Oasis

 We - well, you mostly - created an oasis in our back garden. I helped but in a random way, buying plants here and there but you did the digging, the planting, the tending.

I took advantage of the council's offer of a compost bin. Twenty years of good, rich fertiliser from vegetable peelings. Twenty years of decayed soggy lettuce, sprouting spuds, wet parsnips and wizened  carrots. It made me feel less guilty for over buying and not producing as many home cooked meals as intended. 

You made the little pond for frogs, filling it with tadpols and oxygenating plants with the help of interested friends. 

We left the self seeding Elder, which was little more than a bush when we moved in, to  grow tall. You hung seeds, peanuts and lard cakes for the birds on its boughs.

I saw some gold finches in the clough and a colleague told me how nyger seed would attract them to the garden. Flashes of red, and yellow jostling for places on the feeder. Their high pitched musical twittering a sweet addition and, in the evening, the blackbird's resonant song. 

We - you mostly - created this green space between the high laurels, planted by a former owner, a miserable bugger by all accounts, who wanted to screen out his  neighbours and, in doing so, gifted us this private space, this little oasis visited by hedgehogs and squirrels.

Somewhere to chill. Somewhere to forget the petty conflicts of family or work and the state of the nation with its never ending meaness, injustice and scandals 

Somewhere to screen out thoughts of people being bombarded by bombs thousands of miles away. People whose oases have been ripped up, ripped apart, ripped away. 

Destroyed. 

Thousands of people who have lost those they love. Injured, uncertain. afraid; who have to start over with nothing. 

Joan Bailey 

Herb Robert

Herb Robert has crept in and colonised some pots near the bin without my permission.

Yet I find him to be a welcome addition.

Trust this invader the experts say: he will bring bees and butterflies. Just cut him back if he gets in the way.

Rub his leaves on the skin to avoid midges but never cut his flowers and put them inside overnight or death will surely follow. 

Who would think such as this could herald such sorrow? 

Sources speculate about the origin of his name.

Views differ. 

Some believe he was named for a medieval monk, who used plants and flowers to relieve sickness and pain with their curative powers. 

Or is he named for the puck known as  Robin Goodfellow, the Shakespearian sprite, who circled the earth for King of the Fae on the titular midsummer night?

Whatever...

He can live anywhere: woods. commons, hedgerows, cracks in the pavement. 

He doesn't much care. 

All he needs is some soil, the rain and the God given air.

Joan Bailey 

Mudlark

Rooting through debris like a Victorian scavenger. Clearing a window on the foreshore of time. A glimpse of the past in a piece of old pottery: figures of rowers on broken blue Delft. 

And not  just the boatmen but some unknown person who ate bread and cheese from this long gone plate. Long gone, like the woman who once wore the glass beads displayed like bright sweets on a string long frayed. 

Treasures discarded and washed back up again, long hidden beneath the grey, muddy sand, suddenly illuminated in the light of the morning, as you offer them up in your wet, muddy hands.

Joan Bailey 

Working On It

Autumn, three weeks into term, energy bills like nowhere else in Europe. Liz Truss is PM (How??? Really, how?) 

Equanimity.  Working on it. 

Recipe:

Watch the garden birds, read, peddle on the exercise bike, music, pray for mercy and miracles, love, appreciate those who love me, wine, bit of telly, don't forget the water bottle and eat better. 

Sister-in-law is 80. Off for an Italian meal with family. 

The greatest blow to women's rights in my lifetime

The overturning of Wade v Roe in America is astonishing. It is the most significant reversal  of common sense in my lifetime. Last night, one of my Facebook friends, a wise and thoughtful woman - and a Roman Catholic - with whom I did my teacher training, posted her shock and anger over the Supreme Court's judgement, and expressing concern for her friends in America.  This helped me to express my own thoughts. I am Christian but cannot accept the orthodox view that abortion is a sin. 

I'm a lapsed Anglican and my sister is a converted Roman Catholic. Occasionally, I have attended her church,  most recently when she renewed her wedding vows and for a family funeral. She has been active in the Catholic Church in the past, supporting the bereaved and helping out in other ways and is still quite regular in attendance, even now her kids are grown. I remember one time, after a confirmation service, a woman coming round trying to drum up support for a pro-life thing and my sister firmly saying 'No thank you.' When  the woman had gone. My sister turned round to me saying' I am not into that shit. They have no idea! ' I was so proud of her at that moment.

My sister went  on to work with young single mums who  needed support and later with children at risk of sexual exploitation and she continues to have no illusions about how tough life is.

Abortion is an incredibly difficult thing. It should be a last resort within a nationally funded and supported contraception prgramme. Even though it should be the last resort, no one should feel guilty or be denied the right to a safe, legal abortion. 

I remember reading an article by a female professor, who looked at abortion not simply from the perspective that women should have control over their own bodies  - a given in my book  - but also addressed the pro-lifers with some nuanced arguments, explaining that abortion was, in her view, a necessary evil in a deeply broken world. I have never forgotten this. 

I remember, when I was a young teenager, my mother  talking about how  her own  mother had had an abortion. Grandma's husband was disabled and had been ill for many years. My grandma was the main  breadwinner. He  died when my mother was in her late teens/early twenties. It seems at some point  my grandmother also had a 'fancy man' called Joe. I don't know if this was before or after her husband died but, as a result of this affair, she ended up having a back street abortion, which my mother said was a very dangerous thing to do. I remember asking why and she replied 'because I think they inserted a coat hanger.' For years I had a mental picture of my grandmother sitting on her back step - which she used to make yellow with a donkey stone - dressed in her work-a-day apron waiting for a person  with a coat hanger to sort her problem out.

I remember a little while after this, a friend telling me how  abortion was a very wicked thing  and thinking that could not be true, as the sweetest, kindest, least selfish person I had ever known was my late grandma and she'd had one, even though it could have killed her. I was glad that a woman couid now  get an abortion on the NHS, despite the fact some people made a fuss about it. 

On the overturning of Wade v Roe and the news that half of the states in America will now outlaw the right to an abortion, I feel the need  to express how important our sisters, mothers and grandmothers are and how important is our right to decide for ourselves if abortion is a better option than giving birth. 

The bottom line is this:  abortion will exist as long as  women exist, however offensive certain people find this. It will never be swept away by legislation and moral indignation. The overturning of Wade v Roe will  lead to increased mental misery, even suicide; to increased poverty; to  illegal, unsupervised and potentially dangerous interventions; to the criminalisation of those previously licensed practitioners who will carry on; to  the criminalisation of women.

The righteousness of certain sections of America, who would outlaw reproductive rights, while, in some cases, advocating gun ownership is well know and well commented on. It is quite simply, unfathomable. And to those in any country, who wouid place the rights of the fetus above the needs of the mother, I wouid ask them to consider the bigger picture. 

Keeping on keeping on (again)

Not the most optimistic title for a blog entry and apologies to Alan Bennett who used the phrase ‘keeping on keeping on’ for the latest of his diary volumes – not that he’s likely to notice. Not that I’m down, just a bit muted, though the first few weeks of term were a nightmare. The impact of COVID on adult student numbers, mostly. Things seem to be coming together now but there are still gremlins in the works and those who enjoy casting shade. Enduring and pondering retirement, even though in many ways I still love my job. I doubt I would be able to keep up, given the work load, without the help and support of my retired husband keeping it all together on the domestic front and for which I am so very grateful.

I’ve been doodling little poems and lyrics and have also been listening to music a lot.  I recently bought the Specials’ latest, Protest Songs. I like it. It has a good range of ‘protest songs’ from the nursery rhyme like ‘I live in a city’, which conjures the incongruous image of Terry Hall singing at a Woodcraft Folk gathering, to another -  but this time deceptively - simplistic song, ‘I don’t mind failing in this world’, which packs a solid socialist message and makes me think what a coward I am when it comes to criticism.  Every time, I hear the lines ‘Somebody else's definition/Isn't going to measure my soul's condition/I don't mind failing in this world.’ I am reminded that teaching observations have been brought forward and walk throughs have been increased. I have been through this so many times but I can never quite shake off the feeling that one is viewed as only as good one’s last observation. It never gets any easier. Both these songs were written by political folk pioneer Malivina Reynolds of Little Boxes fame. There’s a wonderful version of Talking Head’s Listening Wind with guest singer Hannah Hoo,  and great renditions of Fuck All the Perfect People and Everybody Knows. Lynval Golding brings a lifetime’s understanding to Black, Brown and White and Get up, Stand Up.

Reading wise, our book group read The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. A brilliant study of male dominance and women’s witness to men’s sense of entitlement and obsession with power. Truly tragic and very moving. The sacrifice of Polyxena as seen through Briseis’s eyes will stay with me, as will the representation of Achilles as an emotionally retarded man child. Fortunately, men have improved a great deal; despite the recent spot light on male violence, there are many good men out there. Without mine, I would struggle on so many levels.

So far, so self-absorbed but life is pulling me back from my own narrow concerns in different ways. My uncle has just passed away, which means family coming north for the funeral; my mum has to have an investigation under anaesthetic, which is a worry. These things plus several social gatherings on the horizon should also to help counteract my currently inward gaze. 

 

 

Sealed in the Book of Life

 G’mar chatima tova” is the Hebrew greeting on Yom Kippur. It means “May you be sealed in the Book of Life.” (Source: Marriane Williams) 

What a blessing, what a hope to be sealed in the Book of Life. 

 I have always struggled with dualistic takes on spirituality, the goodies and the baddies version of spirituality. All those poor souls on the left hand path off to languish in hell; those poor goats sprily gamboling away from love, light and peace. No one is entirely beyond the pale, surely? 

The idea of the righteous and the unrighteous seems too bound up with social control and religious power. The woman in the pure white gown going straight to heaven, while the  woman struggling with ambiguity goes straight into purgatory. And as for the  big bad woman, she's already on her way to hell, right? No. That doesn't seem right to me, especially if such a philosophy/theology is wielded by those in authority. 

I  did a bit of lazy research on Wikipedia and discovered that, as with Buddhism, there is also a  Book of the Dead in the  Jewish tradition and, once your name gets written in there, you're knackered, unlike those lucky souls who get written into the Book of Life and are  therefore guaranteed a passport to heaven. Surely it's not so simple? People are not wholely or good or wholely bad. 

Despite  my issues with dualism, though, I would want my name to be sealed in the Book of Life, who wouldn't?  To be, metaphorically and spiritually, sealed into to growth, wisdom, love, forgiveness, compassion, to radiate the love of something greater and infinitely precious would be just grand.

For me, being 'included in the book' would not be about perfection or being some goody- two - shoes-holier-than-thou arse-hole but something far more human altogether. Being a good friend, a wise counsellor, to be kind and funny, to be less of dick when it comes to my relationship with other people. To be internally at peace with myself and the world around me, and being filled with the 'divine' spark of life. To be able to get out of bed in the morning with a bit of joy inside. 

That would be nice. That would feel really blessed. 

And because I want this for myself, I want it for all those with whom l share space, those with whom I interact and anyone who has taken the time to engage with my ramblings. 

So, several days after Yom Kippur, and within a wide and very secular context, please accept my blessing  that you 'be sealed within the book  of life.'