Achy legs

The North Yorkshire coast is beautiful but my legs still ache from climbing up the 1 in 3 road and taking short walks on the paths around Robin Hood's Bay (I'm so unfit!) It didn't rain all week but, as we crossed the Pennines, it got darker and by the time we got home it was raining. Welcome home.

Back to work tomorrow.

A stone in the sea

I've now been married for 25 years. As I jokingly told my husband, he'd have served less for murder. Unfortunately, at the same time as this happy celebration, I'm balancing the sad loss of my friend Pat. Life goes on and she'd be the first one to tell me so. Sadly, I can't attend the funeral, which will be humanist and ecological: buried in a decorated cardboard coffin, she'll rest under an elder tree on the West Pennine Moors; I can't think of a better place. On holiday in North Yorkshire, I plan to cast a white stone into the sea. The stone is smooth but not rounded, having several sides to it. Unpolished, it sparkles slightly when I hold it to the light. It feels comforting in the palm of my hand. If I can find some handmade paper - plain white otherwise - I will write a message for my wise and feisty friend and, with a prayer of thanks for her life, wrap it around the stone and cast it into the North Sea. Does that make me a pagan? A little perhaps...but there's something about the spirit of the elements that Christianity forgets to uphold.

Meanwhile, riots have taken place in which four people have died .... how have we got to this place? Anger, frustration a sense of unfulfilled entitlement? Gang culture? Shit politics? There's a sickness at the heart of it all that we cannot undo. At least not on our own. I prayed about it.

Lots of my friends find it hard to believe that I have religious beliefs. Surely you're intelligent enough to realise the presence of a God is scientifically impossible and, anyway, what about all the bad things that happen, they ask. I can understand this. This world is full of horrendous things: hatred, war, murder, sex trafficking, abuse. How is it possible human beings can do these things? Maybe, as human beings, we have to accept we don't have all the answers and, without abdicating responsibility, search for answers outside the parameters of the 'material world'? Ever since I decided to trust the possibility of God, my life has been subtly transformed. I understand why to many people belief in God seems illogical but for me God is beyond logic. When I was a student, I stumbled across Keirkegaard, who wrote about taking a step beyond objective logic; it's a step I'm glad I made.

Bad News

The news has been bad: ninety-odd people killed by a right wing lunatic in Norway and the death of Amy Winehouse. My friend Pat also died this week. She had decided to stop the treatment and passed away at 3.00pm on Monday. It's left me a bit blank. Grasp your life and live it to the full, people say when their friends die; today could be your last. But I don't feel like that. I want to wrap my self in a light protective blanket and think. Not sure about what, just wherever the train of thoughts and emotions takes me. But I have stuff to do. I have to call in work and fill in a form, buy a birthday card and a find a card for Pat's family. Hopefully not a standard commercial sympathy card with 'Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time' and a watercolour image of light shining through an open window. I'll look for a blank one with an image Pat might have liked. Then take some shopping round to my mum's house.

Ordinary things.

Spoonfuls of Art and History

I once heard, or more probably read, a metaphor that described life as being measured out in teaspoons. Perhaps a person's life that can be measured so is to be pitied. Even so, my own life sometimes seems as though it's being measured out or at least divided into chunks. Chunks made up of terms and holidays. The summer break being a time to relax, unwind, play a bit.

So far, I have been to London with a good friend, who sweetened my tea with spoonfuls of art and creative thinking. First off, we went to see an open studio exhibition of abstract work on hand made paper in the home of Irma Irsara in Finsbury Park. It was wonderful to see work so full of rich vibrant colour.Irma doesn't just work in this medium but also creates in other mediums, such as stained glass installations. There was something very beautiful and joyful about Irma's work, that I haven't seen much of for a while. Edgy art is fine but sometimes it's great to be engulfed in something more life affirming. My friend, a creative embroiderer, who also makes hand made paper, was in her seventh heaven and has hopefully made a significant creative contact.

We also visited Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields. Dennis created an amazing impression of the C18th and C19th in the house where he lived. He died far too young at 51 but his historical recreation (or should that be installation?) was taken over by the Spitalfields' trust. It is open to the public at rather odd times: Mondays after the first and third Sundays of the month and occasional Fridays, which seemed in keeping with the slightly eccentric feel of the place. Fortunately, we were in London at the right time to visit and were welcomed in by a rather imperious, dark haired gentleman with a 'Shush!' - one must not speak or it may ruin the experience - and took a tour through time. It was, as the Georgians might have said, 'A most excellent experience.'

Irma Irsara


Dennis Severs House

There's a You Tube link to a BBC 4 documentary at:

Never Let me Go

Earlier this week, I cried, if not buckets, than enough to fill half a tea cup watching the film adaptation of Kazuo Isiguro's 'Never Let me Go'. A unique vision of dystopia in which resignation takes on a heroic status in a universe where love cannot conquer the inevitable but makes what ever kind of life there is to live endurable. It also spoke, indirectly but powerfully, of the malevolent tendency of the privileged to exploit those they believe to be somehow less than themselves. It wasn't as good as the book and missed out one small but important segment but it was an excellent adaptation all the same.

Farwell to a 'Starlet'

Yesterday I said good bye to a former colleague. Kath Fry, who on retiring from teaching maths at the college in 2010, discovered she had lung cancer. She kept a grounded yet (and she'd so hate me writing this) inspirational blog in which she charted her ups and downs in a clear eyed, dispassionate way, to keep friends and interested parties up-to-date with what was happening. Early in May, her daughter informed followers she had passed away. Tributes would follow in the Manchester Evening News. This turned out to be unintentionally amusing when Sir Richard Lees, head of Manchester Authority was misquoted. He described her as a 'stalwart of the Labour Party', which was printed up as 'starlet of the Labour Party', which I'm sure would have ticked Kath.

Although non-religious the funeral was incredibly spiritual. It honoured the spirit of a unique individual in a unique way. The singing of the choir was incredibly moving and their secular rendition of 'Freedom is Coming' sent shivers from my knees to the top of my head. Given that Kath's name was Fry (old English for 'free') it seemed all the more fitting.

Reparation

In my last random rambling I mentioned the idea of making reparation for errors of the past. Actually, it's not that easy to do. Asking for forgiveness has to be in context or appropriate. For all of those instances where it's way too late, then it's more a case of developing a contrite attitude and moving on.

But it's not always others we hurt, quite often we can also hurt ourselves. As human beans we don't always know what we are up to. Our shadow can emerge when we least expect it and learning to distinguish our shadow from what might loosely be termed our real selves, seems to me to be a lifetime's work. I do believe, however, that when we behave in ways which are contrary to our true selves we eventually realise - or others will let us know - and we return to where we should be. I suppose that makes me sound quite old fashioned, a bit like Thomas Aquinas with his idea that once we recognise that which is truly good, we will follow it. And as for what is good, then the best answer to such an abstract question is that which we intuitively perceive to be so, or the nearest we can come to that.