did you ever kiss a frog?

Z is for LA70112

 

 

A person’s path through life can be a straight line with one fixed point in view or a meander without  much rhyme or reason, going down this path and that one.  Mine has tended to the latter.  I have wandered through experiences and influences and have been constantly amazed and mostly delighted at the end points.

When I was far too young a child I was introduced to Mark Twain and fell instantly for a small boy not much older than I was.  Tom Sawyer was fun, naughty, but fun.  He lived a life I envied in a place as exotic as the jungles of Mowgli.  Mark Twain conjured up a magical world in a part of America I knew nothing about.  The ways of the world down south were fascinating and then there was that river.  The Mississippi River, just the spelling of it was so alien but so easy to say, it sang.

I progressed from Tom to his friend Huckleberry, what a name, what a boy.  My heart burned with the injustices of his story.  How could his father treat him so?  How could the world treat Jim so?  It was my first taste of slavery and racial intolerance and I wished to stand shoulder to shoulder with Huck in the saving of Jim.  When I was older, of course, I found the deeper message of the book: the conflict between the social norms a person imbibes with their mother’s milk and the feeling of the ethical and just response to these norms.  Huck in the end judges Jim’s worth not on the colour of his skin but on his humanity.  A great book.

  
 
Later still, when I wandered around Australia, I read Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, that history, memoir and collection of Tales.  I was by then adrift in the world travelling in the opposite direction to that mighty river but it engrossed me as much as his fiction had when I was a child.

Television from America gave us the riverboats of the Mississippi in the guise of the gamblers and travellers.  Card sharks, women of ill repute (we only knew that because they wore the prettiest dresses, the most feathered hats, I liked them!); there were races, explosions, guns, loves won and lost, and the bad guys were often the handsome ones with hearts and full carpet bags of gold.

Then, of course, there were the show boats, no boilers to explode but full of life and drama, theatre floating down a mighty river, well!!  Later, after I had left home and had a musical taste for other than pop, I learned that jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke had played them. Those steam boats with big, big wheels were romantic and thrilling as I grew.

That river would impinge again and again in various disguises: in book, but also in folk and blues songs, even a bit of skiffle.  It figured in our history books when dealing with British exploits and conflicts in and with America.  Not just the Mississippi but also the Missouri, the Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers; captured in so many songs and tucked away in my musical memories.

Of course there is no mentioning of the Mississippi River without that of New Orleans.  Darker reading matter when I progressed to the likes of Tennessee Williams and James Lee Burke.  I thought of this town on the river as hot and steamy, with music, colour and very dark undertones of voodoo.  I imagined laconic private eyes and sultry dames leaning on door posts.  I imagined this would be a good place to go to one day.  However, America did not seem to be the end point of any of my wanders. 

  
   Life has its own ideas of paths followed and end points.  I travelled the world for years always pointing east.  One day, when I had bid a fond farewell to youth and started walking hand in hand with middle age, I decided to write a best selling blockbuster of a novel!  So having never set foot in the country I decided I would set this amazing piece of literature in America!!!  I suppose I’m not renowned for my common sense.  Wonderful excuse though for a research trip across the pond.  I had decided to set this greatest English novel on the Eastern Seaboard (love that collection of names). 

So my friend and I embarked on a series of holidays to the place we only knew of from films and books.  We visited both summer and winter.  Taking endless photos, picking up suitcase loads of reference paper and books.  The internet wasn’t an option then.  I visited America on my own when I went to help the captive chimpanzees.  I was becoming quite an expert on this magical place of my childhood.  Strangely similar yet so different from those fictional experiences.  

I suddenly decided to take myself off to University and the blockbuster got put away in a box, on hold until time was generous again.  I gained a BSc and then an MA.  I was on a roll.  I began my PhD and planned accordingly.  Then one day, when I had noticed middle age was getting restless and older age was on the horizon, we had a friend over for lunch.  She was off in a couple of weeks to Louisiana, to New Orleans, to the mighty Mississippi.  I was suddenly green.  Come she said, not even two seconds to say yes.  Two weeks later I was staring at the Mississippi River.  Listening to the jazz in the warm steamy night air. 

I had a birthday while we were there; a birthday which started with a Buck’s Fizz for breakfast in bed and continued with riding a riverboat on the Mississippi, finishing with a slap-up dinner overlooking the elegant streets of the city.  A great birthday.

Well it had only taken forty years to get there. The path did have an end point.

Then my traveling abruptly ceased and due to accident, illness and family commitments that was the last time I wandered away to explore the world for eleven years.

So today on the last post of the A-Z challenge and on yet another birthday, I give you New Orleans and the mighty Mississippi River. 

 

Z is for the zip code.

 

Y is for sand and sun

 

 

Yellow is my second favourite colour, after blue.  It is the colour of sunshine, brightness and warmth.  It is also the colour of sand and therefore a colour of the holidays in my childhood.  We went each year to the wonderful sands of the West Country.  Sand to make dams, castles and moats. 

Sand dunes to play at Lawrence of Arabia, or was it the foreign legion?  I do wonder sometimes just how many unsuitable books and films I had access to in my formative years!!  This game kept me occupied for hours, in the playing and the planning of it.  With a towelling robe, neck to bare feet, and a towel around my head secured with a headband I crept through the dunes, as silent as a mouse, spying through gently parted grasses. 

 Sometimes I would be dying of thirst, so creeping became crawling, gasping, parched throat burning.  Would I make safety, would I perish under the unrelenting sun (this was Britain in August, often wet, often cold!  Good imagination, eh?  Would ants devour me before I finally expired? 

Other times I would be on a secret mission which would involve me at some time getting shot as I leapt from a high dune down onto the enemy, then I would have to crawl again as I dragged my blood-soaked body toward safety.  Oh life was perilous!

What did the other inhabitants of the dunes make of this child crawling through their picnic areas, hand held out piteously for water or first aid; did they gather their offspring closer to themselves, shake their head in the folly of it all?  Or did they, as I hope now looking back, smile at the ability of solitary children to entertain themselves?

When I grew old enough to wander abroad I fell in love with real deserts.  Harking back to childhood?  Was it a self-fulfilling love or had it been a premonition of things to come?  The deserts were not all sand dunes of course and it was the silence, the apparent emptiness and the large skies, that drew me not games of derring do.

Yellow is, as I say, the colour of sunshine and it was towards the sunshine I headed as I wandered.  If not the sunshine, the warmth of the sun.  Grey skies depress me, the cold depresses me.  I am not a winter person at all, however I can take the cold if the sun shines and the skies are blue.  So wonderful places included mountains, always cold but so near the sun; deserts, amazing how cold they can become; and the south pole, well it can’t get much colder but the sunshine is brilliant, all that ice and snow to bounce off. 

Hot places; picking grapes in the mid-day sun in South Australia, watching mirages shimmering in Africa; eating rosemary-encrusted lamb with smiling Greek fishermen.  Trailing toes in the Adriatic, collecting shellfish from under the sand in New Zealand for an impromptu meal on the beach.  Lush tropical fruit and even the sticky heat of jungles and rain forests.

 
 
It’s light clothes in hot colours, bare feet and floppy hats.  It’s cotton coverings, mosquito nets and skin cream.

Desert and heat then combine into survival advice, another yellow.  If stranded save your own urine for drinking!  I never had to do it! 

X is for fibres

 

 

In the devastated world of the Sefuty Chronicles xylem plays an important part in the survival of those who lived through the great Climate Wars, as it has indeed throughout the ages from Neolithic and Palaeolithic to present day.

Xylem is the transport system and support of vascular plants, transporting water and some nutrients throughout the plant.  These xylem tubes are long and stringy, ideal for so many uses from clothes to string.  Evidence of woven plant material is, amazingly, sometimes excavated; amazing because it is plant material and as such one can wonder that it has survived all these thousands of years. 

 

Across the globe woven cloth, basket making and cordage amongst others have been made from these bast fibres.  The stems of vascular plants are beaten and soaked in water to take away the outer layers.  What is left, the interior, are the fibres that will be used for spinning, weaving, cording and plaiting.  Years ago when I first became interested in craft work I tried ‘retting’ nettle – we grew splendid specimens in out garden!  It’s a tedious and smelly business.  I never did manage it and, as the family objected to the smell of rotting plants, I gave up before mastering the craft.

For the Sefuty Chronicles I have concentrated on flax, hemp and nettle as the main plants for cloth making.  Some of the communities in this dystopian world have sufficient water supplies to process these; with fleece as well I reckoned they could keep themselves weatherproofed.

My world does still possess books where information can be gleaned and new skills can be learnt but how did our ancestors learn?  One has to bow one’s head in awe at what our ancient forbears knew, what they could do.  How does one learn that soaking and stripping a plant stem could eventually clothe you?  I can just understand twisting fibres together and making cordage, but the long and difficult process of turning nettles into a jacket astounds me; as indeed does so much of what folk, we would call primitive, did.

Then, of course, they worked out how to dye the fibres with nuts, bark, berries, flowers, herbs and weeds.  Any of you who have used these natural materials for dye-baths will know that some kind of mordant is needed to improve the colour fastness.  So how did they discover the mordants?  

 

 
I imagine fingers would have twisted the first fibres but to produce enough for cloth a mechanical method is needed.  Even the simple spindle is an invention of imagination and maths.  Then the weaving of the fibre into fabric.  Some so-called ‘primitive’ societies have developed quite complex looms, with so many different ways of weaving fabric, and don’t let’s get started on the myriad forms of basketry.

While I was researching fibre and fabric for the Sefuty Chronicles I came across the fact that Panama hats begin their lives as fronds from the toquilla plant on the Ecuadorian tropical coast.  I wore a Panama at my secondary school many, many years ago, before I became interested in craft and way before the Sefuty Chronicles.  If I had known that this tall, rich green palm-like plant had such exotic beginnings I might have worn that hat with more reverence.  I did so like exotic!

 

 

W is for wild wonderful walkabout

 

 

  
It might be apparent from many of my posts during this challenge that as a child I had a wanderlust, that all I ever wished was to travel.  Preferably to warmer climes.  I ignored all warnings of dangers manifest if I went to wildernesses and wastelands.  Be careful, well-meaning friends would say, of eating at wayside stalls.  Ignoring them I wandered at will, often weary sometimes needing willpower to continue to wend my way.

 I viewed many weird sights, met wonderfully welcoming people across many nations worldwide.  I learnt the value of water in many of its guises, from ocean waves while watching for whales, to the lack of it for wetting ones whistle, and none for washing!  I puzzled over how to connect white bones on a beach to whalebones in a corset.  I became weather-beaten and windswept while I learnt about wasted resources.

 There were windmills, watermills, wine in Gorome, and winter in New York, Niagara and Arizona.  I thrilled to wildlife such as wildebeest.  In wadis and waterholes, waited to spot wading birds.  Shuddered at the work of downtrodden women and children everywhere.  Witnessed the aftermath of war.  Used walkie talkies in the bush.  Walking sticks, useful on rough passes where a wary footfall would save wrenched limbs, thought longingly of the welfare state when ill.

 I met many warm-hearted folks from all walks of life.  Saw weapons, weaving and strange looking wheels.  Hoped I was never a whinging Pom.  Whiled  away what seemed like weeks in transport waiting rooms, did my stint waitressing.  Wondered at whirlwinds and whirlpools. 

Eventually I wished to return home. I began my wanders willowy I was weightier when I returned, wiser and far from world weary.  It had been a wild wonderful walkabout.

V is for velvets, silks and fine leather shoes

 

 

The first continuous daydream I can remember involved velvets, silks and fine leather shoes.  About seven years old and for various reasons a loner, the oddball who wandered the playground aimlessly, lips moving in an internal dialogue with myself.  The story playing out like a film in my mind, I was the star and everything was in glorious colour.

The daydream was set in the grey, dull years of post war austerity of the 1950s.  A time of frigid winters, memories of frozen pipes and frost on the inside of bedroom windows; of little choice in food or clothes, due to years of rationing.  If, like me, one was a younger child these clothes were hand-me-downs. 

Pure wool to keep us warm, what luxury! Well, my memories of wool washed for years in primitive machines before reaching me was of half-felted, scratchy disasters.  My earliest memory is of me throwing a tantrum because my long-suffering mother was trying to make me wear woollen leggings.  She has worked out I must have been about 18 months old because she gave up after that winter.  Let her freeze!

  
So my daydream was filled to overflowing with smooth, rich fabric.  I puzzled for years as to how I knew about silk and velvet then realised my knowledge came from my grandmothers and elderly great-aunts.  In their draughty houses doors were lined with velvet curtains on special risers to avoid them catching.  Highly polished tables were protected by velvet throws, mostly rich maroons.

In my dreams I created the royal cloaks that I read about in my fairy stories; to wrap around me in warmth and softness.  Lined with fur, but with no trace of those terrible glass-eyed fox heads that dangled around old necks, no the fur I sewed with was of the finest white.  The beautiful dresses I created for my mythical world were flowing unstructured silk, as my grannies’ blouses were.  They draped in a magical way, in that wonderful thirties way.  I spent many daylight hours sewing a rainbow of coloured silk in my head, every stitch a perfection.

Each outfit was complemented by thin, light leather shoes; if I had known about Italian leather then, that’s where they would have been born.  My grannies, and indeed the great-aunts, all wore these shoes and all seemed to have such neat feet.  I was happy in my world for quite a time, until, I suppose, I ran out of design ideas.  I used to try and draw these creations, scouring the magazines of the time, few and far between, and copying the wardrobes of the older members of my family.

  I had learnt by my early teens that silk was not as easy to sew as I had fondly imagined. The curtains travelled through many house moves after the grannies died.  The maroons and rich reds doubling as curtains and tablecloths in every home and a bright orange one enabled a spare room many decades later to become a more beautiful darkroom for my photography than ordinary blackout material would have done.  And now, again, this same orange cutain is coming into its own to keep the chill eastern winds from the back door window. 

Six decades separate me from my first daydreams and many more decades separate the curtains from their newness, but velvet, well it has stamina that is belied by its luxury and richness. 

 

U is for the end of the world

 

 

 

 

One year in the early 1990s I drank in the New Year in three different time zones. In the space of a few hours.  Well strictly speaking I wasn’t in the UK’s time zone but I celebrated it on a plane between New York and Buenos Aires.  UK first then BA and lastly, because I was by then travelling with New Yorkers, New York.  It was a good New Year.

Way back when, in the mid 1950s, a Commonwealth Trans Antarctic Expedition was set up led by Vivian Fuchs.  We were given the task, in our last year at primary school, of collecting all the information we could find and creating scrapbooks.  Of course such a project nowadays would be simple.  Child-friendly information abounds.  Back then when newspapers were dry, television minimal and the web was found in dusty, spider-infested barns, gleaning enough information about (a) Antarctica and (b) this particular expedition to fill even the thinnest scrapbook was hard.  

I left the school for a new one before the ‘due in’ date but I had finished quite a bit of the work needed.  It was there, in the fourth form, that year that I formulated one of my life’s ambitions – to go to Antarctica.

Foolish child, many people told me.  Only explorers and scientists went there.  Wasn’t I going to be an explorer I thought indignantly, and immediately hid my ambition underground for quite a few decades.  I read all the books I could find on Scott and Amundsen; I read of Ernest Shackleton’s adventures and Apsley Cherry-Garrad.  All these men and all their stories helped shaped my moral code and fired my determination somehow to put foot on those snowy wastes.  When I won a lottery ticket on my Australian travels it was spent buying a coffee table book on Antarctica.  I began a small collection of books about this continent.

For years those that called me foolish were right; only explorers and scientists. I still had dreams.  Then slowly, so slowly, Antarctica  began to open up to tourists.  Very expensive.  Every time I thought I had saved enough the price had risen.  It began to look as if I wouldn’t succeed until one day my family helped with the difference and I was booked.  It is a very long way from England to Antarctica!

 

So New York first.  Not the most direct route one might say but I wanted to see Madame Butterfly at the Met.  After many delays due to snow I reached my ‘booked’ room just off Times Square at 6.00 pm (the opera started at 7.15) after having been on my travels for 17 hours.  The booking could not be found.  It was New Year’s Eve and everywhere was taken.  Help! 

They found me a broom cupboard and, throwing my case on the floor, I raced to the Met.  Slinking into my seat as the lights went down.  Staying awake was difficult but the opera was great.  I fell into bed at midnight after 23 hours awake. 

I hit the streets of New York running, at crack of sparrows, and never stopped sightseeing until I was back on a plane that evening heading to Buenos Aries.  (I later received an apology and refund for the clerical error that had deprived of my room which was nice.)

A day and a half in Buenos Aires trying to understand and be understood then from Buenos Aires we travelled down south to Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. We were heading for the End of the World, Ushuaia; the last town before Antarctica.  Up until then I had had reasonably comfortable plane trips (if cattle class can ever be called comfortable!).  However, in the early 1990s the approach to Ushuaia’s runway was truly terrifying, and for many moments I did wonder if I was to fail just a hop, skip and a jump away from my objective.

 

The town is surrounded by high rugged, patchily mist-shrouded mountains.  The plane descended into mountain passes, height dropping, speed slowing.  At times it seemed as if the wing tips scraped the rock.  Then there was a sharp fearful right hand turn in the middle of the range and anyone scared already of being in the air would stay forever on land!

Ushuaia was beautiful: icy cold, low-roofed against clear blue skies, high scenery and smiling faces.  We spent one day in Ushuaia on the outward journey and two coming home.  We wandered around its magnificent scenery, ate wonderful fish and lamb.  We laughed with the inhabitants and walked miles over rough unmade paths and roads.  

I would like to say I was young and these things are part of that state but I fear I was into middle-age by then.  Thirty years of planning, reading, saving, luck and finger crossing had led me to this tiny town on the very tip of South America.  Named the End of the World I looked out across the ocean and knew there was more to come.  The sea seemed as calm as a millpond.  Beware of seas that seem as calm as millponds!

 

 

 

Ushuaia was where one went to catch a boat to Antarctica.  I was nearly there.  I was nearly there! I only had 800 miles of sea to cross.  Only!  (See M is for La Mer.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excitement, fulfilment of childhood dreams plus some acupressure wrist bands, ginger tablets and determination would see me through, I told myself.

Antarctica is another story, another time.

 

T is for Chai

 
 

 

 

 

I’m British I drink tea.  Oh I enjoy a cup of coffee don’t misunderstand but, if asked, I will usually have tea; after a great dinner in a restaurant I will ask for tea, in emergencies and discord it is the cuppa that will reorder life.  I always thought that if Hitler had targeted Britain’s tea supplies he would have won the war.  It’s what gives the Brits their grit.  

I have been all through the arguments about how to make a good cup of tea; along with the political situation how to make a decent cuppa is guaranteed to cause raised voices and entrenched positions.  Leaf tea v teabags; milk first v milk last;  sugar v none; warm teapot first v doesn’t make any difference and so it goes on.  Should Earl Grey be drunk with milk or lemon and how do you serve Lapsang Souchong?

It took a while to reach tea-drinking status as a child; I desired milk, milk and more milk.  It drove Mum mad when, well into my late teens, I was still asking for it.  One day I became a tea drinker and became ‘normal’.  Peace was restored.  Mum had her tea caddy on the kitchen wall, with a knob to turn which would dispense just the right amount of tea leaves for the size of the teapot.  Mine nowadays just has a spoon within for me to ladle out the required amount.

The very first time I saw a teabag I was seventeen and on a school trip.  Sitting at a table outside a very French café in the Pyrenees we were served a teapot which had this strange bag floating in it.  Well, what could you expect from non Brits was our sniffy response to this aberration.  They wouldn’t know any better.

Tea bags took over Britain within a few short years, instant tea; doing away with warming teapots, catching the leaves.  It also did away with telling fortunes by the tea leaves left in the bottom of the cup.  Then powdered tea!  Drinks machine tea, why is it orange coloured?  Then the fancy teas joined in so now Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong drinkers had their own teabags.  Then came the herbal teas.  No they are not teas; they are tisanes, herbal drinks, anything but tea.  Sorry.

I abandoned the British habit of the time of adding milk to tea when in Australia; black tea was good, iced tea was good.  Now many people concerned with health matters have dropped the milk and take their tea black but back in the 70s this was pretentious unless it was a scented tea when, of course one, should have lemon.  I didn’t care; I liked it black and still do.

   

On my travels I was to taste many variations on my national drink, some better experiences than others. 

 None though can match chai.

Memories

In the Himalayan high altitude deserts:

Its nights so cold that touching metal rips skin from body parts.

Its icy, breathtaking, beautiful falls of water.

Its breath that freezes.

Its pungent wood smoke from a hundred thin, small fires that warmed the sticks that fed them and little else.

It’s that wonderful warm, sweet, spiced concoction that coursed around your system in a way that no alcohol could ever do.  

Water from mountain springs boiled, agonisingly slowly in those altitudes, in copper-coloured, ornately carved kettles, complete with goat’s milk, thin and blue, cardamom seeds split with black-rimmed nails and drunk through brownish, caramelised sugar lumps.  Ah those sugar lumps offered instead of tea and biscuits after donating blood.  

I digress.

It’s chai offered by gap-toothed, brown-skinned, proud-featured and robed Afghanis, Pakistanis, Indian and Nepalese with smiles of friendship and no common tongue, standing nodding, wordlessly as we sipped and gestured our universal appreciation. We all stamped our feet and cupped hands around an assortment of beakers, at peace with the world and our hosts. No cuppa ever tasted so good or so typified a certain experience of another world.

 

Thirty years after, I stood alone in the darkness on the east coast of England, on the building site that was my garden to be, waiting for the dog to finish whatever a dog must do last thing at night.  I looked up at brilliant stars in a sky clear from light pollution.  Surrounded by half-built constructions and foundation trenches only I, it seemed, was alive at this end of this new estate. 

Slowly drifting across the frosty night from each building site came the remains of numerous fires burning off waste wood.  It tantalised my scent buds, mingled with the cold clouds of my breath.  I stamped my feet for warmth and remembered those far off mountains.  No chai here in England but I could still taste it and, looking around, felt I wanted to smile although there was no one there.  I felt at peace, the journey to this rubble-strewn plot of land had been longer than that to the Himalayas all those years ago, a whole lifetime.  When I turned, with the dog, back to the newly built, not quite finished, new abode I decided an English cup of tea would be just the thing.

 

S is for jelly fish, cormorants and leeches

 

 

 

My friend and I haunted the swimming pools of North London throughout our childhood.   During the winter the one most often visited was so hot the steam rose from the surface.  Like Romans we purged our skin cells.  At the end of April we bought season tickets for the outdoor pools and often plunged into water 40 degrees or colder.  We were young.

As a family we swam in the Atlantic, down in the West Country, complete with heavy wooden surf boards.  I didn’t like getting my head wet so wasn’t allowed to surf until I could put my head under water.  That challenge took two years to complete with the incentive of the promise of 1/6d (7½p) if I managed.  I have the photo to prove I did it.  The first time on the surf board (we lay on them back in the 50s) I fell off (of course!!) into the middle of a wave, tumbled about and grasped a hairy pair of legs, clinging until Dad rescued both me and the stranger I had grabbed.

 

Water felt good.  I would pretend I was a mermaid.  Or maybe a seal, weaving through the depths, a dolphin leaping out and up and down.  We would dive for pennies, swim lengths of the pool underwater.  An element I always liked.  Floating, so restful I have been known to sleepily doze.

During my sixth form years a trio of us ‘prefects’ cut school and went home to announce we were going for a swim in the pool.  It was January, the pool was unheated and at the bottom of the garden.  We broke the ice and submerged ourselves – hardly a swim! – Mum had hot soup waiting when we scampered teeth-chatteringly back.

When the 60s hit the world I skinny-dipped my way around various stretches of water: Lake Coniston (sailing holiday); highland streams at midnight (I was working up there); water hole in the Blue Mountains (actually after one of the group found a leech where a leech should never be, we girls all wore pants after the first skinny dip!)

 

I didn’t often swim in the sea after I grew up but once I went for a moonlight swim in the Bosphorous.  Fantastic.  Stars.  Mellowness (we had had a very good night out!).  I didn’t realise until the next day that the sea had been full of jelly fish.  I couldn’t stand as all feeling had been numbed from one leg to the extent that I had no awareness of it.  Strange feeling.

 

 

  
I have swum in swimming pools almost everywhere I have travelled.  Memorable pools.  At Ayers Rock, while working in a motel, the pool went green and was placed off limits.  Now how far is Ayers Rock from the sea?  One morning there was this cormorant fishing it, where did he come from?  

 

Another interesting pool was on an ex-Soviet science vessel in Antarctica, a small deep square pool with room really for only two and the same temperature as the sea, where its waters came from.  Colder than North London. 

High on hotel roofs in America, backyards in Australia.  A very welcome pool was in Bangkok, after two months of travelling through dry deserts and mountains, with minimal water for skin.  We spent a great deal of our stay in the city just sitting up to our necks in clean, sparkling cool water.  Bliss.

I have always liked swimming, when I was young, middle-aged and now.  Now of course it takes the strain off limbs worn out with life, lifts bulk from knee-joints.  Maybe I don’t pretend to be a mermaid any more,  I’m built to much like a seal now to want to emulate one in public but, oh, the feel of the water against skin and hair, the relaxation of floating as well as the ease of progress from one end of the pool to the other. 

Magic still.

R is for Riddles of course!

 

 

Five riddles for you, can you tell what each is?

 

1)

So usual to gab secrets to all who would know.

Now will keep them tight as a tomb.

Hover splendid in hues watching in the shadows.

Protection from evil, heat and the cold.

 

 

2)

The world in a box from childhood to now.

Tickling and caressing feather like hair.

Offering piecemeal.

Room too small for the whole.

 

3)

Interweave fingers in the silk soft languid.

Potential of blood spotting danger,

razor sharp and erratic this fission,

Part of the loving low throttled content.

 

4)

From big birds

who cannot fly

gracefully drooping and soft

to play hide and seek

with dirt up high.

 

5)

Blades to cut atmosphere.

Many shapes one purpose.

Mechanical now supplanting the simple.

With a lineage as long as man’s.

 

 

 

 

Q is for new legends are born

 

 

In medieval romances, mythology and fables, quests are expeditions or adventures made by the knight or hero to obtain something or to achieve some exploit.  A searching for something.  They have to involve danger and excitement.  They also include little asides such as romantic interludes.

The reasons and achievements are many and varied.  They range from Gilgamesh seeking eternal life to Dorothy and her companions seeking a way home, a heart, a brain and courage.  Jason seeks the Golden Fleece, Sir Galahad the Holy Grail. 

    

In fairy tales heroines seek their husbands and sisters their brothers.  Frodo Baggins seeks to destroy the evil ring, in The Fellowship of the Ring.  It is said that the hero’s quest is but a symbol for self-discovery and the journey undertaken, through all the dangers, a symbol of all that is uncertain and dangerous to we ordinary mortals.

 

 

In Ellen’s Tale, the first of the Sefuty Chronicles, Ellen sets out on her own small quest.  I say ‘small’ because alongside the deeds of the immortals in mythology hers is indeed a small affair.  However, adventure and danger are all relative and Ellen has mighty monsters of fear to overcome to fulfil a dying request.  She is aided in her venture by Bix, a charmer of a Feral.  I said there had to be a romantic interlude in a quest!

 

 

In The Storyteller’s Tale, Ellen’s quest, its outcome and her achievement, and her subsequent reward, become woven into a new fairytale maybe becoming a legend itself in the future.

Reading some myths, some legends, one can almost see the very tiny acorn that grew, word of mouth to mighty oak. Magnified over generations into something magnificent.  Will Ellen's quest to help an old lady die happy become mighty?  Will her meeting with Bix help change the world? Will her quest be part of another creation myth?

P is for survival

 

 

 

Preservation in my dystopian world of the Sefuty Chronicles is not only about survival of nations during climatic disaster and war, when all we hold dear now, vanishes in horrific devastation.   It is also much concerned with the preservation of the self, of the small units, family, village.

    
Those who survive my sweeping disasters are locked away for years within lethal traps of landmines, so then survival is about being able to grow your own food and make your clothes, amongst many other skills.  Then the preserving of food against decay becomes part of self-preservation and has to become a skill for the cooks of the unit.  If a surplus of food can be grown there will be, if one is canny, food for the lean months.  I like the idea of food preservation and indeed practise it a bit myself.  I have a food dryer and I also make chutneys and preserves.  The difference is, I still have electricity to aid me and I do not live or die on my skills!!

 

It did mean though that I  had a working knowledge of this part of the ‘world building’ I had to do.  I also had a small knowledge of cloth making from my own interests in spinning, felting and quilting.  To be able to fashion covering against the elements is, of course, a basic preservation skill.  Shelter?  Well I have never actually had to build a shelter with my own hands, apart from building shelters from wildflowers (ragwort and cow parsley) in the meadows of my extreme youth or fashion tools and so, for these acts of self-preservation, I drew heavily on the knowledge of others. 

Many of these small units gain their knowledge from books, rescued from the wars, which now an essential part of survival.  From these pockets of books, storytelling begins to creep out across the land to others.  The power of the story to aid in the preservation of the mind becomes clearer as the series progresses.  How people can use fiction and fable to make sense of the terrible, to give hope in the desperation.  Words are a powerful preservation tool in the Chronicles. 

 
The other survivors in the Sefuty Chronicles are those in the City who preserve their way of life with their own genetically-altered army of Ferals.  The idea of preserving by mass slaughter is not an easy concept to accept but I believe all humankind is capable of it, with the ‘right’ circumstances in place.  To muddy the ethical waters a little I have created a leader, who has put in place the genetic alterations to help preserve the children (it is only children left to fight at the climax of the great wars) from harm on the battlefields.  They are changed and given attributes which will aid them their survival.

The units that have managed the basics of life the best are the ones who have managed to preserve the culture of the survivors as well.  With culture comes identity and strength.  Preserving this aspect of social living is an important factor in surviving.

Through the course of the series hints, as well as in your face examples, of human’s efforts to survive, the ways they try to preserve life for themselves and their communities, unfold in a multitude of ways.

O is for three weeks pocket money

 

 

 

A new book long awaited, an old favourite, for an evening of comfort.  Wine or chocolate?  Armchair, sofa, bed or sunny swinging hammock?  What do you curl up with? 

 Readers all have their habits and rituals, many start in childhood remaining to the grave, others evolve adapting to circumstance.

I don’t curl any more, limbs too stiff, flesh too ample, but when young curling in the corner of the sofa was a good place on dark, murky or wet days.  Up in the fruit trees was a splendid place in the gentle months.  It was fruit in my youth that was the treat.  Chocolates had been rationed for years and I had developed no taste for them, besides which any that came into the house belonged to my mother!  No it was fruit, just hard enough to get hold of with rationing and the exotics still having to travel enormous distances by sea.

I read my new books, my old friends, with oranges and milk.

Facts

a) Back when a paperback would cost 1/6 or 2/- (7½p or 10p) I used to receive pocket money in the region of 6d (2½p).

b) Living in the suburbs of London we used to make periodic trips into the West End of London.

I would be given warning of these rare trips and then, instead of saving for a new book, I would save for these trips.  Mum would do what she had to in the big city and I would never whinge or whine, secure in the knowledge that before we returned we would visit Selfridges Food Hall: an Aladdin’s cave of colour and exciting smells – far better than the perfume department!

  
The selection was one needing thought and care, considering the merits of various fruits.  It was the Jaffas I was after.  I knew size alone was no real indication of the sweet juiciness of the taste.  Is it my old age that makes me believe they were sweeter and juicier back then!  Probably!  I would ponder the merits for quite some time.  It was important to choose well.  This was an enormous investment for me.

Having chosen I would hand over my carefully hoarded money all 1/6 (7½p) of it.  My orange would be wrapped in a shade of tissue which was not quite purple, not quite dark blue.  The entire journey home I would hold it carefully in my cupped hands; sniffing the delicious smell occasionally and mentally deciding the merits of which book to read to its accomaniment.

I would delay the experience, sometimes until the next day.  All had to be peaceful for the event.  Any hint that I might be called to do the washing up or lay the table would scupper the ambience.  When I was sure of a decent period of reading time I would curl in the corner and peel the skin – peeling an orange is a pleasure all of its own.  On the floor at my side would be a glass of milk (don’t make faces I thought they went very well together!).  Blissful reading time.

 
 
I was reminded of this ritual of mine the other day when I was looking through some of my childhood books for some other writing project and spotted the orange juice stains on the pages.

You cannot, just cannot, eat a sweet juicy Jaffa orange while reading without dropping juice on the pages.  You cannot.  Well I couldn’t it seems!

N is for what's in a name

 

 

 

It is such a small word, just four letters long but such an important word.

What kind of animal would we have been without this overwhelming desire to name things, to order and possess?  Everywhere mankind has gone names have followed.  Do other animals, I wonder name, in their own language; do they name? 

 I like personal names.  When I write I look for just the right one for my characters; I like the fact that these names have other meanings, hidden from view.  It is like unwrapping a birthday parcel: take off the brown paper, lay aside the colourful wrap, to reveal something totally unexpected and different.  In a work of fiction the meanings can be used to define the characters, even if only in the author’s mind.

Of course naming people, apart from being useful for identification and for the good ordering of a society, for some, also involves a stab at immortality; lets a part of you trickle down the ages after you are just dust.  An ancestor of mine has donated his name even down to our generation and he lived 300 years ago.  Anyone who has even dabbled in finding their ancestors will come across this, time and time again.  Family names, surnames, surnames turned into family names, they all give a person a fragile handhold down the ages.

 
Names are for keeping pure and safe.  One can lose a good name very easily, especially if named and shamed.  When visiting the Soviet Union we would often pass huge billboards filled with photographs of local ‘drunks’ displayed in the hope their naming would shame.  Not sure it worked!  If you work hard or become famous/infamous you can make a name for yourself.  You could even get your name up in lights.  Other folk could name drop your name for effect.  Be warned, if it’s a good name then read the beginning of this paragraph!! 

 

We name and list everything around us; it creates order out of chaos.  It is the process of becoming acquainted with unfamiliar objects. Naming enables communication to proceed with more smoothness and ease.  So, much of our lives is taken up with the learning and absorbing of endless ‘names’.  From concepts to solid objects, animals, plants, stars, theories and philosophies, in the naming lies the taming.

 Our lives are dictated by names.  From birth (the unease evident if parents tarry overlong to ‘name’ their child), through our ordered lives (it matters not what order, small South American jungle tribe to Western cities’ inhabitants) to our deaths and placement in the record books or the oral history of the tribe our names are important and what define us in the eyes of others.

 To be nameless, according to the dictionary, is to be obscure, anonymous, inexpressible and indefinable.  To be nameless also is to have no legal rights, an insecure place for a person to be.  We often say of an idea or emotion that we have no name for it, to describe it, and the listener is left with the feeling that the idea/emotion is too great, wonderful or awesome to be described.  However to be un-nameable, as a person, is to have no identity, to be a non-person, not belonging to a society.  The dictionary also goes on to use the terms loathsome and horrific to describe the nameless. 

 Harsh indeed not to belong on any of those endless lists.

 
 
 
 
 

M is for the sea around us

La Mer

 mermaids and above all motion

 

I was born in London, with an overwhelming desire to wander away. I dreamed dreams of exotic and fascinating strangeness.  I waited impatiently for age to add enough years to allow me to pack a bag and leave.   One problem, of course, for someone living on an island: the sea.  I get seasick.  I mean really get ill, nausea, dizziness, the lot.  Within moments I am at the stage when I wish someone would kindly kill me.  In fact I think I am the first one to get seasick sitting in a canoe on a swimming pool (practising the ‘roll’).  It’s all to do with balance or inner ear or the mind, who knows.  I cannot actually watch as I push a child on a swing without this nausea and dizziness setting in, not the best really!

Well, as I was also the same in all land vehicles I had learnt that all things pass eventually.  So, with gritted teeth I embarked on the Channel ferries (Hovercrafts are even worse) and set forth. 

 I was to learn many things about the sea over the years. 

•  I learnt that staying on deck in the fresh air was better than down below. 
•  I learnt that hard green apples would help the sickness.  
• I learnt that closed eyes were preferable to open, especially if the waves tower over your head. 
•  I also learnt that the English Channel is not the worst sea to cross.  It is, in fact, quite tame in comparison to others!

Sea journeys that remain fixed in my mind, apart from bad channel crossings.  There was that time, quite close to home, when I took a small fishing boat across the North Sea to Fair Isle for a week’s bird watching.  The trip over was bad, two hours on a choppy sea.  Then we were storm bound on the island.  Early one morning, before the sun was up, we were told there was a lull in the storm; they could get me off if I came then.  I came.  I looked beyond the harbour and thought them mad.  No they were sane they assured me.  Um, a matter of opinion.

We set off; the two hour journey became a five hour  endurance test.  For the boat the sailors and moi.  This was defintely the time for shut eyes.  One did not want to see the heights that little boat climbed to.  It was enough to feel it drop the other side of the wave, with a shuddering thud.  I lay on the deck my head on a coil of rope and blanked my mind.

 All things pass.

 Worse, from the roughness point of view, would have been the crossing from South America to Antarctica but the small boat was now a small ship and somehow that made the terror less, even if the dizziness persisted.  More terrifying was the rubber dinghy that ferried us from ship to snowy shore. The waters of Antarctica are dark and look so deep and a rubber dinghy?  Eyes closed and hang on tight.

The seas around Australia are not gentle, nor those around Scandinavia, Russia or America. Everywhere there is sea!

At this point I was going to insert a couple of you tube clips of boats tossing on wild seas - I became so ill after 5 minutes  had to lie prone until the world stilled!!  What is worse couldn't eat my dinner!

 

You can see some strange events when on a boat.  In the Shetland Islands I watched fascinated while a row boat came out to the ferry from a tiny island, complete with a cow standing in it.  She was winched aboard from the row boat and the look of majestic calm displayed on that bovine face was a joy to behold.

 It is only from a boat you can watch whales, dolphins and porpoises frolic in natural surroundings.  The best way to see icebergs calve, watch glaciers descend to the ocean, is from the deck of a ship.  Want to really see what ragged rocks look like?  Get down close and personal in a sea kayak.  Watch the mesmerizing rush of bow wave from the side of a fishing boat?  Ah those fishing boats!

 

 

Why not fly you may wonder.  Well many reasons.  I like overland travel for the slow changes of geography and culture.  At the beginning of my travels, flights were not the cheap easy options of today but I guess the real reason and I admit this, not caring now at my age how daft this sounds,I could swim!  I couldn't fly! I felt safer storm-tossed on the sea than I ever did in a plane.  There. 

 

 Maybe. . . 

If they had given me a parachute now, maybe . . .!

 

L is for I wish I had asked more questions

     

  
It seems I have been blogging quite a bit about my travels on this a-z challenge.  Today it so happens that the monthly meeting of the Living History Group, that I run, is being held.  So this post is about different memories.

Five years ago I was persuaded to start up this group for our local U3A branch.   I was reluctant, I had never run anything before, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to persuade others to talk about and write down their lives. 

 

 

 
 I took it on because I do believe it’s important for as many people as possible to do this.  Reclaim history from the victors, if you like.  I want the archives of the future to be housing our memories for the world to share.  The ordinary folk of the world are more important than the politicians and leaders of the world.  Without us they are nothing.  History has too long been the domain of dates, battles, treaties and men in portraits.

 

 I had studied oral history as an’ extra’ module at university a few years previously so, with a deep intake of breath, I invited people along to my house to talk about their childhood.  They were as nervous as I was.  Hesitant to reveal themselves.  Unsure of how worthy their lives were of recording.  Ashamed of writing skills and shy of public discourse. 

  

 

 

At the end of those first two hours we were smiling, laughing, chatting and generally content and some of those original members still come.  Others have moved to other areas, other interests.  The group is certainly a success.  Humans like to talk about their past, to make sense of their history.  We like to share our experiences and to discover how different others’ paths to adulthood were. 

 

 
 

  

 I wanted just a little bit more from them.

 

 

From the beginning I had been urging them to record these memories well.  Not to leave them on scraps of paper, at the very least to treasure them in beautiful note books; type them up into files clearly marked. 

 

‘Scraps will be thrown away when you die’ I would harangue them.  ‘House clearance is a gloomy time for descendants; have the memories looking as if they are worth being kept.’  It was hard work getting through the ‘They won’t be interested, I haven’t done anything interesting’ syndrome.’

  

   
Yes, yes you have’ I said.  ‘Just by having lived for 60+ years you have done something interesting.  Look at the changes in your lifetimes?’  The childhoods alone of the group went from the Depression years in the 1930s to the start of the swinging 60’s.  What was there not to be interested in?  Me?  I’m like water on a rock and, after a couple of years, got them to agree to put together a collection of their memories into book form.

  





It was hard work.  I had never done anything like it before; most of it was still in handwriting although there were beautiful notebooks appearing!  So it all had to be entered into the computer.  Another of the group helped with the spell checking.  We left their words alone, very light editing or their voices, accents and turns of phrase would be lost.

 

It was a lovely book, they are proud of themselves; their families are as pleased as punch to have this record and now I am after them to actually record their voices – might be a long battle!!

  

 

 

How often do we say later in life ‘I wish I had asked more questions as a child.  I wish I knew more about  . . .’

 

 It is too late when they are dead.  Ask them now.  Record your own lives now.  Your children, grandchildren and so on will thank you for it.

 

 

K is for the Merry King

 

 

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree

Merry, merry king of the bush is he

Laugh kookaburra,

Laugh kookaburra,

Gay your life must be.

 

    
Is there a country where these words are not known?  I learnt and sang this way back when I was a Brownie in post war London.  I desired to go where this ‘royal’ bird could sing so happily in a ‘gum’ tree, a GUM tree?  I only knew of cow gum (glue made from bones!), bubble gum (which I wasn’t allowed to have) and chewing gum and so although I knew the tree wasn’t made of those I did imagine they smelt sweet!

Maybe I learnt this song when I was about 7 or 8, at about the same time in primary school I was compiling a scrapbook on Australia for a project.  It was during the ‘£10 Pom’ drive and so Mum found loads of photos from magazines for me.  I wasn’t a good student normally but I did get five stars for the scrapbook which made me, for the shortest while, the hero of the hour.

I became very snooty and superior when at the ‘pictures’ (cinema, movies) I watched films set in jungles, which had kookaburras.  What was it with Hollywood always putting that laugh into jungle scenes!!

                     

I can’t remember how old I was when I saw a picture of a kookaburra, there was not one in my project (which made its way into the attic with the rest of my life).  I knew from reading that it belonged to the kingfisher family so always imagined a laughing version of our colourful bird.

Twenty years later, when I had the chance to visit this continent, I knew a lot more about Australia and its inhabitants.  It was, however, the kookaburra I wanted to see more than any other creature there.  It’s hard to miss them!  I saw them in the distance, in the reserves and the zoos, which was okay but I wanted more for my twenty year wait. 

Then, proving sometimes the sun shines on the just, I went to work as housekeeper in Victoria.  The family lived in a house backing onto the bush.  They explained my duties for house, children and pets and then, oh joy, asked me if I would mind feeding the kookaburra.  Mind?  Well, no I wouldn’t.   The bird, they explained, flew in from the bush, just after breakfast every morning, sat on the balcony rail and, if I felt I was able, it would take food from my fingers.  Best quality steak from the amused butchers.  Did I feel able?  Does the sun rise every morning?

    

By golly they have big beaks close up!  It was another Dr Doolittle experience.  Okaaay I know we didn’t talk to each other but we were eyeball to eyeball, so to speak, and for a whole month I got to feed him.  I was, to him, just another feeding station, harmless enough.  To me, the bird was childhood exploded into light, colour and sound.  I gazed into his eyes, so dark, and could barely contain my fizzing excitement.

 After a few days he was sure enough of me to step onto my hand.  I had been right as a Brownie to think he was special!  I had.  I would lean over that rail listening to his laughter in the bush and found that gum trees do smell sweet.  I was to hear whole choirs of them in other jobs I had, but the one that stood on my hand and delicately took the steak from my finge

         that one was the king of the bush .

 

 

 Read more on the Kookaburra on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra

 

J is for Book Covers

    
When I first decided to go it alone one of the first hurdles I faced was the book cover.  Well, apart from editing, printing, marketing, building a web site etc., that is!  I read extensively on the subject and grew more depressed at the prospect.  It is apparently essential a professional is hired to do this.  I checked these out but there was no money in the pot for them.  If you were doing it yourself the advice was to go and see what other covers are around in the shops, see what the bestsellers have.  It’s the cover that sells the book.

 

I remembered the early Penguin books, just colour coded; we didn’t need pictures on our covers back then, I thought indignantly.  No, not back then but it was the here and now I was in and we are used to visual messages everywhere.

I did go to our bookshop and spent two to three hours looking.  I thought I wasn’t that influenced by covers but I soon found many books I never picked up.  Examined the covers they had.  So even I wasn’t immune! My eye just moved over some covers, dismissing them as not being the kind/genre of book that I read.  Very negative.  So okay, maybe these experts were right, nevertheless that still didn’t mean I could afford professional.  I pondered over DTP and, taking a deep breath, I decided to learn.  Are you all clucking now, you who have professional covers!

Hopeless, first because I had no idea what I wanted, I just knew what I didn’t.  I didn’t want people on the cover.  Faces or even outlines.  The book was a series of interview accounts and the descriptions of the narrators are just not there.  Oh Ellen, we are told, is stunningly beautiful with hair that takes your breath away and a small trim figure; the details are left for the reader to supply.  So far I have been told she has platinum, red, ginger, auburn and brunette hair.  Each reader decides.  Bix has green eyes, is short and has a laugh you would follow into hell. 

I tried buildings.  My friend took countless photos of walls and stones for me.  I could never quite get an effect I liked.  Ellen’s Tale is set in a world changed forever by climate change, there are no descriptions of either the City or the village, so if I used buildings on the cover, what kind?  Whatever I chose then would lock my dystopian world into a certain frame, negating my interview narration.  Yes, I knew what I didn’t want.

 Anyway I found I had only a little aptitude for manipulating pictures.  I looked on the web for some I could use and then decided I must have something I suitable in my dozens of boxes of photos.  I started to think colours, always my favourite past time.  I started thinking a series of books.  The subject was climate change so maybe colours could be used to depict possible scenarios of climate change.  I fixed on heat for Ellen’s Tale.  Yellow/orange, sunshine colours for a hotter world.  I found what I wanted in a photo of a poppy petal.  Playing I found I could manipulate a small section of the poppy sufficiently well enough to create a bleak, hot landscape.  I had a cover I liked but would my public like it?

   
 
They got it.  Reader after reader reported back that the cover had given a vivid picture of heat, of desolation and emptiness.  Success.  I then had my theme.  The Storyteller’s Tale was so much easier.  Green, overgrown wilderness.  My friend again went shooting pictures, this time in the local cemetery.  I then had old moss-covered gravestones, shrubs and trees and my manipulation skills had improved a trifle.  Ten pictures were used for this cover and again the reports showed my readers ‘got’ it.

 

Fine, my covers were showing what the books were about and not a hint of pastel or gold lettering on black (my love of colour is for bright vivid colours).  Smashwords did not like that first cover.  The technicalities of it were not good enough.  Did it matter?  Mark Coker of Smashwords is quite firm: it matters.   Even e-book readers judge a book by its cover.  Back to the drawing board.  The e- book versions are still following the colour theme but are just bright colours.  I like them, it remains to be seen if the readers do.

  
                                                                           

I is for Inkpots to micro-chips

  

 

When I penned my first ‘story’ so many decades ago it was back in the age of pens and inkwells.  It was a simple tale of a young rabbit, ‘Master Rabbit’ in fact.  It was an illustrated book, I’m not sure my drawing was any good either!

 I learnt to write at school with a pen that consisted of a wooden handle with a nib at the end.  It had to be dipped constantly into an inkwell, set into the wooden desk, and we had to have blotting paper to dry our work.  Bored with lessons, or just being mischievous, small children could not resist those inkwells; they would tear a tiny nibble of blotting paper and slip it into the ink.  If you were unlucky enough to get a piece of sodden paper on your nib there would be a splodge (trouble, oh such dreadful trouble, if a splodge appeared on one’s work).  Blotting paper was not the only hazard, a splodge could happen if the nib tips crossed; ahhhhh!

Handwriting was learnt by rote: copying letters and words over and over again; one of the few things I excelled at was handwriting!  I liked the whole business of pens, ink and blotting paper and there was no doubt that, wielded well, the character of the letters was wonderful.  I dreamt so often of promotion to fountain pen.

When I went to secondary school I was penning romances set in the Wild West (both subject and location I knew nothing about!!) in endless exercise books and was proud owner of my own fountain pen; how I loved that little lever on the side, the bottles of ink and the, by now, coloured blotting paper.  For school we had no choice, we had to use dark blue ink.  At home my fancy could run to red, green and black.  I had to have two fountain pens, I argued to the parents: one for school, one for my creativity.  When they became available I started using fountain pens with cartridges for school.  But I kept the coloured ink bottles for home.

As my teens progressed so the ink colours became more interesting: turquoise, mauve and pink; I tried them all.  I moved to writing about Teddy Boys and teenage angst.  Using colour co-ordinated inks and writing paper, I penned artistic (I thought!) letters to my friends.  Small bottles of colours nestled in my desk, sparkling whenever I opened the flap.

Then, like a traitor, I abandoned my fountain pens and started using ballpoints.  I couldn’t, I argued, cart ink bottles around the world with me and I was only writing badly punctuated letters by then, my creativity put on hold.  Promising myself I would return, I never did. 

  
 I bought a typewriter instead and, feeling very grown up, fed gleaming white paper into the machine.  Now instead of exercise books and blotting paper I had packets of carbon paper and my next attempts at hitting the bestsellers’ lists were fantasy romances (again subjects I knew nothing about!)  Now instead of ink on my fingertips I had carbon dust instead.

All these boxes of carbon and pristine white paper combined with my imagination to produce a load of rubbish.  I gave up and moved on to other pursuits and the pile of manuscripts jumped into the boxes with exercise books and moved to the attic.  My typewriter wandered downstairs to gain new employment with my father.  The fountain pens found no new home and lingered in the desk drawer being comforted by the endless coloured pencils that were also redundant.

A couple of decades later, tired of ballpoints which leaked, smudged and generally were not nice, I switched to gel pens for mundane life and ventured into the world of micro-chips for the rest.  My first computers were clunky beasts with no pretty pictures and a necessity to learn a new language to even begin to communicate with them.  I did manage to train my first one to greet me in a cheery, caring manner when first switched on, enquiring after my health.  The start of yet another blockbuster was typed on this machine and printed off on a dot matrix printer.  My father coveted this machine and every day was a fight for its use!!

 
 
 The first machine was updated, and the next and so on and so forth.  I have lost count of how many machines now in the last 23 years.  All prettier, faster, with more bells and ribbons and more addictive.  They do not hide away, although all the luggage that comes with them fills many drawers.  I no longer hold to the fantasy of writing a blockbuster, realism finally entered my life and now I create new stories for a limited audience but these ones do sell.  They are not in the attic with all the others but bound and on other people’s book shelves and a few have wandered from my machine to a stranger’s device.    

Some days I feel an urge to buy myself a beautiful fountain pen, some coloured ink and matching blotting paper and see if my handwriting has stood the test of time!

H: High in the Hindu Kush and Himalayas

 

 
 
Oh so many years ago back when the world and I were younger, I went travelling to Afghanistan. This, you understand, was before the Russians tried to tame the untameable.  Before leftover landmines littered the ground in their evil thousands, waiting to maim and kill.  Way back when. 

 I fell in love with this wild country, and the inhabitants.  The very air in those high regions of the Hindu Kush, smelt so different.  It is/was a hard country.  The men wore their daggers to view and, although their eyes (oh those eyes) laughed more often than not, and their hospitality was tremendous, flashing anger was always just there waiting.

 We saw many great sights and one of the most spectacular were the Buddhas in the Bamiyan valley.  Wonderful, and one could only marvel at the skill and craftsmanship of those who had created them. 

I have not found any photos I can use here to do the Buddahs justice so include a couple of links for you. 

 Also 

 http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Buddas_of_Bamyan_ 

 and 

 http://www.afghanistan-photos.com/crbst_21.html.

The valley was high: 2,500 metres or, if you think in old money like me, 8,202 feet; it was autumn and the cold severe.  We decided to forgo the dubious pleasures of sleeping on the roadside and negotiated a night on the floor in the local tea house.  In exchange for unlimited hot chai and a night indoors, as good as any hotel, we were the entertainment. We were welcomed inside and had a merry time of it chatting and singing with the local chai drinkers.

I was an innocent and was ill-equipped for sleeping out in ditches in the high mountains; my sleeping bag may have sufficed in Britain but not there in the Hindu Kush.    I bagged a great place by the huge boiler fire.  For one night at least I wasn’t going to be cold.

As toasty as I desired, I slept the night away, so hot indeed that I had my arms out of the bag.  Bad mistake actually.  I woke to find some bug had had similar ideas about warmth and had stumbled on new fresh exotic blood.  Mine!  I had been massacred.  We counted over a hundred bites on my arms, shoulders, neck and face.  They began to itch.  With a vengeance.  My companions daubed me at frequent intervals, tied my hands in cloth, and dosed me with antihistamines. 

Back in Kabul I tried to find some DDT powder.  Finding the correct shop was difficult enough, it wasn’t the kind of sentence found in any phrase book, then the nurses on the trip had been adamant I was only to get 7% DDT not the 90%  to put in the sleeping bag.  The shopkeepers, to a flashing-eyed man, laughed at me.  7% would not touch their bugs they told me proudly.  I had to freeze them clear of my bag in the end but that’s another story.

I never stopped thinking it was one of the most beautiful countries I ever visited and it’s people fascinating, kindly and full of fun.  When, a few years later, the Soviet tanks rolled in I was so saddened.

We moved on our way across unfamiliar landscapes and entered another range of magnificent mountains as beautiful, as wild.  Perching in these high Himalayas was Nepal, another country to fall in love with.  Seemingly more peaceful (do not be fooled remember the Ghurkhas’ reputation) the inhabitants were as hospitable and kindly as those in Afghanistan had been.  It was here, just over the border, I saw my first banana tree and discovered the fruits grew upside down! 

It is not a large country and soon we were in Kathmandu and staying in a very basic hostel affair.  We needed only to be out of the night winds and a hostel is as good as a hotel. Out of the cold for a few nights again, wonderful.  Well maybe.  

We had been warned to bring a padlock for our door to protect ourselves from fellow tourists!  So we duly locked our doors every night.  The amenities were a short pad along a dark corridor.  One night my friend inadvertently left the door open as she went out and when, on her return she locked up behind her, we found she had locked us in with one of the biggest rats!  How to get to the door and unlock the padlock without actually putting foot to ground occupied our minds for a fair few minutes. 

  
The rat was only interested in getting out of this trap he had found himself in but he was by the door, growing more frantic by the minute.  It was decided (not by me!) that, as I had already been bitten by a possibly rabid dog (again another story), it wouldn’t matter if I got bitten again, so ran the logic, I could brave the rat.  She owed me big time I told my friend when I had acrobatically performed the deed and released rat to the darkness.

Most of our stay here in the mountain tops were remarkable by the hospitality of our hosts, the beauty of the country  and the laughter every day.

Our few weeks in this country where the locals smiled softly and spoke with laughter around their words, with their good manners and nature have remained sparkling in my memory.

Over the years I was to stay in cleaner more comfortable hotels than the chai house and the hostel but you know, I can hardly distinguish any of them in my mind!

 

 

G is for: I love my garden but. . .

  
I don’t like the winter and this last one has been tediously long.  It was the time to curl up in front of a roaring fire, peruse gardening catalogues, books and plan next year’s space out doors.

 The family has always grown food, small scale, just for us.  As a child I took little notice really, I enjoyed the eating and the extra pocket money from the picking but the growing was for my older years.  I travelled, I studied, always reading, developed concerns and interests in many aspects of life one of which was sustainability.  When I left my travelling behind me I began to put my views into place with a more friendly way of gardening, a no dig, organic, wildlife friendly way.

 When I began to write my Sefuty Chronicle series, food production was a central theme.  The very word Sefuty comes from Food Security.  I began to read books and articles on farming in a better way, and, with the seed balls and permaculture, I discovered Robert Hart.  His writing made me ponder not only the Chronicles but my own patch of land.  Forest Farming he called it, but his disciples have more kindly brought it down to manageable levels by renaming it woodland gardening.

Woodland gardening is a food producing garden based on natural woodland consisting of three layers of vegetation.  Top: nut and large fruit trees; middle: fruit bushes, large perennial vegetables and the bottom layer an underplanting of smaller plants.  Each occupies its own niche, each needs little maintenance and best of all, from my aging perspective, needs very little work once established (note that word once!).

The whole idea appealed to me.  I knew that Fair Trade coffee grows quite well in the shade of trees.  I also knew that plants such as raspberries are woodland edge plants.  I could see the logic.  I looked again at what I had.  Two hazels, planted for firewood, which had started producing nuts; some fruit trees in large containers; soft fruit and vegetable beds; plus shady areas from the wild life hedge I had put in.  What to do?

Well go workshopping of course.  I love workshops.  But a couple of years ago, when I thought this scheme up, I was very restricted as I was still recovering from major surgery so my capability for distance travel was limited.  I found Old Sleningford Farm.  I could make that, three hours driving tops to get there!!  Well, not quite when there are traffic jams but never mind.  I booked for a whole weekend so I could recover from each drive and dived into Forest Farming.  An amazing day – with enough going on to near explode the head with ideas and plans.

 
 
How to change the garden, because of course that’s what I schemed after the workshop. Gone my wish to titivate around the edges.  I had PLANS.

Well of course if I couldn’t drive for more than three hours how was I to dig out my new garden?  I had decided to clear the patch I laughingly called my wild garden.  A rose, so wild it called be called mental, had taken it over.  That rose, and every one of its suckers, would have to be dug out.  I had to wait until a strong friend visited!  Then he also helped move all my fruit trees, from containers, into said cleared space.  With the hazels at the side for my top layer and plum, greengage, pear and cherry in the new space and a nectarine in the sun on the fence I then had my middle layer.  For that first year, I underplanted with rhubarb which was fast outgrowing its containers.

This long winter just past, I had for Christmas a wonderful book  A Taste of the Unexpected. by Mark Diacono. A book detailing how grow your own remarkable fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices and flowers.  I settled down with a sigh of pleasure in front of that fire.

I imagined eating my own grown Szechuan Pepper and Yacon and partaking of the fruit of Fuchsia and Honeysuckle.  Of course these are uncommon and therefore difficult to get hold of but I have ordered for next year, nothing much happens in a hurry in a garden!  In the meantime I was feeling well enough to get on with the ordinary – well the known plants I already had.

Turning annual raised annual vegetable beds into soft fruit havens this year, I have dug over and planted two beds to raspberries underplanted with strawberries.  This now leaves me two more beds for the annuals we like most: potatoes and brassicas.  The root crops will be grown in the containers that used to house the fruit trees. However, going with the woodland garden ethos of minimal work (in the future!), I am trying out the perennial broccoli and kale this year, and I still have underplanting to do, in the old wild garden, of wild onions, wild garlic and various other herb/salads. 

I have the nettles already!

One day I will have a low maintenance garden I only need to sit in and pluck fruits from.  Until then such hard work!  

 I love my garden but . . .

F is for: Reality TV

 
 Older and younger feline are devotees of reality television.  They will watch it intently, any time of day or night.  Sometimes with fascinated interest,at others  with barely concealed boredom.  ‘Why bother?’ I ask them.  They have no good reply to that question.  Me?  I have never had any interest in watching paint dry, in a manner of speaking.  I join them sometimes, stand and watch for a moment, ask the question again ‘Why bother?’  Maybe, if I’m so honoured, I’ll get a twitch of the tail in response but their eyes will never leave the point of interest.  So I yawn and leave them to it.

 Sometimes I’ll walk in and find them watching when I thought them outdoors; some nights I wake to find one or other twitching tail and silent, watching.  Many times, by some silent communication, one will call the other to her side and they will sit for a moment or two together, watching.  ‘Get a life’ I grumble at them.  ‘Be cats and walk proud.’

I wouldn’t mind so much if they would clean the glass after them, breathing on the panes like that is not good for sparkle.  Most times I never do ‘get’ what they are watching through the windows that can keep them riveted for so long.  I hear the drone of Big Brother intoning

‘Mice are down in their nest curled around each other for warmth.  Younger cat is up on the cill watching.  Earlier in the day older cat stared at snail.’

However, if they have been inadvertently shut in while I am in the garden, I will look up, under the power of concentrated stares, and find both sets of feline eyes upon me.  They follow my progress around the wrap-round garden from window to window.  They don’t cry out or scratch the glass, they merely sit and stare.  Watching.  When they are released they head immediately for the digging in, potting on, sweeping up, or whatever my occupation has just been, and check it out.  Give me their approval or not.

 Then we sit in the sunshine and they tell me all about being a reality TV addict.

E is for: from global to microscopic

  
 When I was young I wanted to travel to the ends of the earth – my Granny would joke I might fall off if I did that.  I determined that I would travel eastwards from my home and just keep on going until I got there.  The ends lay in the east I knew – in that wonderful, exotic, colourful east of my dreams.  Books have such a lot to answer for!  To the deserts and jungles of the east and then I could eat the fruits of the earth as well; another phrase from my books that lingered deliciously on the tongue and conjured fantasies in the mind.  Well, I travelled the earth around its globe shape and never did reach the end – I ate of the different fruits and met those who my Granny referred to as the salt of the earth and I had a fantastic time of it all.

Then I came home.

 

 I had grown up, learnt a lot, became interested in many divers things.  I began a strange love/hate affair with my garden.  Now Earth was not globe-shaped but soil shape.  More personal, intimate and immediate. 

 

The first garden was on clay – thick and yellow streaked, so thick if one dug a hole (back breaking) the returned earth had to be replaced jigsaw fashion, piece by piece, trying to recreate a whole.  The second on exhausted loam (too many trees in one small garden over too many decades) and this last one built on a building site with reclaimed ocean land and compost.

 I have discovered compost, the true magic of the Earth.  Put death and decay in a heap, apply water and heat then those elves of the universe, earth worms, actually come of their own accord in their hundreds they get so excited.  Let them chomp for a while and, abracadabra! – the result is earth.  Beautiful crumbly earth.

 

  So now I earth up the potatoes, spread my magic earth around my meagre crops!  All the while I think about my dystopian writing and work out how my characters can construct earth houses and whether it is right for my soldiers to pursue a scorched earth policy (never right surely, think of the fruits). 

 

 

 

I have written an ode to the compost heap and its microscopic life.  It seems that in every salt spoon of fertile earth there are more living beings than there are humans on Earth.  Now that’s a fact to make one love earth.  I have used my compost heap as a murder weapon, and wondered if all that microscopic life within the heap could induce madness.

 Like the end of a rainbow there are no ends to planet Earth, well at least not, hopefully, for a few billion years.  It will never become flat enough to walk to the end.  Ah well, another childhood dream shattered!

 

D is for It's a pudding for goodness sake!!

 

What could a coastline, a dog and a pudding have in common?   

 

 
 One of my first wanders abroad, in the 60s, was to Yugoslavia, as it was then. It was an organised trip, we travelled across Europe by trains which became increasingly more uncomfortable as we headed east, adding to the sense of adventure.  This was barely twenty years after the end of the War and right at the beginning of the package holiday business.  Every trip that went further than Venice was exciting.  We were to take a fishing boat down the Dalmatian coast.

It was a wonderful experience.  The boat was small and fairly basic.  The crew were all young, tanned, muscled and had Slavic eyes which they knew how to use with smouldering effects.  They spoke no English and we spoke no Serbian (well one lady did but she didn’t seem that interested in the men!).  We had a guide who, as well as being devastating in the looks’ department, also spoke a little English.  He was a romantic, I am not.  He rowed me under the mid-day sun across the Adriatic Sea to a tiny island quoting Slavic poetry at me.  All about eyes like limpid pools – really, I ask you!  Spoilt my chances there by laughing at the foolishness of it all!

The locals at every port seemed to like us; we had helped during the War.  Given good deals at the market and invited back to their homes for meals and wine tastings, we had a great time.  The coastline was magic with tiny islands and gleaming sun on blue seas.  Easy to forget the horrors of war this region had endured.  We roasted a whole sheep on a deserted island for what was my first ever BBQ.

 

Sometime in the 1980’s my parents inherited a Dalmatian dog.  He fell in love instantly with Mum and followed her everywhere.  In all honesty I cannot say he was the brightest animal around – as thick as two short planks as they say – but such a lovely natured animal.  Now, as a  family, we have had numerous dogs and really nothing much stands out about this one except his shadowing of his goddess.  As he aged and became frail he had to be kept indoors during the winter and would howl non stop until Mum came back in from the fields.  When she was in the house he would lie in front of the roaring log fires and every ten minutes would struggle to his feet and stagger around the house until Mum was located and then, having satisfied himself she was there, stagger back to the fire.  When he overslept, which increasingly he did, he would hurry as fast as he could to find her and if we met him on the stairs or in the hall, he would flash a beautiful grin at us and hurry past.  If only we all had such devoted fans!

Now for a rant.  Although I can see the theory behind political correctness, it goes too far, it really does go too far sometimes.  I want to discuss this briefly before I close.  When I was growing up one of the pleasures of winter was the rib-sticking warming puddings we Brits liked to cook.  They are amazingly good.  Suet pudding, bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, rice pudding, jam roly poly pudding, apple dumplings, Bakewell tart, oh the list goes on.  We have some good puddings here.  One of my favourites was spotted dick.  It is a steamed pudding full of dried fruits.  Delicious served with custard back then, maybe ice cream now!  

I had been aware for a while that using Dick, as a shortened version of Richard, was no longer advisable and I could tut and raise my eyebrows at the crazy world we live in. 

But! don’t mess with the puddings!  Spotted Dick, politically incorrect?  For goodness sake, it’s a pudding!  I dined out the other day and was confronted with ‘Dalmatian Roll’ on the dessert menu.

Dalmatian Roll!!!!

I have lived too long!

 

 

C is for Chimpanzee

   
As a child one of my favourite stories was Doctor Dolittle, or Doctor D as I always thought of him.  I would try and imagine how it would be if I could also talk to animals.  I tried often with our cats but somehow, although they would purr a lot, I never made that connection; I could not truly understand them.  Tarzan could talk to the animals, Mowgli also; oh how unfair life could be!

Well, I suppose I grew out of mixing fantasy up with reality eventually, but I always hoped science would find a way before I died!  As I travelled around and generally found contentment in life I always harboured a little regret.

Then in my 40s I was looking for shorter travel periods but still with all the interests of my longer journeys.  One year I signed up to become part of an Earth Watch Research project in Washington State.  With chimpanzees who knew sign language.  Maybe this was it.

 I did know a little about chimpanzees, not just what had been gleaned from Tarzan either.  We had had a whole term on primates during my Anthropology course, I had signed up for the module because apes had always fascinated me  because they seemed so like us and all the David Attenborough films had added to my meagre knowledge.  On one splendid occasion back in the late 1960’s I had seen a very human reaction from one of them.  While visiting Gerald Durrell’s Zoo on Jersey I saw one hideous tourist who was showing his manliness by teasing and tormenting a chimpanzee: offering food then snatching it away.  The chimp had sat and stared at his tormenter for a moment or two and then deliberately picked up handfuls of freshly excreted ‘shit’ and flung it through the bars covering said tormentor.  Oh how I had cheered!  As did many others.  I learnt over the years this was a very chimp thing when angry so I could only hope the glass was thick where I was going.  A a very long journey to the Central Washington University where the chimps lived. 

 It seemed we would not be with the chimps immediately, we had to learn to identify them from photographs – oh so hard but even I managed.  Then we were put on ‘shit’ patrol and feeding.  The first is not pleasant: they eat an awful lot of fruit and veg!  But we had hoses and humour to aid us.  My companions on the course killed themselves laughing over my accent and decided the word ‘shit’ took on a whole new meaning within my polished vowels!!  We learnt to prepare and hide food for the animals to search for and find; put out and alternate objects they could ‘play’ with and we held themed days to make their lives more interesting. 

   
  The main point of the reseach though was to collect data on how the animals used their space and how they occupied  themselves to try to get the very basic (and cruel) requirements for captive chimpanzees changed radically.

  

So, clipboard in hand, in pairs, we would watch them through the toughened glass and every few seconds mark where an individual was and what it was occupied in doing.  Their purpose-built home was enormous, with many hiding places, and they could climb high above us; we had to try and distinguish which one was which from parts of them!

 All five of the chimps could use sign language and those who cared for them full time would carry on long conversations with them.  About what the next meal would be, what they could play with and so forth.  We learnt some basic ASL(American Sign Language) ourselves and could sign simple words by the end of our fortnight’s stay.  I would go to my room on campus every night well pleased, I was sort of communicating with them.  They had passed comment on my feet, ask me to play, had told me what they had eaten.  I had apologised for not understanding, not playing, had explained I was working.  Fairly basic communication but . . .

 Then, the day before I left, one of them, I will name no names, signed through the window he wanted me to play with him.  I had to reluctantly sign back that I was busy, I had to work.  I started to go away and then, with a rush of shame, realised I hadn’t prefaced my excuse with a ‘sorry’ sign.  I turned back to apologise and found the chimpanzee signing ‘you shit’ at  me,behind my back! 

Wonderful! Marvellous!  To be sworn at by an animal, in the correct context, with the correct wording is true communication.  Doctor D, for one sublime moment I had joined  you.                         

 
 
                                    C is for Communication

Balkans

 
The thread of history can be unbroken for many generations.  My parents were born just before and just after the 1^st World War, my grandparents in the 1880’s and my father’s grandmother during the 1860’s.  This lady spent many years looking after my father when he was a child.  I have access, a little hazy at times, to a time span that is long, long, long.  I inherited, without knowledge, many ideas good and bad from the social attitudes of all these periods.  We all do if we are lucky enough to have these long strands of historical thread.

From them all, when small, I inherited the West’s distrust of the Balkans.  As a child they were a place of mystery and darkness, of untamed mountains, wild wolves and fierce inhabitants.  If a comic or book required a villain, spy or assassin they would use a Balkan.  Cruel eyes glinting in exotic shadows.  The West’s paranoia of the region had been growing throughout the second half of the 19^th century and it had been interfering in the politics of the region.  Endeavouring to stabilise the area to suit itself the West was instrumental in destabilising it.

 The Balkans were mostly the bad guys to the British, after all didn’t they cause the Great War?  Remember my parents and grandparents lived during those times; I had great aunts deprived of the chance to marry due to the carnage of the trenches.  We learnt about the Ottoman Empire, the Congress of Berlin and the causes of the Great War in our history lessons.  I knew the Balkans were the bad guys.

There was the literature also not just the comics.  Dracula, the most well known maybe of the villains from the area, was created in 1897, The prisoner of Zenda earlier in 1894; in 1925 Agatha Christie was depicting a typically stereotyped Balkan peasant in The Secret of Chimneys, books which fed into our culture.

One of my favourite childhood books was Kattie of the Balkans by F O H Nash– it was a tale of derring-do carried out by a young  British girl guide fighting the good fight in those wild mountains, hiding from wolves and bandits.  The castle she was imprisoned in bore a startling resemblance to Dracula’s!  I was that girl, I could dare and do, I was sure of it!!  I would go to the Balkans one day, see if I wouldn’t.

To me the Balkans was so exotic, surrounded by seas of magical names such as the Adriatic, Mediterranean, Ionian, Aegean and Black Seas.  It had rivers such as the Danube, Sava and Kupa.  I could roll these around my tongue endlessly.  I wanted to be there.

So when in the1960s places like Yugoslavia and Bulgaria opened their doors to tourists I was there like a shot – heart in dry mouth for these were dangerous places to go to, weren’t they?  All my life I had been told so. 

No. They were wonderful places full of people good and bad, as everywhere.  The mountains were beautiful and majestic. Maybe I was a little disappointed I didn’t have to hide from a wolf or fight off a bandit but I did see some splendid castles. 

 
 
In Bulgaria, in a Black Sea resort full of young Russians enjoying their holidays, we learnt a new perspective on life and propaganda.  The Bulgarians were charming and friendly and mostly hated the Soviets.  The Russian youth were charming and friendly and thought they were better off under the Soviet rule. Politics are never easy to understand but my friend and I learnt to think before accepting popular opinions.  It’s a lesson well learnt.  I was to visit most of the Balkans before I finished my travels.

I bought a few cassette tapes of Balkan gypsy music, some china and returned home with my photos and memories.  I travelled more and further, to even more exotic lands, but the Balkans always had a special spot reserved within me. 

Then ten years ago, now in yet another century, I joined a choir and to my delight part of the repertoire involved Balkan singing.  That strange, almost discordant harmony; those strong beautiful strident notes that even now thrill the hairs on the back of neck. 

From 1860 to 2011 always these threads of connection continue.

A is of course for apple!

   A is of course for Apple, the very first letter I learnt and therefore the first word.  The beginning of an amazing journey, words have stirred my imagination and enriched my life beyond everything.

 # Apple comes from the old English Aeppel.

My first safe haven for reading was high (I was only little!) in the branches of an old and gnarled apple tree.  Food for imagination, and my stomach, all in one package who could argue with that.  Cat-like I would climb and hide amongst the branches – cat-like I couldn’t climb down again and was always having to be rescued!

# Archaeological evidence indicates apples were eaten in the Stone Age.

One house we lived in when I was young had an attic between the ground and first floors.  This is where apples were stored on blue card trays.  Walking between floors I could listen to conversations above and below.  Pretending I was a spy, secret agent, saviour of the world there was always an apple to hand to sustain!

# 1^st Century China, Egypt and Babylon knew how to bud and graft apple trees.

From a child my main ambition in life, fed by tales found between the pages of my books, was to travel. Unfortunately living in the UK I am surrounded by sea so boats loomed large in these plans and, if not sailing, travel often necessitated motors of some sort, cars, trains, buses; I can get travel sick in a swimming pool.  Green apples accompanied me everywhere to calm nausea.  And later, when suffering from dysentery in Kashmir, stewed apples soothed – such a kindly fruit.

# Origins unclear but maybe Southwest Asia or South-Central Asia.

We had apples in the attic and apples preserved in syrup in glass jars; serried ranks of beautiful glowing colours in the larder.  Such beautiful colours in the greyness of post war Britian, I would stand and just gaze at them, seeing myself in lush tropical jungles, don't ask! it was the colour.  Endless fruit pies all through the non-fruit growing season; apple and blackberry of course was our favourite, British to the core we were.  Apple sauce for the pork.   I remember standing next to Mum as she peeled and sliced Bramley (cooking) apples.  I would ‘steal’ slices and dab them into the sugar (we were still on rationing) to eat until she tapped just a little too hard on my knuckles with the back of the knife.

 # Medical benefits include help for heart, prostrate, bones, teeth, vision.

  When I began to travel the globe it was to find apples were everywhere and some of my best treats.  In Nepal at the beginning of the ‘70s there was a small café in Kathmandu renowned for its apple pies.  They were so delicious that when I took garments for sale in the market each morning (I had run out of money at that stage of my wanders!) not only did I have to haggle for enough for breakfast but enough for a slice of that pie!  There was also that one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the one in Adelaide . . . and – oh well, maybe too many to mention.

 # Maybe of benefit to Type II diabetes and urinary tract sufferers, may have anti-cancer properties.

 Just after I retired and just before I put pen to paper seriously, I stood at a window watching a rat find a prize windfall apple so big he had a problem.  It was too big to fit through the netting of the dog-proof fence we had put up.  He tried forwards and backwards to no avail.  It was a very cold winter and he was determined.  He bit off large pieces and took each one through the fence until the core of the apple was small enough for him to scamper off with.  Full marks for determination I cheered him on his wintery way.  Another one who appreciated this fruit.

 # It is thought there are 10,000 different varieties in the world.

 I can only eat them cooked these days.  I blame the aspirin dose I have been put on for an atrial fibrillation.  Cooked fruit is very nice but . . . oh I do miss the crunch and texture of a fresh apple.