Day 81

Red squirrels are beautiful little creatures. We have several of these quick intelligent small beings in our vicinity.  They are very fast and very bold, and have to fend off the larger grey squirrels which they do with great gusto and inventiveness, twisting and turning around tree-trunks when they are being chased, leading the grey ones on a merry dance.  Our red squirrels sit and scold me from a high branch if I disturb them in their seed-collecting at the bird-feeder.  They have chirrupy high voices like birds.  In America, red squirrels are sometimes called chickarees or fairydiddles, which is the most wonderful word.

American red squirrel with adopted baby

They have an interesting social life too, because they are intensely territorial, but territory can be bequeathed by the mothers, who will "make room" for a daughter to live nearby, which seems like a rather matriarchal society.  The females mate with many males too, which is very unusual in the animal kingdom, where often it is males that mate with many females.  The strangest thing they have been observed doing, in a 20-year study, is to adopt the babies of relatives.  If a mother squirrel notices that one of her aunts or sisters have died, she will adopt one of the babies.  This is known in evolutionary circles as 'Hamilton's law" which explains the reasons for altruism as being beneficial to the altruistic person or creature's genetic continuity. 

And red squirrels love mushrooms, even eating those that are poisonous to humans.  And some they pick and dry on branches for later consumption, or because they taste better. 

The first private screening of a motion picture took place on this day in 1895, a 47-second film by the Lumière brothers, of workers coming out of the gate of the Lumière factory.  Even though people loved the few films after this one, the Lumière brothers never believed that moving pictures would become so popular.  They made three versions of the same scene, with women workers in their bonnets and long skirts, and a dog running about barking.  In one there is a cart-horse and in another there are two horses pulling a cart.  This was how they distinguished the differences: one-horse, two-horses, no-horse.

We went to see a movie tonight called The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson.  Nick, who is a film student, loves his movies and has twenty reasons why he is a brilliant director, but I have never enjoyed his work, finding it shallow and passionless.  However, I LOVED this movie. 

a scene from the film

It was like a very beautiful little fairytale, with monstrous villains, pretty pure-hearted girls, and two interesting main characters.  I loved his use of the square screen for part of the movie, which Nick tells me is because of the actual film on which it was shot.  I loved how the violence, which is quite unusual for Anderson, is muted, how the central character is so honourable in his own way, and how the entire fantastical tale is wrapped up like one of the delicate confections from the Mendl bakery.

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Bravo Wes Anderson!

I will continue with this subject tomorrow, because it is a broad topic, and because I am very tired right now. 

Eighty

Lobsters grow all their lives, but their shells are hard so they have to do something called ecdysis, or, in more common language, shedding, quite frequently in the first two years, and then every year or so after that.  This is a very intricate and difficult procedure, involving hours or their lives, the shrinking of appendages by the loss of blood to them, then sucking in water to expand the shell so that it splits in the right place, then lying on its side to allow the shell to become loose, and then slowly peeling out of it.  At this point they apparently look like a toy black rubber lobster. For a while they can't do anything, can't support their weight.  All this is done in the privacy and safety of their burrows.

This is also the time when lobsters mate.  They have the most fascinating social lives, these little creatures that people boil alive.  The female chooses her mate and goes to his den where she releases pheromones.  He comes out to see what is going on, and if she puts her claws on his head he knows she is ready for him.  Then they go into his den.  Over the next several days they are naked and weak together, and mating takes place.  Swimmerets are involved, which is just about the most wonderful word associated with sex.  It actually means swimming legs.  The female incubates the eggs for about 9 to 11 months, which is a very long time for a little thing like that.  What do they talk about in the burrow for all those days?  How does it feel, I wonder?  

And sometimes the world is right there, you are as naked as a lobster during ecdysis. All your feelings sitting on your skin.  And for that brief time that you are soft and vulnerable, there is understanding, compassion for the child with the big eyes who can't sit still, who is incapable of concentrating for longer than 5 minutes, but who is making the most beautiful wire sculpture in your class.  And the child who is so homophobic, who irritated you so much with his"gay" jokes, you suddenly recognise where he is coming from, he is eleven years old, for goodness' sake.

I remember the moment when I realised that not everyone feels the same way, to the same depth.  It is a whole ocean, the world of feelings, and some float on top, others tread water, and still others go so deep that they sometimes almost drown from the weight of their sensibilities.

There was a magazine that I absently picked up in my brother's room when I was about ten or eleven, and while reading it I came across an article on how pâté de foie gras is made.  I read it with incredulity and a growing horror.  It is the most awful process, involving force-feeding of geese and ducks, called "gavage", invented by the french, and still takes place, and still fills me with the same terror I felt that day when I had to get out into air, and climbed out of my window on to the roof, my sanctuary, which is where my brother found me hours later, cold and sick to my soul, having lost my faith in humans in one fell swoop.  He tried to explain it all to me, how the world works, about cruelty, man's inhumanity, but it was so unbelievable, so terrible, and I was suddenly no longer a child. 

My brother and sister were the interpreters of many appalling words and incomprehensible events for me.   

And so I go through life with these times of nakedness, where I stand behind a resigned old man with sagging cheeks in the queue at the grocery store and weep to see his basket with enough food for one, but a bright wedding ring on the ring finger of his wrinkled crooked hand.
 Where I ache for the doomed spring leaves in the future of the cold trees as the winter moths lay their endless inevitable eggs.
Where tears spring to my eyes for a perfect dead skunk on the side of the road.
Where I cannot understand the terrible cruelty of every day.
Where I want to hug the little fat kid nobody wants to sit with, and so I make people sit with her.
Where I feel a magical connection with my children, so real I can almost see it shining.
Where I wish I could bring people who are dead back to life.
Where I check my garden bed for crocuses every day.
Where I am arrested by the presence of beauty, geese honking as they fly in their exquisite chevron lines from here to there.
Where my shell, even when it grows back, is never impermeable.

Day 79

I went for a short walk on the beautiful beach, on the lovely first day of Spring, which began with rain and fog, burnt off into sunshine, then ended with a pretty sunset late in the day.  There were such beautiful waves that about 20 surfers blew the cobwebs off their wetsuits and stepped into exhilaration!  Brrrrrh! Bonjour, le printemps!

Panorama of Good Harbour beach.

I woke up into the new day from a sweet dream about a young fawn coming to see us, walking calmly out of the forest, on its impossibly skinny legs, while its mother waited under the trees, snorting nervously.  The small creature came right up to sniff my outstretched hand, and then Tim's.  The little thing wasn't scared at all, just curious and new, its huge innocent eyes gazing at us, its incredibly sweet face, its short soft coat.  Then it turned, satisfied, and went long-legged back to its mother, who took it right through the pond, not around it, so that the youngster had to swim, and I could see its strong twiggy legs churning the water, with perfect instinct, doing doggie-paddle, or deer-paddle, I suppose, and then out on the other side to bask in the sunshine, which was warm and mellow and dappled there.

And then on to the day.  There were about ten imperatives to do, and the hours seem to slip past so quickly.
I did two loads of washing and hung things and folded others and put them away. 
I played the piano for about an hour, accompanied by a turquoise jug of orange tulips shining on the table at the window.  I made progress on Nocturne in E minor.  There you go, Monsieur Chopin!
I made a good start on my report-cards, of which there are many.  (155!)
I spent quite a long time helping my son edit his grant proposal, until it was polished and shining.
I talked to one of my daughters, but not the other, although we texted one another.  There was also a text from Senegal, so I was in contact with all four today!
I watched the birds, which were happy and various.  I saw that the red-bellied woodpecker has returned to delight us. Also, the quick chipmunks have woken up from their intermittent hibernation.
 I didn't do half the things I thought I could, but it was a good day.

I drew the tulips on the kitchen table.

Tulips from Amsterdam (not really)

seven eight 78

A momentous day.  Filled with mixed emotions. Brimming with feeling.  A long, full day.

We travelled close to 100 miles (160km), all the way to Gardner, where my Naturalization ceremony was held at Wachusett Community College.

For some reason I was chosen to go there, on today's date, and Tim and Nick will go to a different venue, together, next week.  I was initially distressed about that, but it is virtually impossible to change your appointment, you actually have to go in to the USCIS (US citizen and immigration services) building in Lawrence, which is a fair way to go, and try to see someone there who could change it for you.  There is nothing to be done online or over the phone.  Bureaucracy. 

I am also not really one for ceremonies, which is the reason why Tim and I just went one day and were married in the registry office.

So I wasn't really looking forward to this day.  It seemed like something I was just forced to do, and by myself.  Tim of course refused to let me go on my own and he accompanied me, which was lovely, but I wish we could have stood together, next to one another, for this milestone, just as we have for all the others in our lives. 

There were 222 people becoming new Americans. All the USCIS officers were incredibly kind and sweet to everyone.  It was as though they genuinely cared about us all.  It seemed as though they wanted this day to be really special.  

The director of the Lawrence branch of USCIS seemed very genuine too. I was really impressed by how cheering and pleasant they all were.  They must do this so many times, you could understand if they did not have much enthusiasm left for the task, but no, they joked with people, helped put everyone at ease, and smiled and smiled, as if they were so happy that we had finally arrived!

The director told us that he understood how immigrants feel because he is himself a naturalized citizen.  He is Portuguese, and arrived when he was ten years old.  At school, his teacher welcomed him through an interpreter, talking about America being a melting pot.  He had no idea what she could mean, all he could think of was a pot being forgotten on the stove and boiling over maybe.

Some of the examples I found.

She said to him, 'Well, does your mother make soup?"
He thought, "Lady, we're Portuguese, we live on soup!"
"Well, what goes into the soup?" she asked.
"Er... potatoes, carrots.... onions, celery... herbs..."
"Exactly, and all those ingredients together make the soup taste good, don't they?"

It was a sweet albeit clichéd story, which for some inexplicable reason made me weep, and when he was finished talking, he welcomed us, saying "And now today there are 222 new ingredients!"  He also urged us not to give up our cultures, our traditions, our languages, and especially not our foods!  America would be a very boring place if we all became the same, he said.  (Which is a nice theory.)

Eventually, after two hours, a judge from the Supreme court of Massachusetts arrived, a sweet old man with a pink shirt, tan-coloured trousers, white socks and funny brown pull-on shoes. There was some official legal language, and then we all stood to say "I pledge allegiance to the flag of...."
It is weird, this thing with flags, but I will leave that for another day.  And then a woman sang the National Anthem while we all held our hands on our hearts and looked at said flag.  And then there was a televised message from Barack Obama, and we were given our certificates.  The man called my name which was apparently "Anna", which made my heart sink because we had been told to check them for mistakes and if there was something wrong they would have to be redone then and there, which would mean more waiting!  But luckily he had just pronounced the "e" for some reason.    

Afterwards we wanted to have a celebratory lunch, but decided that we would all have one when Matthew goes for his ceremony, hopefully in July sometime, when he is back from Senegal.

Also, I had to get back to school.  I had thought that I would be back in time to teach Stop-motion Animation to my Student Exploration Project (SEP) group, but the ceremony took until 1 o'clock!  So my director had to look after my little class, and when I finally got there they had apparently been practicing for my arrival, and broke into a spirited version of the Star-spangled Banner!  It was so sweet of them that I stood there overflowing with delight, and pride, and love, really.

What a long way I have journeyed today.  Altogether, 219 miles (352km), which is almost the same as driving from Grahamstown to Knysna!

And what a long way we have journeyed to this point in time.  I am happy to be able to vote, and I am sure there are other benefits to being a citizen, but of course my soul looks back at my roots, and there they are, in the sandy soil of Cape Town, reaching into the salty spray of the Indian ocean, deep under the Pecan-nut tree in the garden of that old Settler house, beloved number 16 Cross street, where we all grew.

16 Cross Street, Grahamstown, our very fine house.

Day 77, Sewe-en-sewentig, Soixante-dix-sept

My heart was broken for the first time when I was eighteen years old, and so, instead of going to the University of Cape Town, where I had been accepted, it was decided that I would run away safely to a town 900km away, a little university town called Grahamstown. I would study there instead.  My departure was delayed for three weeks due to illness, and then after a train-journey of stops and starts and having to lug all my baggage (one suitcase was just for books) from the broken-down train to a bus which had finally arrived to rescue us from the middle of nowhere, I arrived late in the town itself.  And so it was dark by the time I reached the residence where I was to live, and I went to bed exhausted and quite lost and alone.

I awoke early to the loud squawks of geese being driven down the road, and thought, "Good grief, I'm really in the country!"   But when I looked expectantly out of my window I could see nothing.  It was very mysterious.  Later on that day I heard them again, and saw that this very large sound came from a much smaller bird than a goose, a drab brown bird with a beautiful sweeping line from back to end of beak.  It looked like a lackluster version of a Sacred Ibis, which I knew from the wetlands of Cape Town.

I found out that it was in fact a Hadeda Ibis, a sweet placid bird that builds nests made of sticks, which look like avant-garde sculptures, the proverbial early bird which catches the worm with its long probing beak, with a calm unhurried outlook on life.  So it is somewhat strange that this outwardly serene plodder over early morning lawns and freshly-dug vegetable patches has the most powerful voice of all the birds on the African continent.

The somewhat awkward Hadeda Ibis

Some people say it squawks like that because it is afraid of flying, others call it the "flying vuvuzela".  Since I first met this species, it has happily spread over the whole of South Africa, even Cape Town.

When the boys were little babies, they used to lie together on the changing mat and we would ask them all the animal sounds they knew, like, "What does the cow say?"  Two little voices would say "Hmmmmmoo!" and giggle at one another. "What does the dog say?" "Wuf!"  "What does the hadeda say?" "Ha-Haaaa!" And they would burst into contagious peals of laughter, that delicious chortling of the very young.

So the man-made thing for today is a poem I wrote a long time ago, when the boys were at pre-primary (or kindergarten, as it is called in America, the beautiful German word used by the inventor of early childhood education having stuck fast).  It was a lovely way to get to school, a long walk across playing fields and down a little hill to the school buildings surrounded by tall trees offering shade and sunshine. 

Silver Lining

Trailing snail-like after my fleet sons
Across the dew-soft morning field
Of early autumn green and rust,
Laden with school-bags and Monday blues,

Three shining rugby balls float suspended
On the cross-bar of the upright posts
Against a heavy somber sky.

Three plump hadedas, sleek-feathered,
Chat softly to each other
On their morning tea-break.

And the little illustration I did for the poem.

76

I ran 2.28 miles today on the machine at the gym.  Yes, we went back to gym, yuk.  But I skipped out of that building afterwards feeling wonderful, so I know it is good for me.

I am reading the most beautifully written book and can't believe that I have never discovered it before.  Of course I have read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  This book is Dandelion Wine, by the same author, very autobiographical, told from the viewpoint of a twelve-year old boy, Douglas Spaulding, about the magic of childhood and summer and realising you are alive, and the gradual discovery, as one becomes aware, of the realities of the world.  It is written in the most alluring poetic way, and here is an example of its lyricism:

"Dandelion wine.
The words were summer on the tongue.  The wine was summer caught and stoppered.  And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage  day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal.  ...
And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine.  Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were re-inhabited with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind.  And peering through, color sky from iron to blue."

Dandelion wine.

I went to a girls school a few suburbs away from my own, and there was a school bus which took us there and back, which I caught on the main road near my house from the age of six.  I was extremely short and tiny for my age until I reached the age of about fifteen, when I suddenly grew into a normal person.  There was a big hibiscus bush growing next to the bus stop, and often the driver would not stop because he hadn't seen me behind the hibiscus, even though I stuck my arm out frantically!  So I would walk disconsolately home to my mother who would have to get in her car and drive the 5km to my school.  It happened so many times that eventually my mother came with me to the bus stop, stopped the bus and gave the driver a severe talking-to.  Unfortunately there were sometimes different drivers and so it did happen again, but much less frequently.  The power of mothers.

View of Devil's Peak from my bus stop.

When I was about nine or ten, we had afternoon sport twice a week, and then we would not be able to take the school bus home, as we finished too late.  So we would have to take the green bus along Main Road, then walk down to the bus terminus at Mowbray Train Station, where we could catch an orange bus, with the romantic logo of the Golden Arrow bus company, to Pinelands.  The trouble was that the road to the station was hard to walk down without being assailed by the sights and smells of so many enticing shopfronts selling all manner of services like shoe repairs and radio and vacuum-cleaner repairs, tailors adapting patterns, convenience stores or cafe storefronts.  Then there were the wonderful smells of the Indian shops, selling samoosas and curry-bunnies, and the fish and chip shop,  and we were always hungry.

But there was a strict school rule (there were many) that you could not be seen in your uniform eating in the street.  We never had any money anyway, but on this occasion, there were four of us and somehow we put enough cash together to buy one bag of slap-chips, a kind of fried potato-chip which was not crisp as you would expect a chip to be, but soft (slap, in Afrikaans) and oozing oil and vinegar.  Utterly delectable to a ten-year old girl!  We merrily shared the greasy delights while prancing down the road to catch the bus at the station, all in our bright blue school uniforms with our white Panama hats of summer.

The next morning at the very end of assembly, during notices, the headmistress, who seemed to constantly have trouble parting her upper and lower jaws, hissed through her teeth that there had been an incident the previous day, in which four girls had disgraced the school by being seen EATING IN PUBLIC!  She added, viciously, "We know WHO you are, so those four girls are requested to meet me after assembly in my office!"  My legs quaked, but I was not standing near any of my friends and therefore could not see how they were feeling.  So of course I believed the headmistress when she said that they knew that it was us, never questioning how they could possibly know our identities or who would have betrayed us.

I dutifully filed silently out of the hall and made my way to the office.  No one else did.

I was questioned and cajoled and threatened but I knew the code of silence.  You never "told on".   But it was while I was standing there all by myself in the worst trouble I had been in since climbing the rope to the high ceiling of the gym, that I had an epiphany which fascinated me so completely that I quite forgot the scolding of the clenched-tooth woman standing before me.

I was alive, hugely alive.  I had eaten the chips and loved them, revelled in their greasy ambrosia and in the lovely sharing of food with friends.

And, I was all alone in the world.

Even though I had a mother and father and family and friends, it was only me who was experiencing this particular day in this singular way.  I would always be like this.  I would suffer alone, I would feel elation alone.  It is a most peculiar feeling, this knowing you are alive, really knowing that you are you and no one else, that you are the only one who will go through your own life-experiences, all those moments of elation and ecstacy, and also the saturating sorrows, with the ordinary days in between. I think it always comes as a sudden shocking revelation to people.

I was punished for all four girls, because I would not give up the names of the others.  My punishment was nothing violent, because little white girls were not beaten.  (I was horrified to discover, when I became a teacher, that beating had always gone on at black schools, and still did, in the 90's, and still does, I expect.)  That was also the punishment which made me realise that they couldn't really do anything to me that I couldn't bear.  As soon as you realise that, you are up and away beyond them.

I had to stand with my face to the wall in the outside corridor which led to the playground at each break-time/recess, so that every girl in the school would walk past and see my disgrace.  Only it wasn't really difficult, standing for half an hour or so, thinking wonderful thoughts, flying off on my imagination and entirely forgetting my surroundings so that the stares of the girls could do nothing to hurt me.  I had to do that for four weeks.

It was four weeks of discovery.

Seventy-five, snakes alive!

Another very beautiful but very cold day!

Long interesting skype conversations with three of our children today, two connecting us with that wonderful rainbow-coloured thread, to parts of Africa, one 3,851 miles away, and the other 7,716 miles distant. The other call was from Boston, 30 miles away.  

I spent ages looking for a photograph I have of a snake eating a frog on our deck.  I was going to base my natural investigation entirely on this snake and its frog victim, but in fact it is now already late and I have not found it, so here are some other snakes I have seen in the meadow:

The beautiful markings of a Milk snake

Garter snake pretending to be a hose-pipe

Brilliant markings.

 Which is why you should always categorise your photographs so that you can easily find them.  Tim has his all done with the wonderful Keywords of Lightroom, and mine are just this nightmarish mess of dates.  If you can't remember when you took a photograph then tough! 

So a few minutes ago Tim just came over and rescued me in his usual knight in shining armour fashion, showing me how to find it in minutes!  I felt stupid and useless but he helped me see how that is silly and that the world is better if you ask for help!  

So here is what I found one day when I came home from school, a snake lying (it's weird that a snake can never sit or stand) on the deck slowly eating a frog.  Part of me was horrified by the slow death of the frog, the other was fascinated by the incredible jaws of the snake detaching themselves in order to swallow this enormous meal, and another bit was delighted that this was all happening right in front of me on my deck, to wake me up after my long day's teaching.

 It is rather gruesome but also amazing, isn't it?  We learn about such things in school, how snakes' jaws are attached to the braincase with tendons and ligaments, giving it a flexibility unlike any other animal, but we rarely see the real thing taking place on our own back decks.  I watched until the frog was completely gone, and although it must have been awful for the poor frog, it did not last terribly long.  And then the snake suddenly looked completely normal and thin again, as though it had this instantaneous metabolism, and went on its way, sated for a while.

Post-prandial constitutional

And here is a dear little frog that has thus far escaped being eaten by a snake.

And while I was searching for the photograph, I came across this picture of my dad on his last visit to our house.  I took him on several little adventures, just he and I, and one of them was on a river boat, the Essex River Queen, which goes from Essex all the way through the meanders until the river mouth mingles with the Atlantic Ocean. They gave everyone a free postcard at the end, and he told me excitedly that he would send his postcard to his sister Margaret in England, telling her of the wonderful trip!  I agreed that that was a lovely idea, not mentioning that his sister Margaret had been dead for years.

The old man and the river.

My father had quite bad dementia by then, as my mother had been the one keeping him together, preserving his sanity, but she had died earlier that year and his mind, which had been slowly unraveling, began to come completely undone.

My brother flew with him from England where he had been staying, and remained for a week, but then he flew back to the UK while my dad stayed on another week.  My father then had to fly back all by himself, which must have been rather nightmarish for the cabin crew.  As it was, he finally came through the Arrivals gates at Heathrow where my brother was waiting for him, and was delighted to see someone he recognised!  His son was there!  But he had forgotten to collect his luggage from the baggage retrieval system!   

He loved everything we did while he was here, loved all the attention I lavished on him because I knew that this was probably his last holiday with me.  He enjoyed it all with the great energy for life which he had always had.  He would try new foods like sushi with my brother and I, having never had it before, or so he said, and so it felt like to him. 

It is an awful thing, to watch your parent go a bit crazy, and then very batty indeed.  It was tragic, because he was always the most dignified and competent of people, and then suddenly to lose all that, and end up on stranger's doorsteps not knowing where he lived.

I miss him terribly, because even though I didn't live in the same city as him for most of my adult life, he was always there for me, for all three of his adored children.  He loved us with a boundless love which did not extend to anyone else, besides my mother.  We were the perfect ones, his darlings.  He was our strong and steadfast rock. 

When I was about twelve I found a litter of newborn kittens which had been dumped and left to die.  They were all dead except for one, this huge life-force pushing the blind, wet little thing to try to crawl, dragging its umbilical cord.  I wrapped it in my long-sleeve and rushed home where my dad showed me how to feed it with a dropper, and helped me to raise her.  She was the sweetest little cat, and was addicted to food, probably because she had suffered that early trauma, so she became rather round, but always stayed small, and her name was Little Fat Cat.  My father and I adored her, and she was a source of love for the whole family, happily sitting on laps and just the dearest little cat personality.  When she was still young, three or four, she was diagnosed with an eosinophilic ulcer which is usually a death sentence.  My dad paid so much money for an operation to save her, and we both nursed her back to health, where she remained for a while, but about six months later the rodent ulcer returned, and we had to put her down.  We drove home very quietly, and I saw tears drip down my big strong dad's face, as tears run down mine now, remembering him. 

Day 74

I haven't been to the gym in about two weeks, due to weather, laziness, work and other sundry excuses.  I quite despise the gym actually.  But I suppose I will go back.  I have exercised every day by walking or hauling wood, or shovelling snow off our very long driveway,  or running up and down our two flights of stairs ten times, which registered on my pedometer as 790 meters.

Today our exercise was cleaning the house, because we were having visitors.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and outside it felt warm.  The top temperature was about 10C, positively balmy!  Amazing what we consider toasty now, we South Africans who come from such a warm country.  I suppose having to endure way below freezing temperatures for so many months has something to do with it!  I carefully cleared away the little patches of snow and frozen leaf-mould from the bed where my crocuses usually peep up, but there is no sign of their delicate colours yet.

We had the two strong young men to help us move things, and by 3 o'clock the ground floor looked wonderful and sparkling!  Even the staircase was spotless, nothing sitting waiting patiently on the steps for days to be taken up to its rightful place in a bookshelf, or cupboard, or the bathroom, or just to find a home somewhere.  Which is more than can be said for the middle floor, especially Matthew's room, which was the repository for everything untidy downstairs.  As he is away in Senegal, he won't mind.  We got quite carried away, re-organised things and scrubbed and polished, setting out flowers on beautiful table-cloths, fixing pictures which had fallen down in their frames, putting away all the blankets strewn over the couches to nest in during this long cold winter.

I hate cleaning with a passion, next to cooking, actually before cooking, it is my least favourite thing.  It is not quite so bad now because I can listen to a book, but it is the most thankless job, as you clean and clean and next minute everything is dirty and untidy again, because you have to live, and there are (usually) many people who live with you in your house!  And everywhere there is this shedding and dissolving and spilling and dropping and everything has to be swept and mopped and polished with a relentless monotony.

So the reason for all the cleaning was that in the late afternoon a piano soirée was held at our house.   All my piano teacher's adult students came to have food and wine and play a piece they love.  Most of us had never met before and so we sat around in a kind of circle in the Lily Lounge and introduced ourselves one by one, each telling an abbreviated version of our journey to the piano.  Many had played as children and then given up, and upon retirement, or some inspiration, had been moved to take up lessons again.  Some spoke of dragon-like teachers, and a few had had difficult experiences playing at recitals.  Everyone spoke of stress, of feeling nervous. 

It is a huge thing, to play in front of people.  Piano-playing is something I do every day, practicing on my very beautiful piano that I love, my most prized possession, in fact.  But it is a solitary struggle and delight, shared only by Tim who, if he is at home, has to listen to pieces filled with mistakes, and troublesome little phrases played over and over again, and boring scales, and stilted sight-reading.  And only every now and then, something of beauty. 

My beautiful Kawai

So it takes a lot of nerve to go and sit there and try to produce a perfect piece, with expression, timing and grace.  None of us managed that.  But we each managed to play something, with little patches of sweetness and light.  When we made a complete mess, we just started again.  There was a positive hum of support in that room, and every performer received a grand round of applause. 

Hard experiences stay with you forever.  Mostly you keep them somewhere safely locked up, but sometimes a trigger will cause an awful rushing of memory and you are back there, right in the throes.  When I was about 14 or 15, I had proudly learned Fur Elise, which I knew so well that I could just about have played it in my sleep.  My music teacher said that I was good enough to play at assembly, which was supposedly this huge honour, to play as all the girls filed silently out at the end of assembly.  I had never done it before. 

I was wracked with nerves from the moment I woke up in the morning, and all through assembly I dreaded the thought of sitting high up on that stage and playing as everyone filed past me.  And then suddenly assembly was over and up I went to sit at the grand piano.  I got through about half the piece, and then got stuck, so went back to a part I could remember, and, arriving at the place where I had foundered, halted again.  I then decided to start all over again from the beginning, and of course, arriving at the dreaded spot, my mind hiccoughed again, losing itself in a frenzy of worry, where I would never find that lost phrasing again.  Miss Thompson, the headmistress, who every time she looked at me saw TROUBLE, came marching over in her very tall intimidating stick-insect way, and ordered me off the stage in front of the half of the school still left in the hall, announcing in a loud voice how disgraceful it was that I hadn't practiced and had dared to play in this hallowed position.  It was extremely humiliating and quite soon after that episode I gave up the piano entirely. 

So today I felt a similar horror at the thought of trying and failing.  This morning I played my piece, Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, and got stuck, even though I know it so well that even in my dreams I can play it, and eventually I just gave up trying and went to do something else, which is the sensible thing to do, because I am a much older wiser woman now.   A while later I went back and played it with relatively few mistakes, which is the best I can do.  And even though I am that older wiser woman, my hands shook and I made one very glaring error, and had to go back to a place I could remember, but I finished the piece with the beautiful aplomb of the last few bars, and bowed to my audience and felt very satisfied, and thought "Up yours, Miss Thompson!"  (Oh well, maybe one day I will be old and wise!)

It is very late as I write this, and bright with moonlight outside, from a huge almost full moon, the Maple Syrup Moon, according to Native Americans, as attested to by some moon website, but I think, well, which Native Americans?  All of them, even those who lived very far away from Maple trees? It seems so unlikely.

But I will go now to bed, and lie down next to my already sleeping husband.  I will see the brightness through our soft kikoi curtains, and think of my sister, because that is what we do, we look at the same moon,  on different sides of the earth, and remember our affinity.

Drie-en-sewentig

It was -12C when I left home this morning at 6.15 for school!  The ice and snow storm had made the driveway pretty slick.  I slid down the hill, but remembered to take my horrified foot off the brake and stopped myself from meeting up with the neighbour's quietly parked car. Such a strange solution to the problem.  Your every instinct is to slam your foot as hard as you can on the brake, to stop at all costs, the only way you know, but if you just lift your foot off gently for a couple of seconds, then apply pressure to the brake, and repeat when necessary, your car eases smoothly down the icy hill, barely skidding at all.   Our hill is always an adventure in the winter.

It is Einstein's birthday today, an amazing man in so many ways.
He had five children, which not many people think about when they remember Einstein.  He was a rebellious, free spirit all his life, looked at mysteries in different ways because of this, and came up with incredible ideas as a result.

His wife-to-be, Mileva, gave birth to a little girl, Lieserl, before they were married, when Einstein was just 22 years old.  She went home to Serbia in secret and no one quite knows what became of the baby, although there are many theories about her.  It seems that she was left with her grandparents and died of scarlet fever while still an infant.  
Hans-Albert was an engineer, who eventually worked for the USDA, on sediment transport, after emigrating to the USA a few years after his father.  He was an avid photographer and loved playing the flute.  He died in Massachusetts at the age of 70.  Albert left his grandson Bernard, Hans-Albert's son, his violin when he died.
Eduard became a scizophrenic, died at 55, after having been institutionalised for many years.
Hi second wife Elsa, who was his first cousin, had two daughters whom he adopted, named Ilse and Margot. 

He became a vegetarian in later life.  

Such a sweet face.

In his lecture at Einstein's memorial, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of him as a person: "He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn." - wikipedia.

Intelligent conversations were had tonight in our lounge, sitting in front of the lovely warm woodstove, with Matt P. and Nick, who both came home unexpectedly for the night.

Amazing, to talk about all kinds of things, like aesthetics and conceptual art and different photographers and cinematographers they have met, with these two huge giants who used to be little boys whom I carried.

And we talked of Winthrop, where we all lived once upon a time, and how one day I gave them a talk about strangers and how to behave when someone invites you into their car, or to go and look for a puppy, or some such, how you should say "No" loudly, and refuse to get into the car, and call an adult as soon as possible.  They were all nine years old and we had been required by the school to reiterate "the talk".  The very next day, after school in the afternoon, the boys were playing in the neighbourhood, and I peeked out of the window to check on them, and saw with horror that they were all three of them, getting into a huge truck parked in the street!  I rushed outside and hauled them out by their collars, so angry and frightened, and there was horror on their faces at my distress, and great surprise on the face of the sweet truck-driver, who was fixing something for our next door neighbour and was completely legitimate!

After having a good laugh, Matt P said, "But there were three of us!" And I said, "I doubt whether you thought that at all, actually looked around and thought, "We'll be fine, there are three of us after all!"  You just thought, "Oh look, a truck, let's get inside!"

The three friends and Luna last summer.  So glad they escaped the truck!

Day 72

I went walking with my ghost dog Molly through the dancing snowflakes this morning, greeted the giant personality of the Corner Pine Tree, crunched along the path to the pond, and sat in the plastic chair there while the snow filled up around me. It is a little wild spot, with birds always in the tall trees, and sometimes a duck or two, and a good place to cry, so I had one.  It was so cold that my eyes felt as if the tears were freezing, but it was only my dramatic imagination.  The lovely fantasy writer Ray Bradbury said, "If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live a full and complete life.^"  I had just heard about plans to mine the Everglades for oil, and the radio article had interviews with affected homeowners protesting the destruction of this fragile and beautiful eco-system, as well as with persuasive company-men, sprouting new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, which result in "clean" mining.

The Everglades

 "Look at our track record," he said.  Well, that's not such a good idea, because if you look at oil company's track records in general, they all have histories of "spills", that stupid word again, like spilling a little milk when you take it from the fridge.   Four years ago when I was writing this blog, I was heartbroken every day, pushing away the image of oil gushing uncontrollably from the BP well under the sea in the Gulf of Mexico for so many months!  And the US govt has just lifted the ban on BP working in the Gulf! 

I took photographs of snowflakes today, even one with my little iPhone!

At school we make cut-out snowflakes each Christmas for "holiday" cards, as it is not politically correct to make Christmas cards.  I discovered a very easy way of folding and cutting which results in a beautiful six-sided snowflake that looks like a doiley.

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, a reclusive Vermont farmer who spent much of his life looking after his ailing mother, was fascinated by snowflakes and devised a way to catch them on black velvet and preserve them for the time it took to photograph them, beginning in 1885, and taking more than 5000 images of snow crystals in his lifetime.  He did it so well that no one bothered to take pictures of snowflakes for about fifty years.

In the 1930's a Japanese physicist, Ukichiro Nakaya, a researcher of snow crystals, took about 3000 images of snow crystals he created in his lab.  They are probably so fascinating because they are beautifully symmetrical, and each one unique, like a finger-print.  Well, that is what people used to believe, but in fact snowflakes start out just about the same, in the clouds.  It is their descent through different fluctuations of temperature and erratic air movements that form their beautiful individual shapes.  And many snowflakes are just funny shapes, just lumps of crystal.  the ones we notice, like the ones Bentley chose to take photographs of, are the Margot Fonteyns and Rudolf Nureyev's of the snowflake world, the beautiful dancers.

Little stars on the ground

When we came to America I insisted on bringing my kitchen table.  It is an old Oak table with leaves that can be taken out to make it smaller, although we have never had it like that.  I have had that table for most of my life, forty years.  I bought it when I was 18 years old, at an auction in Grahamstown for R14, a paltry sum, although it seemed like quite a lot for a poor student back then. (This is the equivalent now of about $1.50!)   No one really wanted it because it has a round burn-mark on one end from something very hot, perhaps a small cooking pot, although the mark is concave, which is odd, and not much like a pot-bottom.  We used to ask people to guess how the mark happened, and several came up with interesting ideas, but we are no nearer to the actual story.  I love imperfection, the rejects of life, so that table knew it had a good home with me.

Tim and Marc, our friend, decided to fix up the legs and sand the table, clean it up a bit before we packed it off to America.  While they were working on it in Marc's workshop, they discovered a little old stamp on the underside, proving that it was made in Philadelphia, so it was going home at last!

I love this table with a deep love.  It is rarely empty, the friendliest of tables, offering a poetry anthology here, a jug of tulips there. 

When I lived in Bonza Bay, the table lived outside on the huge verandah, where we ate all our meals, it was very tropical there.  The centre-piece was a big bowl of fruit, until the monkeys discovered it and clambered and climbed all over the verandah and the table to get at the delicious items. We kept all the fruit inside after that.

When I was a new single mother, one end was my sewing table, constantly covered with sewing machine, fabric, the pin-cushion my mother made me, etc.  The other end was where we ate our meals, my two little daughters and I.  In the magical 16 Cross Street, it dominated the beautiful tall-ceilinged room that was our kitchen.  Here children did their homework when they were little, while I made supper.  Friends sat around eating dinner or having tea and chatting about things large and significant and also small and inconsequential. The stuff of life.

It has always been my rule that we sit at the table for all our meals, together, and that we have "intelligent conversations".  (Sometimes it is quite difficult to have an intelligent conversation with a rebellious teenager.)  This sitting at table for dinner inspires interesting ideas: Matthew and Nick, puzzled little boys having just started pre-school, "Mom, we know that our names are Matthew and Nicholas, but apparently we have something called a surname, and what is ours?"  Matthew, aged about 4, "Dad, why aren't our fingers all the same length?" Emma, aged 16, "Mom, you have to let Michael move into the flat, it is a matter of life and death!"  Jess, aged 12, looking pale and worried, "I have a project on Renaissance Artists due tomorrow."  "How much have you done?"  "I'm just starting."  The kitchen table sighs at the prospect of a long night ahead. Nick, aged 5, telling the story of the operation to remove his adenoids, "The nurse was so beautiful, she smiled at me the whole time."  "But how could you see her, she had a mask on?" " Her eyes were all blue and smiley."

And here in America, we were set adrift from all that familiarity, cast off from our previously comfortable existence.  We set off on our separate journeys into the unknown each morning, but always returned to one another at the end of the day, to a good meal and the telling of our stories at our benevolent and generous kitchen table, the raft of our lives. 

Four graduates of the Kitchen Table.

Le jour Soixante et onze

Languages are so interesting.  French counting gets to sixty and then becomes all poetic and arithmetical after that.  Seventy is sixty-ten, seventy-one is sixty and eleven.  Eighty is four twenties.  And ninety is quatre-vingt dix, four twenties ten.  French seems to me a bit like isiXhosa, very descriptive and wordy.  Working at a French/American school we have numerous signs, articles, forms etc., in both languages, and English always seems to take up less space than the French.  The simple sign with four words, four syllables: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH, becomes, in French NE TOUCHEZ PAS, S'IL VOUS  PLAIT, six words, seven syllables.

French influenced English enormously, mainly because of the Norman invasion in the 11the century, and so many words were shared, but there are many which you think mean the same thing but they don't, like medecin, which means doctor in English.  Medicine is medicament in french. Cave in French means a cellar in English, a librairie is a bookshop, not a library.  I wonder how that happened?

In isiXhosa, there are many words which are like pictures, like ixhesha abantu bahle, which refers to a particular time of sunset when everyone is bathed in a rosy golden hue, the "time of the beautiful people".  Impumalanga is the word for east, meaning, "the coming out of the sun". 

When I was young, Afrikaans was the hated language, the language of the oppressors, but in grade 11 I discovered its poetry.  We had a rather large Afrikaans lady who taught us, Mevrou Botha, I think her name was.  She smelt sweetly of talcum powder and was always impeccably dressed in matching pastel shades.  For a rebellious teenager this teacher was definitely not high on the list, and yet, when she introduced us to the Afrikaans poetry of N P Van Wyk Louw, D J Opperman, Elisabeth Eybers, Olga Kirsch, et al, all read in the most beautiful voice you have ever heard, rich and low and expressive, I fell in love!  This is one of my favourites.  It is better understood if you have lived in a parched land. 

DIE DANS VAN DIE REËN – Eugene Marais
Lied van die vioolspeler. Jan Konterdans.
Uit die Groot Woestyn
O die dans van ons Suster!
Eers oor die bergtop loer sy skelm,
en haar oge is skaam;
en sy lag saggies.
En van ver af wink sy met die een hand;
haar armbande blink en haar krale skitter;
saggies roep sy.
Sy vertel die winde van die dans
en sy nooi hulle uit, want die werf is wyd en die bruilof groot.
Die grootwild jaag uit die vlakte,
hulle dam op die bulttop,
wyd rek hulle die neusgate
en hulle sluk die wind;
en hulle buk, om haar fyn spore op die sand te sien.
Die kleinvolk diep onder die grond hoor die sleep van haar voete,
en hulle kruip nader en sing saggies:
“Ons Suster! Ons Suster! Jy het gekom! Jy het gekom!”
En haar krale skud,
en haar koperringe blink in die wegraak van die son.
Op haar voorkop is die vuurpluim van die berggier;
sy trap af van die hoogte;
sy sprei die vaalkaros met altwee arms uit;
die asem van die wind raak weg.
O, die dans van ons Suster! 

The Dance of the Rain
Song of the violinist: Jan Konterdans
translated by:Nikita
The Dance of the Rain
Oh, the dance of our Sister!
First, over the hilltop she peeps stealthily
and her eyes are shy
and she laughs softly
From afar she begs with her one hand
her wrist-bands shimmering and her bead-work sparkling
softly she calls
She tells the wind about the dance
and she invites it, because the yard is spacious and the wedding large
The big game rush about the plains
they gather on the hilltop
their nostrils flared-up
and they swallow the wind
and they crouch to see her tracks in the sand
The small game, deep down under the floor, hear the rhythm of her feet
and they creep, come closer and sing softly
“Our Sister! Our Sister! You’ve come! You’ve come!”
and her bead-work shake,
and her copper wrist-bands shine in the disappearance of the sun
On her forehead, rests the eagle’s plume
She decends down from the hilltop
She spreads her ashened cloak with both arms
the breath of the wind disappears
Oh, the dance of our Sister!

The translation is quite awful really.  I suppose this is why you should always read poetry in the language in which it was written.  One of my Nombulelo students learned Spanish just so that he could read the poetry of Lorca and Neruda. Amazing.  I knew a man in Grahamstown who could read in six different languages!  

Noam Chomsky developed the idea that language is innate, basing his theory on the fact that children learn language even though adults do not speak "adult language" to children, which he called "impoverished input".  He believes that the human brain has evolved (probably only in the last 100 000 years) neural circuits that contain linguistic information at birth so that the child's natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech.  So the learning of language is biologically and genetically determined.  Chomsky is always lovely to listen to, and in this little clip he talks about the way theories grow and develop, and explains the addition to the universal grammar theory of principles and parameters.

My little granddaughters are grasping at their language, believing they can talk just like anyone else.  Ella in her deep voice with long vowel-sounds, telling me long stories about her day on Skype, and Luna bubbling over with her little language too, with a few recognisable words happening now, like "Hello, dog, and (maybe I'm imagining it) Granny".

Ella-Bella

Luna-Moon

Day 70

What a beautiful day!  Like Spring.  Pink fingers of clouds in the milky morning sky as I swanned down the highway, and glorious sunshine all day, and so warm in the Art room that we opened all the windows! 

Of course, we are supposed to have another big storm Wednesday going into Thursday, but today was a beauty, giving us hope for the future, warming our bones, making us happy!  So that we can wait another few weeks for the delicate crocuses and proud dandelions which are the first heralds, and then the actual buds, the newest green leaves, and all the tremendous burgeoning LIFE!

My little advisory group was so funny today, as we have been having trouble lately with respectful listening.  They are all crazy-lively, super-springy today, terribly enthusiastic and a couple of them are also very loud! So I asked them what sign we could use which would work so that on command they will all keep quiet.  They came up with this idea:  I clap twice, and they all respond by raising one arm like a trunk and making a sound like an elephant's trumpet!  Then they are quiet and I can talk without anyone interrupting me.  And it worked very well (for today).

When we were in England for Emma's wedding two years ago my sister and I went to see a very old friend of my mother's, Vicky, who lives in Kent with her daughter.  The two families used to live next door to one another in Pinelands, Cape Town, before I was born, and Diana, Vicky's daughter, is the same age as my brother, so the two played together and got into an awful lot of trouble, apparently.  My brother was very accident-prone as a child, and Diana kind of followed along behind his calamities.  Vicky is now 96, I think, and still wonderful, full of life and telling her lovely stories in her lilting Irish brogue.  She and my mum were friends for nearly 60 years.

Auntie Vicky telling one of her lively stories!

They took us on an outing, to a place they knew we would love, a church called All Saints Tudeley, which is the only church in the world to have all its stained glass windows designed and created by Marc Chagall!  The little church doesn't look like anything special from the outside, but you walk in, and yes, you just walk in, it's not locked or anything, you can give a little donation in a box if you want to, and you can walk around and marvel and stay as long as you want to in this beautiful space! 

Between 1963 and 1978, Chagall replaced all the windows in the little 13th century church.  A wealthy Jewish landowner and his Christian wife had lost their 21-year old daughter Sarah in a boating accident, and commissioned a memorial window from Chagall.  Chagall fell in love with the little church and decided to do all the windows, apparently he fell a little in love with Sarah's mother too (it appears that he was always a terrible flirt), and isn't it strange that this little ancient Christian church has windows done by an old Russian Jewish man, playing with light?

50

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I discovered the rude meaning of 69 when I was 18.  Before that it was just a number.  

My childhood was very protected, a time of innocence, and also very happy, for the most part.  I played imaginary games, climbed trees, read books, read everything I could really, perused the huge tomes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica sometimes, with that paper light as tissue, the books almost too heavy to carry far, so I would sit on the carpet next to the bookshelf and pore over them.  (My best friend and I once came across the special medical section with clear plastic pages, where you could see the circulatory system of the entire body, then turn that page to discover underneath the digestive system, the way muscles lie under the skin, and so on and so on until you reached the bottom images which were a naked man and woman, lying patiently under all these transparent pages, giving the body's outline to all the systems portrayed.  It was a fascinating discovery.)  I drew pictures constantly, loved my friends with a deep and passionate love, learned to swim in the salty sea-water of the Kalk Bay baths, rode my bicycle all over Pinelands, lay on my tummy on the carpet with my brother and listened to records, or our serial on the radio, and all this wondrous being in the world was based on the certain knowledge and safety of my family's great love.  

The 11 or 12-year old child today could be living on another planet from the one of my childhood.  Everything is technology-related.  Boys (and some girls, but still mostly boys) are besotted with games played on screens, often killing games, where you shoot people and there is much blood and gore, but if you "die" you can just start over again.  Girls (and some boys) are addicted to how many likes they get on Facebook, there is a culture of narcissism, with everyone taking constant "selfies" which are then posted online.  On websites like Tumblr people post and repost, so the same things are going around and around, and all the moments recorded are succumbing to all the minutes and hours and days of youngsters' lives, as they compulsively check their phones for updates and news.  And everywhere sex and pornography, and still the objectification of women.  Such a strange world. "O wonder!/ How many goodly creatures are there here!/  How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,/ That has such people in't!" Miranda in The Tempest  by William Shakespeare, Act V, scene i.

It feels as though my childhood was a lengthy continuum, with highs and lows of course, but generally quite placid, and filled with long periods of concentration with no distractions, like curling up in a "nest" on the couch and reading for hours on rainy wintry days, only stopping for meals, or when you finished the book.  And quiet walks in the rain, and curiosity and imagination always at play.  The child of today lives a very fragmented life, filled with perpetual new sensations and demands, a constant barrage of stimulation.  

I feel this as a period of extreme change, 2014 and beyond, and Luna and Ella's world will be even more different from this one today, this world where children have too much information, a technological environment where 11 year olds are already quite familiar with all the different meanings of 69, a fact which constantly shocks this old lady. 

And now I go back to the topic of travel.  Most of my life was spent not travelling.  I had my daughters early and was bound to them, and all my efforts were to love them and provide for them.  I was also a teacher, which is a job without much remuneration which can be spent on travel.  Later I had two more babies, and always dogs, and cats, and no real idea about money and how to keep it from slipping and sliding and rushing out of my bank account into the coffers of grocery shops, and school uniform stores, and mortgage companies, and vet surgeries. Camping in the mountains and holidays spent at a friend’s sea house were all the travelling we did. 

And then we took this gigantic leap across the ocean, travelling so far both literally and figuratively.  We landed in Massachusetts to a difficult and lonely life at first, a hard battle, an undertaking to settle and understand the unfamiliar culture, to prove ourselves, to find friends, to make a living. So it is only in our older age that travel has become possible.  There are no longer any children living at home, no dog to find a dog-sitter for, we can be free as birds on occasion, when Tim has leave, when I have school vacation.

Travel expands us, we become more open, we see our human race from a different perspective.   A journey to another land provides us with empathy, with knowledge, with different tastes, views, sights.  

When I went to Vietnam we went to the American War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, which used to be called Saigon.  (It is called the Vietnam war here in America, and the American war in Vietnam.)  Most of the exhibits are photographic, horrifying pictures donated by war photographers, showing graphic images of the aftermath of the My Lai massacre, the effects of defoliants on babies, the huge swathes of jungle destroyed by the Americans spraying Agent Orange from aeroplanes.  I walked around one floor and then disintegrated on a bench outside, my eyes pouring, my heart an aching jelly of emotions.   

A huge self-education has ensued from that encounter, one which still haunts me, and stumps my rational brain, that we can manufacture such toxins and use them on forests, farmland, people, animals.  We can make laws which allow this to happen, and Monsanto, the company responsible for the manufacture of Agent Orange, can still continue to grow and monopolize and manipulate as it does today.  This company is the scariest of bio-pirates, and one of the greatest threats to biodiversity on the planet.

Before going to Vietnam I had a vague idea of the history, of Indochine, the war, the present country.  But actually being there meant that I met Vietnamese people, I saw how things worked, I lived with a host-family in the Mekong Delta, I ate strange dragonfish, rode a bicycle on the miles of narrow pathways through the jungles and canals, washed myself with a little hose instead of using toilet-paper, helped to build a road by hauling rocks and concrete and water in the extraordinary heat, was invited to a farm to enjoy the hospitality and hear the personal story of a woman who had been a spy during the war against the Americans.  It was hot and difficult and strange and extraordinary. 

Village elder in the Mekong delta

Restaurant in the jungle

The flight of the hibiscus

Monk in Buddhist temple who asked me to take his picture.

Little girl waiting on the scooter for her dad.

Entrepreneur

How many people can you fit on one scooter?

When I disembarked from the plane in Boston, I immediately wanted to take Tim and go back, so that we could experience it together, so that he could take his camera and his wonderful eye for detail and composition, and capture the phenomenon of that place.  I want to go back to see Hanoi, the thousand-year old city, I want to see Anghor Wat, the incredible ancient Hindu then Buddhist temple in Cambodia.  Travel creates a yearning for more travel.  It helps us become more fully human, to see beyond borders. 

Soixante-huit

With daylight saving last night, we "sprang forward" in time, losing an hour.  Unfortunately it meant that by the time we went to bed it was 2.30 and we got up at 9am, which has made for a very tiring day.  And even though it was lovely to arrive home this evening at 7pm and it was just dark at that time, I am exhausted.  I miss the hour that was taken from me.  Well, I suppose I just had to give back the stolen hour from last November, when we "fell back". 

Today we went to visit old friends who live a long distance away.  It is 65 miles one way, about 105km, which is almost the same distance as going from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth.

When you went from Grahamstown to PE, it was a trip planned well in advance, for which you had your car serviced so that nothing would go wrong on the long drive, and it only happened when you had to fetch someone like your mother from the airport in Port Elizabeth, or you were flying off to a conference somewhere yourself, or you were expecting twins and had to go to a gynaecologist, of which there were none in our little Grahamstown, or your son had a burst eardrum and had to have his adenoids out in the hospital.  It was a huge trip, taking the whole day.  It was a journey.  You came back with presents from the big city for the children if they had had to remain behind. 

We always went for a walk along the pier.

And here we are in Massachusetts where people frequently drive this far just for their work.  For a couple of years Tim's work was situated an hour and a quarter's drive from our house!  Which meant he was in the car for at least two and a half hours a day!

We often listen to podcasts of radio shows like RadioLab, or This American Life on long journeys, or music, which is easier because then you can talk when you want to, without interrupting an important part of the story.  For talk is something which happens easily on long car trips, often about deep subjects.  I love driving long distances with one of my children, as you have such interesting and real conversations at that time, and being from a family of four children there is often not much chance to have your mother to yourself, or as a mother to have just one child to myself.

Today on our way there we didn't need the radio as Nick talked to us almost the whole way on the phone, telling us all about his amazing weekend in New York.  It seems that he met some very interesting and friendly people, saw some wonderful Art, had lovely and magnificent conversations, which could be because he is very friendly and interesting himself, and interested in others' stories.  It was a lovely hour which made the distance seem much shorter.

At our friends' house, we had a lovely laughing time eating a lunch which lasted about two hours, and one of the topics of conversation was travel, specifically flying to distant places.  Karen hasn't flown for a long time, and she pointed out how much I have flown over the last few years.  So on the way home, with Simon and Garfunkel singing nostalgically in the background, I stared out at the snowy land, the forests of trees, each with its own little circle of brown earth marking where the trunk is rooted, and I wondered if this is because trees are living things, so they must therefore be warmer than the snow?  I'm not sure why it actually happens, but it seems as if they are all just melting the snow immediately around them with the warm sap of their lives.

And I thought about all the travelling I have done since moving to America when I was 45.  Before that I had just journeyed back and forth between Cape Town and Grahamstown.  The last time I had left the country of South Africa was on an overseas trip with my parents when I was 12 years old. 

The largest distance I have journeyed was to Vietnam almost three years ago now.  And because I am so tired I am going to put up some of my photographs from that time, and carry on with the travelling theme tomorrow.

Day 67

I went for a long brisk walk through the sunny snow, checked in on my hollow tree, where I always hope I will see an animal, although I have only seen a possum there on two occasions, in all the years of days.  Today I made my way through the brush, on to the rock which puts you almost on a level with the cavity, about 10 feet away, and stared, trying to see into the darkness.  And suddenly I realised that I was looking at a creature, there was a sleeping, breathing animal in there, and I thought, after a few more shocked seconds, that it was a large owl, as it seemed that I could make out a beak and tightly closed eyes.  I got quietly down and strode as fast as I could back home, but when I had made the long trek back, had the camera, and was walking towards the tree again I convinced myself that the little being would be gone, so that I would not be disappointed if it was, and of course, as I plunged downhill three deer suddenly scattered at my headlong rush, and moved away into the trees surrounding THE tree.  As I went closer they all scuttled noisily away, and I expect that the owl thought something very dangerous was coming and flew off, because by the time I got to the viewing rock, the tree was empty.

I wandered around the base, and stared up into as many trees as  I could before my neck refused to do that any more, and pondered on enjoying the moment rather than giving in to this ridiculous desire to capture it on camera.

Crossing the stone wall, some chickadees decided to cheer me, and sang their little piping songs, and flitted around a few inches from my eyes, doing little dances and aerobatics just for me. 

I sat on the bench-rock in the meadow and felt the warmth of the sun, the actual warmth.  And so the seasons come around again, the tilt of the earth, spring coming for us, autumn for Jess and all our family and friends in South Africa.

This evening we have been to an Avett Brothers concert at TD BankNorth Garden, a huge sports and entertainment arena at North Station in the city. The Avett brothers band consists of two brothers, Seth and Scott Avett, and three other "honorary brothers", including a very interesting cellist, who plays his cello while leaping around the stage, a feat I had never witnessed before.  They sing "harmony-drenched southern-influenced rock", which Tim discovered a few months ago. 

I think that I am more of a Symphony concert type of person, where the music is filled with colour and variety, and the silences mean something just as the notes do.  And the people are all attentive to the musicians and everyone behaves.  No one has public fights right in front of you, like the sorry-looking grump in the seat in front of Tim, who was dumped by his vivacious girlfriend during the interlude between the opening band and the actual concert.  Or the couple next to them who danced (really badly) for most of the songs, not giving a hoot for my friends sitting beside me, who couldn't see through their gyrating bodies.

And don't they torture people by shining sudden bright lights in their eyes?  Why ever would you do that to people who have paid to see a show then?   In almost every song, at one time all the revolving lights above the stage would abruptly turn on the audience with the seemingly express intent of blinding us!  In the end I had to sit shading my eyes with my hand and peep out of the bottom if I was to see any of the band's action.  But then looking around to see if anyone else was outraged, I found that everyone else could happily look straight into these lights, so I must just be too old and fragile. 

Also, I don't actually do well in places with lots of people and no windows, and smoke machines.  Why would you want smoke?  Or the illusion of smoke?  And people shout and scream inanities, I was constantly jumping out of my skin every time a man would scream out behind me with a bloodcurdling howl, at a completely inopportune time, not at the end of a song when you almost come to expect it and can brace yourself a bit.. 

So it was a violent assault on the senses, this concert, and even Tim admitted to feeling that a little, with your seat thumping with the waves of music, people coming and going and spilling beer and being thoughtless and gross and too many. 

Tim said that we are just probably too old.  Perhaps.

Seth Avett is a very accomplished artist too.  His paintings are much quieter.

Seth Avett's painting of his wife and two children

Well, maybe not.  Can you hear that baby screaming?

66 on the 7th

You know those days when you are rushing to leave because you are almost late, and then something happens to make you definitely late?   Like you are just leaving, rush back to fill your water-bottle, and as you sweep past the counter the glass of water left there last night leaps off and smashes on the floor, so that there is now a large area of wet broken glass and a puddle to clean up.  And then you are finally on your way, and around the corner at Bothways Farm, the trees are dressed in the finest coats of lacy rime, glinting and glittering in the early morning light, and you are arrested in your car as it attempts to drive on past, and you stop and get out in the -13C air and try to capture this beauty.  And eventually you get back in the car, after several people have slowed and almost stopped to see if you are alright, crazy woman without hat nor gloves, and your hands are now screaming for warmth, and luckily around the next corner the heat finally comes on and your aching fingers unstiffen, the sun shines its best to try to warm you through the window, and the highway is kind, as it usually is on a Friday morning for some reason (does everyone work from home on a Friday?), and you reach your destination in perfect time.

 

Shining.

So just to bring me back to reality, to realise that my art room is not a magical kingdom where everyone has partaken of angel-dust, today I had a sixth-grader say something completely disgusting about another sixth-grader’s older sister, and it must have been pretty bad because no one would tell me what he had said, and the little brother was crying his eyes out on the other side of the table.  Why would a little kid say such a thing?  I remember Nicholas and Matthew, the new foreigners in sixth grade, similarly defending their sisters, who weren’t even in the same school, who the insulter had never even met!

And then in my other class these four little boys (over whom most of the girls tower) who are eleven and twelve years old, but honestly two of whom could pass for nine years old, were talking in a very disgusting way about pictures of naked women and making very rude gestures indeed.  I couldn’t understand everything they said because they were speaking low and in very rapid Parisian French, but I thought, “Why are you even talking like this, you barely have balls to speak of, you’re only 4 foot high, it's ridiculous!”

There must have been something in the air today, because even my older kids were being mean about people and had to be called out on it. 

It is the 7^th March, the wedding anniversary of my Mum and Dad.  They were married on the seventh because it was my mother’s lucky number.  (It is apparently the lucky number of many people, and the number 7 features prominently in all world religions and mythologies – a few examples out of hundreds: in Christianity, God took seven days to create the earth; in Islam, when you are a pilgrim to Mecca, you make seven circumambulations around the Kaaba. In Judaism, Shiv-a is another pronunciation of the number seven, hence one sits shiva for seven days.  Buddha walked seven steps when he was born, etc. etc.)    

Seventy-two years ago Joan and Jack were married in Sea Point, Cape Town, where my mother had grown up. Several months earlier my dad had come over on a troop-ship from England, a member of the RAF, and met my mother who was working as a WAF, handing out uniforms.  He fell in love with Joan, my mother, and with South Africa, and always maintained there was nowhere else where the sun warmed you “to your bones’.  

Mum and Dad on the beach in Cape Town - circa 1941

 

It is so strange to see images of your parents so happily in love, long before you were born, long before they became your parents, when they were young and beautiful and had few worries.  When you are a child you can’t even imagine such a thing, it is inconceivable that the world of your mum and dad did not always revolve around you. 

They were married for 64 years, a huge number, quite unusual in our world, and a good example of how hard you have to work at a marriage, how making a promise means keeping it for a very long time.  They had great ups and low downs, grand arguments and great joys, awful despondencies and happy reconciliations.  They had three children, ten grandchildren and three great-grandchildren in their lifetimes.  Now there are four more great-grandies, of which my little Luna and Ella are two!

Mum and Dad on the beach in Winthrop, Massachusetts, circa 2002

When my parents had been married for fifty-five years, I made them a wall-hanging, showing them standing in front of their beloved 10 Forest Drive, and there are their three children with their families, and of course it was not ready for the anniversary (yes Emma and Jess, you know me well – but what a lot of embroidery and sewing went into this wall-hanging), so it was finished by July of that year, when we went to Cape Town to deliver it, where it hung in pride of place in my parents' little lounge until they died.  I have it now, but, like their ashes, I still have no idea what to do with it.

Applique and embroidery wall-hanging for 55 years.

And so the tree grows new branches,still standing on firm roots, although the great trunk is composed only of spirits now, and new saplings are springing up all over the world. 

300 more days to go!

And up at 5.55am and out of the door by 6.15 and down the highway to school in the cold cold COLD!, for parent/teacher conferences!

And a lot of smiling and saying warm and interesting things about your students, which parents love to hear.  Three mothers told me that I had made their days, because although their children struggle with “ordinary lessons”, I report that they are creative and cheerful and enthusiastic and full of life and ideas, all of which augur well in an Art room.  One parent was absolutely shocked to learn that his child focuses intently on each art project and works diligently until its completion!  

And many of the parents who come to see me are of course those who love Art themselves, those who know that there needs to be a balance between the various subjects taken by one child, that Art, Music and Theatre are just as necessary as Math, Biology and Social Studies.

I am so glad that my school values the Arts so highly.  I read this interesting fact about the history of art education in American public schools: ‘The study of art appreciation in America began with the Picture Study Movement in the late 19th century and began to fade at the end of the 1920s. Picture study was an important part of the art education curriculum. Attention to the aesthetics in classrooms led to public interest in beautifying the school, home, and community, which was known as “Art in Daily Living”’.  –wikipedia.  What an amazing idea!  I want to know why it faded.  And carried on fading a century later …. Since 2010, 25% of American public schools have dropped their Arts programmes altogether. 

 

I am consistently contented with my job.  I love to teach children new skills, enjoy training their wonderful brains to really look at things, to see more deeply.  I appreciate guiding their research, exploring the role of the artist in society.  I love to argue with them, or listen to them, considering every subject under the sun.  I want them to know better how to live in the world, how to make sense of it through artistic expression.  This type of education animates self-awareness and with this comes a growing awareness of others, which is the beginning of empathy, the glue of a society. 

 

War and Peace - group project inspired by a study of Picasso's Guernica

Place

The promise of spring

When I was fifteen the SS Wafra, an oil tanker travelling with a full cargo of crude oil from Saudi Arabia to Cape Town, ran aground at Cape Agulhas (which happens to be the geographical southernmost tip of the African continent).  Most of the tanks were punctured on the rocks and at the time it was the worst oil spill in history.  Of course there were millions of marine animals affected by this spill (which is a truly pathetic word to describe what happens when crude oil spreads out over a wide area, kills everything and affects so much for decades!).  

(The SS Wafra was eventually towed way out to sea to be sunk.  A Buccaneer tried to bomb it, unsuccessfully, until a Shackleton was brought in to do the job, a fact which my sister will definitely enjoy immensely, it being her favourite aeroplane.) 

One such little animal was deeply affected but there were things which could be done to try to fix them, these quaint little characters, the African penguins. These small creatures used to be called Jackass penguins, because of the sound that they make, but their name has been changed to the more polite African penguin, which also goes to show that this is where they live.  They should really be called the Southern African penguin, because they actually only live on a few islands off the coast of Southern Africa, with a couple of mainland populations having been established in the 80’s.   

In the newspapers and on the radio (tv was still banned in South Africa at that time, Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, having compared it to the atomic bomb and poison gas in terms of its danger to the population), a call went out for volunteers to help bathe and feed these incapacitated flightless sea-birds.  I volunteered at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) (where is the F in that acronym? In fact quite a few words are in the wrong order!) in Sea Point or Camps Bay, I can’t remember quite where it was, although now their headquarters are at Rietvlei Wetlands, which didn’t even exist at that time.  My dad used to drop me off there in the mornings every weekend, and pick me up in the evenings.  All day we would take turns bathing the oil-soaked birds in a special type of detergent, which had to happen many times, over many days, so that the birds didn’t go into toxic shock. Eventually, numerous washes later, the feathers and skin would be free of the bad oil and the penguins could preen themselves with their own good oil and in this way many were rehabilitated and released.  

After the poor things had lost all their dignity being scrubbed, we would have to force-feed them because penguins don’t eat dead fish.  This was the hardest part.  The penguins all stood around looking desolate after their baths, like helpless little old ladies, turning about this way and that in an aimless confused way, holding their little arms out stiffly.  To feed one you first had to reach in and pick up the sad figure, settle yourself down and wedge it between your legs, where the strong ones would fight violently.  Once you had it more or less under control, you would then grab the beak, force it open, somehow keep holding it open with one hand, seize a slippery silver fish and shove it halfway down the bird's gullet.  Once you had done this the penguin generally swallowed, and after a few more fish, you set it down again with its fellows, where it shook itself a few times in a half-embarrassed, half-irritated way, and then went back to looking terribly sorry for itself just like all the others. 

These penguins were the guinea-pigs (yes, I know that sounds silly) for rehabilitation, as quite a number of them died in the process, little being known at that time about what constituted a good programme to successfully clean oil-soaked birds.  It is a tragic fact that organisations like SANCCOB have had too much practice dealing with increasingly common oil spills and have therefore come up with ever better cleaning methods.  It is heartbreaking that there has been the need, and will always be a need, for such work.  Four years ago almost to the day, when I was writing my other year’s blog, the worst “spill” happened in the Gulf of Mexico.  And yet, and yet, we maintain all the usual ways of doing things, it is not if another disaster happens, but when.  Mankind is pretty stupid when greed and global corporations are involved.  

My first-friend Trish put up a post about knitting little coats for penguins being rehabilitated in Australia, which is an ongoing process, just as it is in South Africa.  So I have resolved to knit one little jacket a month. 

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2014/03/05/3957423.htm#.UxfkKvmfH-8.facebook

Penguin doing interpretive dance as a teapot in a tea-cosy.

Day 64

Getting weak-willed in my old age!  Couldn't quite get it together to go out into the snow to gym early this morning before school, so did a few exercises at home instead.

I had an avocado for lunch.  We always call avocados the food of the gods, because they are the most delicious fruit, although they are not like apples and oranges and the rest.  Botanically, the avocado is a large berry! 

When I was about sixteen I went to a winter-school at the Space Theatre in Cape Town, recently opened and run by Yvonne Bryceland and her husband Brian Astbury.  It was the first non-racial theatre in South Africa, defiant of the apartheid laws of the time, and we were about 50 school students, mostly white, but a few of different races, learning to trust one another, with strange trust-building exercises that I had never experienced before, and so at lunchtime I would leave the building and walk down through the Gardens in Cape Town and buy an avocado from a vendor for my lunch.  I would sit alone on a bench under the beautiful avenue of trees, and savour the deliciousness of the avo, cutting it open with my penknife and eating it off the blade like my dad had taught me to do.  I would think about all the huge and difficult things in my life, and then I would go back, to try again. 

In the magical 16 Cross Street Bouwer-house, we had a huge avocado-tree that was prolific in its fruit-production.  We had a constant supply of avos, and a fat black labrador called Skye who loved avocados even more than we did.  Sometimes the high ones were impossible to pick, and so we would wait until they fell down themselves, but we rarely got any of those ones, as Skye would sit and wait for them to fall on the ground and then pounce on them and consume them rather like a hippopotamus attacking a bunch of grass, with great happiness.

(The closest relative to a hippopotamus is a whale.  They diverged from cetaceans about 55 million years ago.   They are very aggressive creatures, and are known as one of the most dangerous African animals.)

We used to call Skye the canine seal, because she was this little fat black waddling creature who loved water and wallowing.

My friend Cindy had made a wonderful avocado dish for a dinner party, and told her little daughter to carry it in carefully and give it to the host, and say, "Here you are, this is the food of the gods!"  So the little girl went off very proudly, balancing the dish very carefully, and announced, "Here you are, this is the food of the dogs!"

I have to get up very early for parent-teacher conferences, and I am so so tired, my weak will has continued into the night, and so my man-made thing today is an old painting, called Childhood.

Sixty-three

On Sunday I was wandering around A C Moore, looking for a particular sized frame, listening to my book, far away, when I realised that a woman was trying to attract my attention, and had perhaps been speaking for a while, not realising that I had earphones in my ears. She was saying, very loudly, as she had probably supposed that I was deaf, "I JUST LOVE YOUR HAIR!  It looks exactly the same as that movie, you know, Tangled?  Exactly the same colour and everything!  Just lovely!"  So I thanked her and walked away feeling a bit perplexed, because I was pretty sure, it being Angelina's favourite movie, that the heroine in Tangled is blonde?  She must have meant Brave, but confused the title because of the state of my hair - tangled!

I am quite partial to my hair actually.  When the boys were born 21 years ago I started going grey, and as I didn't want to be mistaken for their grandmother, being a relatively old new mother, I decided to henna it, which I had done once before when I was still naturally blonde and had given my mother the fright of her life by turning up on her doorstep one university vacation with bright light-orange hair!  

Henna is natural, just crushed leaves, basically, so it doesn't destroy hair like regular dye, and actually keeps it well-conditioned.   I have been doing it ever since, and now I am kind of stuck with it as I would have to cut my hair short-short in order to let it grow out grey, and I have no desire whatsoever to do that.  So I'll probably be that old 80 year old woman walking around, all wrinkled and bent, but with copper-coloured hair to the end!

When I was little I couldn't have long hair because I suffered from asthma and the doctors said that short hair was best because it couldn't hold dust and whatnot, so while I envied the beautiful long wavy ponytail of my best friend Trish, my hair was always cropped short like a boy's.  As soon as I became a teenager I rebelled (against almost everything) and grew my hair long and have only had short hair one other time since then when I cropped it in a moment of madness, tired of the two babies pulling on it! 

Anne and Jess, the henna-girls.

So so cold to get up and begin in the morning, -14C, a ridiculous temperature, and dark, cold and dark.  I can't wait for spring, really can't wait!  Of course it is not -14C in our room, but still feels frigid!  The alarm goes and I just want to turn over and curl up in the warmth left by Tim's good body, as he leaps up to go and play squash at some unearthly hour!  I want to sink back down into the interesting dream I was having, float off into that warm dark ocean...

To actually get out of bed and find an outfit for the day, then take off your warm sleep-clothes, and put on the cold clothing, is torture. 

But it has to be done, and a breakfast made, and a lunch packed, and as the first light emerges weakly, tentatively, through the trees, and the birds come out and sing happily, having survived another freezing night, telling everyone there is fresh seed and water here, I gather all my school things and pick my way down the icy path to the car, and off I drive to the city.  Today I listen to WBUR National Public Radio, because my book is finished and I can't bear to begin a new one yet, the last one was SO good. 

So I have the radio on and I think.  And there is Ukraine, with Russian troops poised, and later in the morning my ninth graders discuss this fact, and debate which forces run the world, while they are creating beautiful flowing tissue-paper collages of seascapes and landscapes and water-lilies, and they come to the right conclusion, that it is weapons, the sale of weapons.  This is what makes the world go around.  How sad it is that they should already know such things.  But also good, how they talk, discuss, and then are not submerged by it all, but dig in to the colours, splash on the mod-podge, fashion a composition, enjoy, ride high on the beauty of their creations, and eventually clean up, organise themselves, and stride off to the next class. 

Students often remark how slowly all the other subjects go, and how fast the art class flies by, and I have to almost physically push them out of the room sometimes, they are so caught up in it.  It is so sad, that we lose all the art we just take for granted when we are young.  Art is in every subject when you are little, every little kid thinks they're an artist, they believe it with all their hearts.  And then as you get older it is gradually squeezed out of you, you are told that it is unimportant, science and math are paramount. Art is for people who can't do those things, art is beneath the intelligent ones, and soon, very few young adults believe they are artists.  Our happiness leaks out like air from a forgotten birthday balloon, imperceptibly at first, but a part of our soul withers.

Sixty-two

I went for a very long trek through the snow with my ghost-dog Molly.  It was very very cold (-8C), but I became so hot that by the time I was halfway along I had stripped off my coat and hat and gloves. 

It was very disconcerting to come across two sets of human footprints, perhaps a man and a woman, one smallish, the other large.  And a dog or several dogs.  I consider this land MY meadow, and have rarely seen a living soul on my daily trails through field and forest for the past nine years.   Of course I followed the prints and they even knew the best place to cross the wall, so obviously have a knowledge commensurate with mine.  I felt almost violated at first, and then the meadow calmed me down, because if the meadow had accepted them then I would too.

Birds sang in the March sunshine, which is almost warm, beautiful whistling songs from cardinals and tufted titmouses. 

When I got home I hauled wood for half an hour until all the storage spots were full. 

I was cleaning out my drawers today and found an old diary from 2012, when we were in England for Emma and Stuarts' wedding.  We arrived a few days early so that we could go to visit our friend Stephen in Manchester for a few days.  We got on a train feeling like death from all the travelling and no sleep.

Diary excerpt 04/12/2012

On a train - fast one, travelling to Manchester.

A sign that said, "Tubular Erectors Ltd."

Subway, sitting waiting underground, an overhead walkway with a grille through which you can see people's legs walking, with a sign saying WAY OUT with an arrow pointing straight up, as if you had to climb up and get through the grille somehow to be able to get out.

Such beautiful rural landscapes in England, the green and pleasant land, sheep by the dozens with all their new little lambs. (sheep with twins, how does she feel, lying down and twins nuzzling)

Gorse, hedgerows, magpies, fields and fields of startling yellow rapeseed.

The man in front of me is having conversations on his cell-phone with all different people, his work, men, then he talked to his two little daughters, then his wife, quite friendly and helpful, no "love you" at the end though.
Then talking to a woman from work, laughing and laughing, a low scurrilous kind of laugh, and then at the end, a kind of whispered "Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, it'll be..." and I couldn't hear the rest, whispered as though someone relevant on the train would hear him!

It's so usual, isn't it?

Barges on a slow little river/canal, locks, everything like Postman Pat's countryside, but in many happy-looking houses there are very unhappy people, cruelty is occurring, people are ambivalent about their sexuality, people are treating their old ones abominably.  But also there are people being kind to their children, being patient with their husbands. 

We feel like zombies, running on empty, Tim and I.

Beautiful clouds.

People talking loudly on cellphones, saying "Sorry?" intermittently in that very British way.

A cow-shaped cloud above a field of sheep.

Lots of nests and hawk-like birds, especially in one field, must be good mouse-hunting there.

So much history - ruins - so different from South Africa.

Taking pics from the moving train with my phone.

Black clouds hastening towards us with Black Angus cows in a large green field, calmly curled up at comfortable distances from one another, taking notice, or not, of our train whooshing past.

Only 5 stops on this train:  Somewhere, Stoke on Trent, Macklesfield (pouring with rain), Stockport, (getting bleaky), Manchester.

I hate golf-courses.

Ivy like a hand creeping color up a grey dirty railway embankment wall.

So interesting to read what you wrote a long time ago.  Writing it down makes it real, brings it back into focus, makes it easy to relive.