe.

Daisies on a Teacup [26]

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano 2022, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

He stayed away for three years. Each term, when his fellow students would pack their trunks and shout their goodbyes, he stayed on. Always finding an excuse to stay. One summer he worked as an assistant for an old doctor who lived in a village not far from the Academy. Another, he found himself inundated with work that he had not managed to complete during term, and had a letter from Master Jeffman himself to say he required the services of one Thomas Norton, if his family would be so kind as to excuse his absence.

Each holiday when John stepped off the train alone, or arrived home alone, or exited a carriage alone, her eyes would lose some spark. Nobody noticed. She was still her energetic, cheerful self.

Nobody thought it odd that Tom did not come back. Not even John. He would cheerfully remark on his friend’s ability to throw himself wholly, completely into his studies. He would detail how well Tom was doing, the praise Tom received from Master Jeffman, praise which any for other boy was hard to come by.

And she smiled when her brother spoke of him. Gracious smile, and then a change of track in conversation.

Nobody noticed.

Until one day, she could not take it any longer.

She sat down, picked up her pen.

Dear Tom,

I do not know but that I despise December. It is cold. It is grey. Darkness arrives not long after it lifts. When I see the dawn, I see no colour, save for the few days of sunshine we are so blessed to have. Perpetual GLOOM, Tom. Daises on a teacup. The only thing I look forward to in December is John’s much anticipated arrival. We all wait for him at the station, you see, since he writes which day he will be here. Mary waits, too, and your mother. She expects you, even if you have written to tell her you will not be on that train.

We get up early in December, before the dawn struggles its way up our side of the hill. The Lake has finally, finally frozen around the edges. Not enough to skate on – never enough for THAT, but we still dream, Mary and I. She is preparing to set off to new horizons. Come February, she too will be gone and then it will be just me left. She will be an Educated Woman, and I shall be the last remaining farm girl.

I could spend the rest of my life here, Tom. Everyday I love it more. I love the wind blowing over the hills and meadows. I love watching the sun set itself over our lake. I love the rustle in the forest. I love the smell of pine and rose when I fling my windows open in late summer. I love, yes, begrudgingly, I love the frosty mornings of December when every leaf, every twig, every branch, every blade of grass is iced most delicately, the most beautiful handiwork ever seen. I have no desire to take myself off into the world, or throw myself into studies, or teach, or marry a rich man and sail the seas with him. I want to stay here. With my roses. With my beast.

Daises on a teacup, Tom.

Our John tells us you are doing so well. So brilliantly well. He says you will be a doctor so renowned one day that none of us shall ever hear from you again, you shall be wanted all over the world. Is that true? I know my brother, he embellishes a lot. He flourishes one’s positive traits until one becomes faultless in his description. You are not faultless, and I know you are excelling, but I want some grisly detail. I want to hear of the fun things you get up to. I want to know what you do when you are not wearing the tip of your nose away on the grindstone.

With Affection,

Laura

P.S. Can we possibly be friends again?

Image Credit

Beast [23]

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano 2022, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The first time they encountered the beast it was when the children were all swimming at the Lake.

It was not really a ‘lake’ – it was a small body of water surrounded by tall fir trees. You could access it via a stony, winding path, the edges of which were flanked by a low stone wall built by hand over a century ago. All the town’s children traipsed down the path in the torrid summer weeks, picnics and clothes in baskets, their chatter and laughter rising higher than the trees which brought them relief from the heat.

It was the longest day of summer. The hottest day. From the moment they woke up in the morning, they were stifled by the heat. When a ten year old Laura went downstairs, all the windows had been flung open, and the drapes hung lifeless in a nonexistent breeze. They had a light breakfast of bread and cold milk, before their mother shooed Laura, John and Phyllis out to the woods to play in the shade. It was cooler there, and on her way out Laura asked if they could swim in the Lake.

‘Yes, yes of course. Don’t forget to take your swimming things. And have Minnie pack you a lunch,’ was the response.

They met Mary once they reached the winding stone wall path. She was picking her way among the scattered stones three paces behind Tom, her older brother. As they neared the Lake, they heard splashing sounds, laughter and screams, and they all smiled at each other in anticipation.

They had to turn a final bend, which, when they did, they found themselves faced by a larger thicket of tall pine trees, rather than the slope down to the Lake that they had anticipated seeing. Tom, who was ahead, stopped dead in his tracks.

‘That’s funny,’ he said, as the others reached him, ‘that isn’t supposed to be there.’

‘We must have taken the wrong turn,’ John said quickly, grabbing hold of his sisters’ arms. The earth went silent. They could no longer heard the shouts and whoops from the Lake.

‘We can’t have taken the wrong turn,’ Tom hissed, ‘there is only one straight path.’

The children stood still. Frozen in place.

A wind started to blow. They felt it surge at them, and before they had any time to react to it, it swelled around them with a shriek so deafening that they fell to the ground. It pulled at their hair, hot and damp, tugged at their clothes, and roared in their ears. Laura, who had fallen next to Tom, locked eyes with the older boy – his, vivid, green, wide, looking directly at her, just so, in that way; she knew immediately he had heard exactly what she had.

Then it stopped, and when they looked up, the world was loud again. Birds chirruped in the trees. The path was clear ahead of them, sloping down to the grassy edge of the lake, where they saw their friends leaping into the water, squealing and splashing as though nothing was wrong.

Image Credit: Olga Beliaeva

Is Your National Identity Becoming a Global Identity?

Ocean Bream Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Hello internet.

What do you think about national identity?

National Identity is defined as “a sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language.”

17021950-Abstract-word-cloud-for-National-identity-with-related-tags-and-terms-Stock-Photo

Which is interesting to me because if a sense of unity within a ‘nation’ is established by a distinctive language, tradition or culture, what then does that make the two dominant western nations, i.e. America and the UK?

The English language is a global language. This was a process begun, of course, by imperialism and invasion, not always seen a moral process. Nevertheless, it has resulted in a new dawn for culture and language. English is the predominant language of the Internet, because while webpages can be viewed in other languages, their addresses are in English. Computer codes are in English. A large number of countries around the world use English alongside their indigenous languages for administrative and governmental uses. English is often associated with economic affluence, education and prestige in many societies around the world. This could be because high end jobs require a knowledge of the English language, in this modern, advanced technological, interconnected world.

The result of globalisation, of course, is the globalisation of English, and with it the Western culture. ‘McDonaldisation’, ‘coca-colonisation’, and ‘Disneyisation’ are just a few terms thrown out there by sociolinguists who claim this creation of a monoculture has resulted in the killing (linguicide) of other languages, and cultures.

I personally think that it is a grave misconception to assume the western culture is the globalised culture, because while that may be predominantly true, indigenous cultures will always exist, alone or alongside the global monoculture. There are also thousands, even millions of cultures and civilisations around the world which remain untouched by the modern online community. That is a beautiful thought, to know that in some places, beauty and nature coincide to create wondrous populations of life and tradition that we know nothing about and have never heard of but can be related to through sheer humanity.

So what do you think? Is this true? Does this also mean that traditional cultures in the UK and US are also being killed, replaced by the globalised idea that western culture is multicultural cuisine (e.g. falafel, curries), universal fashion and a nomenclature of ideals which co-exist?

What do you think about national identity? Do you think your country has a distinct national identity, or is it so intermixed with the global monoculture that you feel as though your nationality is not much different from much of the world today? Or, alternatively (or , do you think the world is a diverse place and there is so much more out there?