SHERINGHAM DIARY 22 ~ Finding The Direction Of The Grain

The money has come through from my Dad's estate, as has the money from the sale of his house which completed on the 23rd November. Our finances are now the healthiest they've ever been in either of our lives so far.

Meanwhile, Jnanasalin has lost over a stone in weight in the first two months of his diet and fitness regime. My physical fitness, with the twice weekly swims is improving. I've been able to increase the number of lengths I do from 30 to 36 to 40 lengths per session. My fellow early morning swimmers are mainly retired ladies and gentlemen. There is your solitary silver fox in his early forties wearing his purple tracksuit and flip flops, his work suit hanging in the back of an SUV. But most cruise in on the muted metallic tones of a Citroen Picasso say, for a therapeutic swim to ease arthritic limbs, stimulate adrenalin and keep the mind active. I'm a strong swimmer, but not your Mr Super Speedo. I do hope as I get older and undoubtedly slower, I'm able to recognise when its time to downsize from the Fast to the Medium swimming lane.  Many elderly gentlemen appear not to be able to do that, as they do slow motion swimming up and down like floundering whales.

The Sheringham Christmas Lights have been switched on. Throngs of rather 'chunky' sized people, shall we say, turned out for further expansion of their already extensive stomachs with chips and candy floss. Meanwhile the Salvation Army band played Christmas Carols, interspersed with earnestly Christian blather about how they were 'truly besotted with Jesus'. I'd have gagged on my candy floss, if I'd had one. The switch on was underwhelming, as the same badly arranged strings of lights become progressively poorer in nick with every year they're re-used. Three out of the five snowflake lights on the Theatre are damaged. The Town Hall has a 'Hawaian Skirt' of lights draped in a drunken sag above its doorway. Presumably the prohibitive cost of putting up the lights every year, explains why they tend to be left up throughout the entire following twelve months. It is not surprising then that they are worse for wear. But then 'worse for wear' describes the shabbier side of Sheringham to a T. We left with some urgency as the strains of 'Wombling Merry Christmas' reached an unbearable pitch of overamplification.

Our primary reason for going into town on a Friday evening, was to see Alan Bennett's new play 'Allelujah'. This was being shown in Sheringham's Little Theatre, as part of the National Theatre Live broadcasts. Heavily pre-booked, we couldn't even purchase seats together. The regulars who attend Sheringham's Little Theatre could be almost your archetypal Alan Bennett audience, comfortably retired middle class, unreasonably fond of a good cardigan.

'Allelujah' is set in a geriatric ward in a small local NHS hospital called the Bethlehem. A ward filled with mainly female patients, exhibiting a wide range of ailments and dementia. They form a choir to keeps their minds active and improve their memory retention. The play is, as a consequence, interspersed with old time songs and dance routines. The Beth is under threat of closure, and a campaign is under way to save it.

Bennett is capable of being a sharp and acute observer. The play is as humane, touching and funny, as you'd expect a Bennett play to be. Quite why renaming one of the hospital wards after Fatima Whitbread becomes such an absurdly funny thing, one shouldn't perhaps enquire too deeply. If 'Alleluah' fails to pack the punch that Bennett obviously hoped for, its because his more acerbic comments are blunted by being prefaced and pursued by such jokes, its like wrapping discomfort in cotton wool to avoid further bruising. Given the subject matter, you ought to be finding it challenging or provoking of further thought. As it is, 'Alleluah' was a very enjoyable evening, but so is sucking slowly on a sherbet covered boiled sweet for a couple of hours. David Hare this isn't.

Our preparations for Cottonwood Workshop's relaunch in 2019 feels as thought its an uphill struggle at the moment. A few frames got scuffed or damaged whilst in storage, so I duly touched them up. I decided to improve how we stored things, by making individual bubble wrap pockets for all our picture frames and mirrors. Only to discover that some bubble wrap I'd used had a film of reddish pink stain on it which transferred its pinkish sheen or finger marks onto anything that came into contact with it, namely the very things I'd just retouched. The 'hissy fit' that followed passed, and I slowly progressed through the items affected, only to find the stain colour still came through. The only thing to do now is to sand back to the base wood.

Set backs have an intensity to them which undoubtedly can feel frustrating, but they do flag up areas where you need to improve. We've since introduced daylight quality lighting into my workshop, created an area within the craft room for painting and varnishing and bought better shelving for the garage stockroom. All the photography we did last month we chose to scrap because they weren't quite good enough. Jnanasalin is doing smaller photo shoots which are then fully processed before moving on to the next batch of stock, this is working out better. Gradually he's getting to know what works and what to avoid when photographing products and image processing. We are undoubtedly getting there, but the protracted and emotionally turbulent nature of our recent learning curve has been a strain and somewhat humbling.

Travelling to Sangharakshita's funeral turned into a modern pilgrimage. Arising at twenty to four in the morning and returning home at half eleven at night.  It took us both a full week to recover. The funeral was held in a large semi-open barn, that got progressively colder and damper as the four hours + service went on. This included the seemingly obligatory 'ramble without end' from Subhuti. The funeral was a fitting tribute to Sangharakshita's achievements as a Buddhist, something overlooked during the controversies and scandals which emerged during his life. As my first Triratna event since resigning the atmosphere of the funeral felt all too familiar. It was good to have chats with a few friends, including a brief but warm interaction with Padmavajra which I found quite touching.  Sangharakshita's death brings to an end a distinct period in Triratna, and for me it brought a fitting point of closure to my involvement.

Thoughts about moving on spiritually did arise in the wake of the funeral. So I took the initiative and made plans to attend an Introductory Session at the Norwich Zen Priory one Saturday. We did a bit of Christmas shopping before hand until the time for me to split off and walk to the Priory came. I thought from looking at a map before I left home that I'd find the walk there relatively straightforward. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn very early on, and subsequently found myself well and truly lost. As the start time for the Introductory session loomed I got a bit flustered, until I had to acknowledge I was not going to make it. I hobbled back towards the city centre I never seemed able to get away from, feeling somewhat foolish. Perhaps my plan was a bit premature.

This experience represents the zeitgeist of the last month pretty well; the strains that emerge when it feels as though you're walking over the same ground again and again. In Taoism they use the analogy of paying attention to whether you are planing a piece of wood with or against the grain, when trying to align yourself with The Way  According to this if you're planing wood against the grain you'll be constantly snagging and gouging into the wood.  Whilst if you 're planing with the grain, your experience of things will generally be running smoother, as both you, the plane and the grain would be in better alignment. Sometimes it simply a matter of making small adjustments to the spirit with which you approach your life. It could even be that the moment for what you want to do has not yet arrived, and what is required is an ability to surrender yourself up to its gradual unfolding in real time. Though it has to be said, I do tend to exhume this old Taoist chestnut whenever my initiative is feeling unreasonably thwarted or robbed.

CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 11 - Zesty & Moist

Heydon Tea Rooms, Heydon, Norfolk.

Spiced Carrot & Orange Cake 

First, I must confess a prejudice, Heydon Tea Rooms is one of my all time favourite places to go for coffee and cake. The range and excellence of their cakes is unmatched. How would they perform when stepping onto the hallowed ground of Carrot Cake? 

Well, if I'm being really really honest, this was never going to be the pure unadulterated Carrot Cake that I've extolled in fundamentalist detail in previous blog posts. ( You'll find those posts here:~ Perfect Carrot Cake ) The official title for this one was Spiced Carrot and Orange Cake. So thats spice, tick, carrot, tick, orange? well, lets see. Orange can easily sweep away all that comes into contact with it, so what started out in its bones the very essence of a carrot cake, is frogmarched into becoming a Tangerine. 

As you may be able to detect from the photograph this cake could never be described as solid or weighty. The cake's texture was light, springy and moist. My god was it moist, moist with all those bright zesty citrus overtones, but without being detrimental to the balance of the Carrot or the Spice. It was poised beautifully between the demands of all these competing flavours. There was still room in the mix for good sized chunks of walnut and a scatter of sultanas. Throwing all these ingredients together and not have a cake you could either fiill holes in a wall with or has the consistency of rain sodden soil, is nothing short of masterful. Though it may have looked insubstantial it had enough substance in its structure. It didn't fall into cake rubble as soon as you applied the fork, nor dissolve like a ghost as soon as it hit your pallette either.

Though this style of carrot cake exists on the more experimental fringes, in our world of culinary fantasy, it does somehow manage to pull it off. Plus, it does have a cream cheese filling, so that's another thumbs up from me.  I find it tricky though when assessing these modern twists on the traditional form, when it comes to how to mark them. Though not traditional they are, nonetheless, successful.  Here they manage to cover all the basics of the form, whilst adding a twist that accentuates without drowning the patient. Though it challenges what I set out to do with these posts, it is after all just a personal mission statement, that I can chose to adjust however I wish.

CARROT CAKE SCORE - 7/8

BOOK REVIEW - Junichiro Tanazaki - The Makioka Sisters

I'm reaching the end of my year of Japanese novel reading. Its been a mixture of the inspiring, the informative and the frankly infuriating. When it comes to the latter The Makioka Sisters is a perfect example of a cetain type of mid-twentieth century Japanese novel.  Everything is described by its surface, emotions are restrained and reserved. Its as if the human tendency towards melodrama had flatlined. Previous works by Tanazaki I've greatly enjoyed. He has a mischievous, dry and ironic sense of the absurdities, as well as the beauties, of traditional 'Old Japan'. So if you were to skim the storyline of The Makioka Sisters you'd think this might be fertile ground for Tanazaki to find gold in. That it isn't, leaves this novel as nearly five hundred pages devoid of wit, humour, or in fact much happening at all.

Whilst not being imitative of Chekov, its clear that The Makioka Sisters is something of a Japanese homage to the spirit of The Three Sisters. Because here we too have three provincial sisters, Sachiko, Yukiko and Taeko. except everyone wants to stay in Osaka, no one wants to go to the big city, to dreary, dirty Tokyo.  The Makioka family used to have standing socially but has fallen on harder times. Though they are no longer able to cut the social mustard, they behave as if they still do. The modern world is passing them by, as they try not to play catch up. Of the three, only Sachiko is married, but as the eldest it falls to her to ensure the traditional process is followed and that the second eldest Yukiko is next to get married.

Unfortunately, Yukiko is now in her early thirties and they worry that she is a bit old to still be in the marraige market. If they don't find a suitable match soon, the shame of perpetual spinsterhood and dependency on the family will descend. Yukiko, has all the presence of someone who is constantly absent, her feelings and motives remaining essentially unknowable for the entire length of the novel. You neither love or hate her. Its as though she's become this empty vessel, a blank pawn in a very long game of chess. Her younger sister Taeko, by comparison is a free spirit who wants to make her own way in life, chose her own lovers and resist playing the marriage game. There are, however, tragic consequences to the choices that she makes.

That is it really as far as the storyline goes. There are passages of brilliant descriptive writing, such as the torrential rain and flooding in the centre of the story, and (spoiler alert ) a couple of death scenes. But these are brief blips, amid acres of not a lot going on of any import. I suspect there is much that could be labelled 'metaphor' in this novel, but this has not been heightened enough. The period the novel is set in is in the years leading up to Pearl Harbour.  The China Incident where Japan stages a proto-invasion of the Chinese mainland is a brief passing reference. The closeness of Nippon-Nazi relations is seen obliquely through the Stoltz family who live next door. That none of this impinges upon the Makioka obsessive pursuit of marrying Yukiko off, speaks volumes about Japanese insularity at this time.  They are literally living in another world to everyone else.

There are also countless incidences of someone in the family falling ill, or they suspect to be ill, or is a bit off colour, who then cossets themselves away until the often vaguely identified malady passes. Then there is the constant worry about that small spot above Yukiko's eye, will the appearance of this blemish spoil her marriage chances? To be followed by weeks of costly injections to eliminate, or at least reduce it in size. The body and the body politic have both become dis-eased.

Its a small fading world they live in, which is at times extremely petty, which Tanazaki relishes describing in minute detail. That the Makioka's are in some way cyphers for the Japanese malaise pre-war is pretty clear. There is, however, a difficulty for the Western reader of Japanese novels, there is frequently no sense of his characters engaging in any internal reflection.  'Internal dialogue' just doesn't happen, so you don't understand and hence never reach either hatred or empathy for these people. They are all a bit bland and featureless, with little sense for a mood or period. What's really going on within this family remains a disinteresting puzzle.

One has to remain wary when reading any Japanese novel in translation, as your impressions of its value are entirely dependent upon the skill or otherwise of the translator. Converting an ideographic script into coherent English sentence structures must be inherently an unfeasible task. Murakami, when he reads the translation of his novels writes to the translator congratulating them on the book they've written, he no longer sees it as being composed by him anymore. Tanazaki's writing style I sense may have been let down by Edward G. Seidensticker's translation of it. I may of course be wrong and this really is one of the most tedious books I've ever read. But that it maybe the translation that is at fault is, for me, indicated by the last line of The Makioka Sisters, where Yukiko has finally found herself a husband and is travelling to Tokyo for her future marriage and life. This disingenuous sentence bears something of Tanazaki's trademark wryness and sense for irony. More like this and I'd have found this an enjoyable thing to read, instead of a bit of a drag.

'Yukiko's diarrhoea persisted through the twentieth-sixth, and was a problem on the train to Tokyo.'

What a way to end a novel! 

SHERINGHAM DIARY 21 ~ Let Them Eat Paint - (Subsisting on Farrow & Ball )

Once you're accustomed to North Norfolk, you realise its reputation as one of the most popular places in the UK for the middle class to retire to, has had unforeseen consequences. The indigenous population, if indeed there is such a thing anymore, learn to survive in a minimum wage economy, with a minuscule chance of owning their own home. Their opportunities being swamped, if not swept aside, by the needs of these semi-retired wealthy incomers, and the house prices they raise in their wake.

The village of South Creake is some twenty miles along the coast from us. It's population at the last census was 516. Like most small villages in the UK it has lost its local corner shop, and any pub will have either gone, or gone gastro to a pricey and exclusive degree. Simple cod and chips, will be coated in a beery batter with a side of rustic potatoes fried in duck fat, accompanied by thick buttered wedges of 'artis-anal' sourdough. But, fear not, all is not lost because what South Creake does have, is its very own Farrow & Ball Shop, and bespoke kitchen design outlet. South Creake lives on the fringe of Burnham Market ( population 877 ) where this type of thing flourishes unsupported by any retail rationale. It has its own Joules and Gun Hill outlets, plus several high end interiors shops, and though not quite the archetypal butcher, baker and candlestick maker, it comes close. There is a cafe/shop that derives everything it sells from their own farm in Tuscany.

You may well shake your head in incredulity. Cottonwood Workshop exists on the coastal cusp of associating with this world. You could say we understand what part of our 'target market' is. I raise my hand, I confess, yes, I have purchased Farrow & Ball paint, not to eat obviously, but to use on our furniture refubs. Though actually Little Greene paints are finer quality, with better coverage and colours. So I'm not just going along with established market consensus here, I'm able to wag my individuality with the best of them.  Once you've got a taste for top quality emulsion paint its hard to kick the habit and return to the weak and watery 'in house value brands.' It bears similarity to eating cheap white sliced bread after trying handmade sourdough. Yes, the latter is more expensive, but goodness you do feel better about yourself afterwards. Worthy of having more of this well made stuff instead of cheaply made crap that leaves a nutritional deficit, not to mention a social or cultural one.

Seemingly everywhere round here, the smell of sourdough is whispering at you from cafe windows 'come put your mouth around a substantial crust'.  I consider myself reasonably adept these days at making a spelt, rye or wholemeal loaf, but have remained wary of approaching this prince of 'artis-anal' breads. I recently launched myself into singing the long song of sourdough. First, I had to kick the habit of just throwing a pack of easy yeast in a bowl and begin making a sourdough starter. This takes 4-5 days, feeding it daily like its a voracious child who loves wheat and lukewarm water. On the fifth day, my starter exploded out of the bowl, dribbling bacterial slurry all over the slats in the airing cupboard and a stored duvet beneath. On the fifth day though, thou shalt also form a gooey 'predough.' On the sixth day of sourdough you form your actual dough after much knackering knuckle kneading. After which, I rested the aching arthritic hands for an entire hour.

According to my recipe there follows a strange ritual, as in a clockwise movement you pinch, stretch and fold the dough as if it has love handles, once every hour, for three hours.  Finally, you can rest after the dough makes it into a loaf tin and you wait and wait for the rising of the sodding thing......for a further 4-6 hours! If you can make it through all of that, the delightful taste of the bread is the minor achievement. That you survived long enough to see the sourdough reach breadhood, was the real deal. There really ought to be a badge for it. I've joined the National Trust, I've bought Farrow & Ball, I've made sourdough, I've arrived in the middle class elite. Though I was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, lets not make too much of that. These days its who you think you are, not what you are that really matters. If toffs like Reese-Mogg can become the voice of ordinary working people, I can behave as if I have time and money to burn.

Having now completed our first month as free citizens, unencumbered by meaningless work and accompanying stresses. It would, however, be incorrect to assume we are now living the life of riley. We have a lot of work to do. With experience we know how to make the best use of this time. For instance, we've learnt photographing or programming all day just does your head in. So we space it out, and ensure we get to do craft work, if not every day, at least regularly. We both have backgrounds with a strong work ethic, and what we are doing now isn't quite what most working class guys who happen to have got educated do.

On days when nothing appears to be going right, a mood can descend - that we aren't doing enough - or not moving fast enough on our various projects - or worry about running out of money, even though we don't need to. Some of this is an emotional panic around making this year count, plus we've had unrealistic expectations concerning how much we can actually physically or mentally do. There is also a backlog of processing, of stuff we've both sat on whilst employed at our previous workplaces. Now we are both our master and our servant, emotions do bob to the surface because we are both less guarded and more relaxed.  So even whilst motivated and inspired we can slip into tenseness and anxiety. Primarily because now, there is no one else to praise or blame for what happens, but ourselves.

We've achieved more than we perhaps give ourselves credit for in our first month. Jnanasalin has completed the design revamp of our website, and is nearing the end of the minute nerdy details of the background construction that will support it. We've re-photographed literally hundreds of stock shots for it. I've gradually got into a groove with refinishing items. I've painted, varnished or upholstered three stools, repainted four picture frames and made a battered wooden shell into a fully complete decorative box. We've also started assessing potential cafe sites, at this stage just to get a sense for what we should be looking out for in future.

Splash Swimming Pool Sheringham

Since moving to Upper Sheringham we have both become unfit, as a lot of comfort eating has been engaged in. Since starting 'our year of living a wee bit dangerously' we've begun monitoring our food consumption and getting more regular exercise. Jnanasalin goes for a long walk almost everyday. I've got back into swimming twice a week, hoping to expand on that once my body has grown accustomed. After the first swim, my body screamed at me like a new born baby - 'don't you ever ever do that to me again, you sadist!'. Because everyone knows that after 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' the next words an intelligent baby masters are 'you sadist !' The accumulative effect has been a substantial lift to my general mood and sense of well being, easing my bodily discomforts considerably too. So I guess you might call that a 'win win.'

We've had friends staying with us on two separate weekends. It was very good to spend time with both Saddharaja and Vidyasiddhi, catching up a bit, walking, taking in scenery and generally sharing some of our favourite spots in North Norfolk.  It can feel as though we live in a bit of a self contained bubble, so it was good to hear how things are going back in Cambridge, and of other peoples lives and future plans. It was a real pleasure.

Urgyen Sangharakshita

This week we heard of Sangharakshita's death. He founded the Triratna Buddhist Order, that I used to be a member of, and Jnanasalin still is. Sangharakshita was a remarkable man, sensitive, perceptive and possessed of a formidably rigorous mind, His analysis of social mores was controversial, plus there was abuse of power scandals recently, that had taken place in the early years of the movement. Despite the latter, he remains to us one of the most significant positive influences upon both of our thinking, practice and lifestyle. We intend attending the funeral to pay our final respects and show our gratitude to the teacher, to whom we owe so much concerning the form of our lives as Buddhists. It will be the first Triratna event I'll have attended since my resignation from the order, the prospect of which, in my imagination at least, I'm finding a bit daunting. This year is turning out to be such a significant one, with so many things and people coming to an end.

As you drive from Kings Lynn towards Fakenham, you pass a favourite sign of mine. Its stuck by the road, on a turning into a dirt track running by the side of a farm. For a moment when I first saw it, I was perplexed. Painted in large red letters on a white background it simply says SHORT TREES.  Now there may be a whole trend for trees that are vertically stunted, that I've remained thankfully unaware of. But I've come to the conclusion that the simple addition of an apostrophe and an S after SHORT, might provide a more easily comprehensible solution. 

MUSIC REVIEW ~ John Grant - Love is Magic

What is there left to say about John Grant that hasn't already cashed its chips in on an already established line of musical myth making?  Its as hard to look at an artist from a fresh perspective as it is for an artist to find one for themselves. Both develop expectations and associations built up from a repeated experience of what they love to write and what we love about them. We can become so accustomed to Grant's self confessional material that its robbed of its power to shock. amuse or awe.

He has often expressed his life experience in such a frank manner, its difficult to see beyond it to notice how he's filtered and packaged it for our consumption.  The results process his feelings via some of the most honest, witty, yet scathing songs about former lovers you are ever likely to hear. Emotional truths struck home and cause reciprocal resonant chords in others -'yes me too'.  Anyone who has broken up badly with a former lover and wanted to get back at them for the hurt they've caused, could hear it in a John Grant song. Much of this early solo material arose from a precarious sense of himself, to which the songs became a sort of cathartic therapy. Trying to rid himself of layers of self- destructive hate, doubt and anger. Over his three previous albums and associated live performances it was apparent that Grant has gradually been putting to rest, or at least managing better, the bitterness that drove his most cutting early songwriting. Where too now though for the bard of the withering put down?

As he releases Love is Magic, his fourth solo album, what more can we hear that hasn't been heard before? As Bella Union pre-released tracks from the album online, I felt concerned. What I was hearing, seemed like retreading old ground,  a lost sense for a melodic line, run out of fresh ways to write songs? Grant himself thinks this album is the most complete realisation he's yet achieved of what he's wanted an album to be. My feelings about it before hearing it in full were then a little troublesome. I was surprised then to end up loving it.

Queen of Denmark released in 2010 was in effect a salvage job by the group Midlake, to rescue Grant from slipping into a self imposed retirement. The resulting highly successful album has much more of a country lite feel to it, and had echoes of his previous work in the Csars. By the time of Pale Green Ghosts, three years later he's confident about where he wants to go musically experimenting with electronics, though still dropping back into the style of the first album from to time to time. This gave the album stylistically speaking an uneven feel, even though its full of songs that are some of his best.  My sense of 2015's Grey Tickles & Black Pressure was that it consolidated without developing further what he achieved on Pale Green Ghosts. With Love Is Magic, I believe I have a sense of what he's tried to achieve with this album. Its is more coherent in its form, being largely electronic in style from start to finish, but it also toys with something a bit more sonically adventurous too.

Between the last two albums he's done quite a bit of feature vocals on other people's albums. Most noticeably on Susanne Sundfor's Mountaineers, and with Creep Show. Both these allow Grant to sing over the most gorgeous sonic backgrounds allowing space to accommodate the full richness of his vocal timbre. Susanne Sundfor's album Music For Troubled Times, is a patchwork of songs each beautifully wrought. At times sparsely backed, sometimes lushly orchestrated,  experimentalally mixing in the spoken word, whilst still hanging together as a whole album concept. Love is Magic bears a few similarities, there are re-statements of what is good in a John Grant song, whilst weaving into this bolder explorations of the song form, pushing at his own compositional boundaries. The track Metamorphosis for instance opens the album with a crazy in your face list of things that appear to have no association, bookending a sad little tune about the death of a loved one, written from the perspective of someone with an emotionally alienated sense of loss. It doesn't quite convince you to fully buy into whats happening, its a fraction too clever to touch you, but it is a courageous track to open your album with.



The theme that holds the album together, resides in the title track Love Is Magic. Laying out the different reasons for our experience and desire for love. He sings that however it arrives ' when the door opens up for you, don't resist  just walk on through, there's really nothing else to do.'  Since an earlier song Marz there's has been a nostalgic vein that reflects back on his early life. Its present here in the Tempest, where he yearns for someone to come play the Atari arcade game with him. It has within it a plangent vein of loneliness, requesting someone to come and share an enthusiasm with him, to love what he loves. Preppy Boy, is a young inexperienced gay teenager imagining himself falling for the most straight looking and hence unobtainable love object. Smug Cunt could be seen as another of Grant's character assassinations of a hate figure. But there is often a sense that Grant only dislikes them because they have what he wants, the Smug Cunt has unwarrented self-confidence, but by the bucketful. Diet Gum, opens with the line 'I manipulate, that's what I do, I manipulate that's what I'm doing to you' interspersed with a lot of gay bitching trying to put down the manipulator 'Do you really think you could seduce me in a leisure suit' . Yet these pathetic expressions of independence are empty ones. They are only susceptible to being manipulated, because they love the manipulator.

Critical appreciation for this album has been mixed, some have like me loved it, often for the very same things that others have found irritating. Sometimes, I have to say, Grant's use of electronic instrumentation can seem a bit like he switched the machine on and used whatever its factory default settings were. He needs a musical collaborator to push him to be bolder in his arrangements, someone who'll conceive a unique sound to enhance Grants songs further. That said, Love Is Magic's compositional themes are as rounded and thoughtful as ever. It still has its pokey moments, but in a gentler, less cruel way, and he is perhaps more forgiving of others failings than before. Though not quite the superlative album that one might still expect him to write, it points towards a few bold musical directions he could pursue and expand on further. Nonetheless, for all its sometimes half resolved quirkiness, its a really interesting album that I'm already quite besotted with.

  

SHERINGHAM DIARY 20 ~ Taking A Break From The Usual

A Pre-holiday Holiday
Five days after we both completed the last day at our jobs, we were now inhabiting a bardo of our own making, a place between two states of being and styles of work. Time for rituals to mark these changes in our surrounding landscape:~ writing the names of people or states we disliked or wish to leave behind onto pebbles and throwing them into the sea combined with the force of a Vajrasattva mantra behind them:~ on another day writing the people or aspects we liked and would wish to remember onto a thin Japanese paper which became transparent once placed in the bottom of a pot and anointed with water, adding soil, spring bulbs, then more soil before anointing again with water, and perfumed with the aroma of two sticks of incense. Sometime in early Spring they hopefully will grow and bloom.

This was a pre~holiday holiday, a week in which to put down work concerns, catch up with ourselves, and take time to tidy up the house a bit and simply relax. I prepared my workshop to be in readiness for the new work to begin post holiday. Jnanasalin made jams and preserves. It felt like a long weekend with no perceivable end, to be followed, according to our nightmares, by a return to our previous work by desperate pleas for help. So there was a bit of anxious emotional adjustment lingering around.  The finite nature of our savings creates a time pressure to crack on with developing Cottonwood, with it a distinct tension. But first, allow ourselves a break, travelling up to Richmond in North Yorkshire for seven days away from all that is familiar in hearth, home and work habits.

Celebrate Holiday


Richmond is an attractive Georgian market town, dominated by a huge castle towering over the fast flowing water serpent that is the River Swale. Its an ideal base from which to explore The Yorkshire Dales or Moors, even The Lake District. Having said that, what we did was spend three of our seven days hanging in and around Richmond.

Mainly we wandered about a bit, taking in a couple of lovely riverside walks, either side of the Swale. My favourite was along the old rail line to Easby Abbey which lies about a mile or so out of town. Jnansalin and I are never your purposeful ramblers charging on, walking poles in hand, to the next objective dragging both the willing and the unwilling behind them. We are, however, up for an nice easy strole, a gentle amble along a worn and hopefully well signposted route, motivated by the reward of coffee and cake at the end of it.

The best cafe we found was in Mocha, in Richmond Market Place. From the outside it appears just a high end chocolatier, but it has a small number of tables inside and out. These quickly get full, so you do have to stake claim to your territory when one comes available. Both coffee and cakes were the best in Richmond and district, so it was always worth it.

Finding a good range of vegetarian dishes on a menu in the North Yorkshire appears to be patchy and the results often feeble or unsatisfying. There wasn't a single cafe that could provide even a half good Veggie Breakfast. Most being let down, by over cooked fried eggs, grilled but still uncooked tomatoes or fried mushrooms that seemed to have been numbered and rationed per person. We also failed to discover a local baker who sold danish pastries that weren't doused in a vat of liquid sugar. The Noted Pie Shop, on the market square, wasn't notable for its culinary inclusiveness, for apart from an anaemic looking quiche it appeared to sell nothing but meat based pies.

We did have occasionally quite excellent meals. The Black Lion has a limited range of vegetarian dishes. but Jnanasalin enjoyed a richly flavoursome Mushroom Stroganoff there. On our last full day in Richmond we discovered Duncans Tearooms. A small upstairs restaurant with only a door at street level, it gets five stars and rave reviews on Trip Advisor. Its only open Wednesday to Saturday, so lunchtimes in particular you may have to book. But their menu is broad, ranging from superbly executed standards to rather more unusual fare. I had a creamy Potatoe and Leek Pie that was simply mouth-wateringly delicious, whilst Hubby tucked into a deep and richly layered Mushroom Tarteflette.

Whilst in Duncans Tearoom, I had my best 'overheard' of the entire trip. As we were sat waiting for our main meal, a retired couple came in sitting on a table behind and just to one side of us. Middle class and country tweedy, her voice in particular would've cut a glacier in half, so clear I suspected she might actually want everything she said to be heard. I certainly caught everything darling ' Well, I first read the early novels of the lesbians when I was at university. There's not one mention of sex between them or anything, so its hard to see why they got in such a lather over it. But goodness there was a lot of bitchy conversations between them, it just goes on and on and on... and I had to study this thing, it was so utterly tedious I got extreee..mly bored.'

On a very wet day in Ripon we sought shelter from the whip of wind and rain in Lockwoods. Its a sort of hipster boho bistro I guess, but that didn't put us off. Surprise surprise, from its non-alcoholic cocktails, a starter of soughdough and olives, through to the mains of  Butternut & Feta Risotto, dribbled with walnut pesto topped with a tangle of pea stems, it was pure joy from start to finish. Excellent service, timed well, with just the right amount of attentiveness. We left sated and deeply satisfied. Highly Recommended.

Don't let the number of column inches I devote to food lead you to believe that is all we look forward to on holiday. Though everything else does tend to sit in a time limited orbit around when the next opportunity for eating might arrive. This time we tried not to pre-plan our week, attempting to stumble into spontanaity. Well, it certainly felt less pressured. Nevertheless, we managed to take in the marvellous, the historical and the cultural, a few of which are worthy of highlighting.

Many stately homes have first been a castle or abbey which subsequently became an ancestral pile. Raby Castle has always been a house that later applied for a 'license to crenellate', which is something I'd love to think you could still ask for. The current owners of the Raby Estate trace their ancestry back to the notoriously power grabbing Neville family.  Raby Castle on the outide seems a classic medieval fortress, has grand and ambitious interiors, extensively remodelled in the Victorian Gothic era. When you enter the Octagonal Room you do literally gasp, nothing in the rooms prior to it quite prepares you. Its the sheer audacity with which the bling has been thrown, plastered or hung around. It bears a similarity in spirit and style to the interior of the Brighton Pavilion, though the Octagonal Room was executed some forty years later, its in close sympathy with the Pavilion's camp ostentation. I loved it to bits.

From being quite young you could never please me more on holiday than to leave me exploring some castle, church, cathedral or abbey. In consequence I've gleefully wandered over countless ruined abbeys in my time. Its never clear until you actually get to a monastic site how much of it will be left, a few walls, a solitary broken window moulding, sometimes only a stone outline in the ground. So nothing quite prepares you for the size, scale, and level to which it is intact, of Fountains Abbey. No other monastic site in England I know of comes anywhere close. Yes, the roof is long gone, all its architectural and decorative flourishes in stone, wood, paint or glass have been stripped away, but what remains, the vaulting, the height of the walls, the clerestory, columns, arches and windows, is all without parallel.

Without fail on visiting a ruined abbey I get a mixture of feelings; great sadness and a silent hankering for what has been lost culturally and spiritually due to the dissolution, plus a fantasy of becoming a monastic myself. How these religious institutions would have fared had they been left alone, is hard to say. A place of true solitude away from the worldly, would be harder and harder to find as the subsequent centuries progressed. Perhaps, even leaving aside the effect of being mugged by the so called English Reformation, the writing was on the wall for them.

Close by Raby Castle lies the market town of Barnard Castle. It too still has its own castle, that has mostly had its crenelation nicked, with only a curtain wall left. What it does have is the Bowes Museum, built like a French Chateau, founded and paid for by the wealth of John & Josephine Bowes. Finding themselves unable to bear children they spent the rest of their lives using their surplus income to build a huge museum to house their art collection. Mostly the art works are second level Italian or French masters, with a couple of Canalettos and an El Greco to raise the quality a bit. Anyway, apart from the 200 year old mechanical swan, the main highlight was the exhibition Catwalking based around Chris Moore's fashion photography. Covering a period from the start of his career in the sixties to the present day, the often iconic photos are accompanied by the actual iconic dresses by Chanel, Dior, McQueen, Westwood etc plus the sculptural delights of Issey Miyake.

There was much about our holiday that was filled with quiet and small delights. Through a small door just off the market place and down a narrow corridor you are taken into this beautifully compact award winning garden. Not much wider than 4 or five metres Millgate House Gardens meander down the hill slope in the direction of the Swale, pausing to create small arbours for garden chairs, benches or tables, and then sidling on its downward path  The day we visited was a bit drizzly, the garden bore more of a dripping jungle demeanour with its luxuriant hostas blanketing the ground level catching beads of rainwater. The planting is deceptively but delightfully informal, but then you start to notice there is quite a bit of distinctly structural topiary scattered around. The Georgian house with its balconies overlooking the valley provides its own architectural accent to the splendid garden laid out before it. Its a garden worth taking a look at, anytime of year.

There were hardly any duff venues, but The Richmondshire Museum must get a special mention and the battered wooden spoon. We arrived just as it opened and the lady on Reception was a little startled, 'Do you want to see the museum then?'- 'So, will that be two adults?' She's obviously forgotten exactly what an adult looked like as two middle aged gentlemen loomed into view.  Five minutes later she catches up with us to hand us our tickets. The museum, run and set up by volunteers, hasn't been updated for fifty years, maybe more. All the items exhibited have faded or fogged labels originally typed laboriously on perhaps a pre-war typewriter. They're immensely proud of managing to acquire the set from All Creatures Great & Small after it last aired sometime in 1990. We couldn't wait to exit this museum which felt like being locked up in a dusty and heavily mothballed wardrobe.

Working For Ourselves
In most jobs how you schedule your work is constrained by the job itself, your boss, the people you work with, and other stimuli external to you. When you work for yourself all those prompts and responsibilities return home to you. The first thing we had to decide when we returned from holiday, was what our working day and week was, what to prioritise, how Jnansalin and I would work together. All of which was surrounded by slivers of Protestant Work Ethic, guilt about actually having the time to be creative in, and anxiety about making the most of this upcoming year.  We found we were pretty much on the same page about products and how we want to revamp our website. So - so far, so good!

SHERINGHAM DIARY 19 ~ Au Revoir To The Croaking Frogs

After Dad's funeral, Jnanasalin and I returned home, and home already felt different in tone. There is nothing like a death in the family to alert you to the time limitations preset into our lives. Our future plans suddenly had an urgency, pregnant with a potential that we needed to start tapping into now.  Where were we now with our dream of building our own business? As long as we continued to do what we were currently doing, not much further than Bodham.

We know we have sufficient money saved to fund us for a year. Sometime in the next twelve months, one would hope, Dads house will be sold and his estate wrapped up. At that point further money will filter through. The choice was, either hold on until that point arrives, or begin the venture now. We've chosen to do the latter, because if we don't strike whilst this momentum is here, will we ever? We plan to give Cottonwood 100% of our energy, effort and time, and see what  develops over the next year. Its a risk, but then any such enterprise will have an element of that. If it doesn't work out we'll return to paid work, but at least knowing we've given our dream a good try. With that decision made, we both handed in our notices at our respective work places. We are both feeling excited, with a background of anxiety that I guess is understandable, as our ideas and combined talents are about to be truly tested.

Post Dad's death I've been generally OK emotionally. Just one moment of gushing at the end of Grayson Perry's excellent Channel 4 programme called Rites of Passage (highly recommend) It was the one on death rituals, that got to me, unsurprisingly. The pre-death ritual he devised was just such a beautifully poignant and meaningful expression of a life. It made the traditional Western forms and ways to process the death of a loved one, feel empty and sterile. I have, however, been holding a lot of bodily tension this year, as its turned out to be quite an eventful year so far. Its been worse since Dad died, particularly in the last month leading up to leaving work. This physical bubble duly burst on my penultimate day at work. I was cleaning a sink and whilst making a slight torso sideways turn there was a click and my back became touchy and tenderised. So during the last two days at work whilst training my replacement, I was nursing my back, bruised and brooding, through its snappy moods and spasms.

Last month we were at Overstrand Garden Centre on some UPM (urgent purchasing mission), to buy a pot probably. It was their Autumn Market where they have special craft stands and live music. We've generally try to avoid them, as the Summer event last year had an over-amped lounge singer drunkenly slurring his way through songs from the sixties Summer of Love. It was so in your face as to be unpleasant to stay around, so we quickly exited stage left chased by a bear. For this Autumn event, however, they'd booked in an all female Ukulele Band, but not a ukulele band as you'd normally conceive it. It consisted of ten ladies of 'matured middle age' shall we say, with bright golden hair rinses, who strummed lightly and gaily through a much darker music catalogue than there appearance might suggest. Playing tunes with murderous bad-ass subject matter such as The House of The Rising Son and Bad Moon Arising. The conjunction felt so utterly incongruous, we giggled with delight at it all the way home. Only in Norfolk.

When you've worked around people whose mental grasp of reality is unstable or obsessive, you can unconsciously assume they no longer possess the ordinary feelings and desires of a human being.  The need for independence and intimacy for example. Both of these hard to get in a mental health care home. I wasn't a member of staff, but I was a male in a largely female environment, and I couldn't fail to notice how some residents looked at me 'through different eyes' shall we say.

Feelings of desire weren't limited just to the female residents though. There was Fred for instance, a very local Norfolk born and bread chap, who I'd estimate is in his seventies. He's always been chatty and friendly, briefly talking about the weather, news or local events. Still fit enough to do regular voluntary work for a local farm. In the Spring, whilst I was still wearing work overalls he pointedly asked ' Will you be wearing shorts in the Summer' as if this might be something to look forward to. By mid way through the Summer I am indeed wearing shorts, and he remarked 'Oh, yu got quite a good taan on your legs, does it go all over?' I said 'No' and thought it best to leave it there. Since then I've regularly caught his eyes giving my legs a sly oggle.

Julie is, like Fred, a resident who is relatively free to come and go as she pleases. Originally from King's Lynn, where according to Irish Moira she was a drug dealer. I've no way of confirming this, so like most information I receive via a resident, it has a question mark over it. However, at least a third of the residents in the home are 'drug casualties'. Excessive drug use having welded the synapses in their brain according to an entirely different configuration than in the original operators manual. So it is possible Julie was once one a drug queen. In my last week she said something strange that possibly hinted at this seedier side. She asked me 'where you might buy a lie detector, because no one ever believes I'm a nice person'  which was immediately followed by a mumbled confession about a time 'when I was a teenager, I was put under a restraining order after stubbing out cigarette butts on someones face'

Julie is a gargantuan woman, shaped a bit like a Weeble. Similar to Queen Victoria, she's almost as large in circumference as she is tall. She carries out an elaborate early morning bathroom routine; painting kohl around her eyes; bright red varnish on her filed pointy nails, and platting and coiling her hair into side buns or pig tail. All surrounded by a sickly sweet aroma of musky strawberry. This has its uses, as it disguises the lingering poo smell from her toilet, which she rarely flushes. A regular job in her bathroom is to remove black splashes and scratchy scuffs of red from sink, bath and floor. I had to wait til all this bathroom palaver was over, before I could mop the floor, because her feet and shoes were so dirty they'd leave a record of her movements worthy of the artist Richard Long, otherwise.

Preliminaries completed and dressed in a black jumper with pink hearts all over it, she'd waddle downstairs for the next stage. Sitting outside in a plastic garden chair she can only just fit in, she looks at herself for hours in a petite round makeup mirror, arranging and rearranging the same hairs of her black fringe, over and over again. All down her puff pastry coloured arms are a series of names etched in blue tattooed capital letters, made up of spidery lines and dots. Starting at the top of her upper arm they go 'Julies loves Stuart' then 'Julie loves Pete' then 'Julie loves Mark'  then just above her wrist its 'Julie loves Dad'  concluding with a red heart. Sequentially it paints the suggestion of a storyline I'll never know the details of, that has always struck me as quintessentially sad.




My conversations with Julie have always been pleasant, but like with most residents, quite repetitive. We regularly swap our names, for instance. Whenever I'd be cleaning the resident's kitchen windows she'd inevitably sing the Mr Sheen jingle and say ' my Mum used Sparkle, do you remember Sparkle?', whilst her eyes would wander down to my crotch and she'd begin chuntering to herself, a noise similar to those that Muttley from the Wacky Races made.

Madame ASBO, I'd say is a woman in her late thirties. For weeks you'll hardly hear or see anything of her, then suddenly, without warning, she'll be repeatedly setting off the Fire Alarm, chanting loudly, singing out of tune, hoovering her room for hours, or playing rave music at extreme volume, all of these at any time of the day or night. She's recently been joined next door by Dave The Rave who currently competes with her for musical dominance of this rave culture. Both these people never appear to sleep, and neither does anyone else on that landing get much chance of shut eye either.

When I first started cleaning at the home Madame ASBO was the only resident I felt distinctly wary of. How she behaved seemed done knowingly, for the effect on others.  Now, I believe she was just testing me, like when she'd burst out of her room and shout expletives at me or bellow' what a fucking looser you are' right in my face, as I was casually hoovering her landing. She once stood talking incomprehensible tosh, head bent to face the reception floor as I'm mopping it, and after throwing lewd words and gestures to the workmen opposite, left. There was frequently a sexual undertow to what she does, though few people, I guess, find a shouting mad person alluring. There isn't a single resident who doesn't immediately vacate the room the moment she enters. Quite lonely and friendless, she has an thirteen year old son whom she occasionally meets up with. I feel for the boy, living with the knowledge of his Mother's mental condition, knowing you can never rely on her for emotional support, or for anything really.

Madame ASBO has, however, gradually warmed to me, and recently took to striking up friendly conversation with me. Trying to play matchmaker between myself and a lady who does night shifts, who I chat with in the mornings. There's a coy coquettish quality to the way Madame ASBO interacts with me. One day whilst I'm cleaning her door I heard her speaking from behind it 'Hello my name is Lucy, and I'm alone behind this door' followed by a slightly sinister girly giggle. Sometimes I've felt as though I've stumbled into some creepily camp Hammer Horror movie set.

Mr Ed, aka ~ the Talking Horse or Stinky Stuart, are a few of the names I've toyed with that fail to quite capture his essence in an epithet. He has a ground floor room in the L shaped corridor which, due to the nature of its residents, its proximity to a loo that forever gets blocked, and a general lack of ventilation, always pongs of horse dung.  Mr Ed is another Norfolk born man, but scrawny, dressed like a scarecrow, with a wildly unkempt bush of black corkscrew hair. He totters around at great speed with his zimmer frame, like a demented peg legged doll wearing trousers he's either peed or shat in. Its not just his cleanliness that's challenging, but also his language. His sentences are rambling and garbled, so you can rarely understand him, often working himself up into an angry tirade at staff. What comes over loud and clear are the swear words, that are never complementary about women. Even Irish Moira, a woman not averse to spitting out the odd poisoned invective, once said to me she thought he was evil.

For all her less appealing characteristics, I remain fond of Irish Moira, and will miss her. If only because she provided excellent source material to write about in this blog. Over the ten months I've worked in the home I've seen how her mental state has deteriorated as a result of a series of falls she's had and changes to her medication. Living opposite Madame ASBO and Dave The Rave, can't help either. She's often spun a melodramatic tale, such as the midnight police raid because five pounds has gone from her wallet. Mostly she's emotionally manipulative, trying to get me to clean her room because she says it hasn't been done for weeks, or to fetch her a member of staff, because she's not feeling well or at the point of death. I've had to learn to turn a deaf ear to this or I'd never get my job done. In the last few weeks she's become obsessed with cleaning the resident's kitchen. Well, it has to be said, its more the idea of cleaning, what she does is lightly brush the tea counter with paper towels whilst aggressively and repeatedly banging cupboard doors. She's become defensive and proprietorial about this activity, declaring the moment I appear ' It's clean' or trying to convince me that a visibly filthy floor is fine to leave as it is. That polish is good for nothing.

Her mood is changeable, one morning she's quite the sweet old lady, the next she's uttering 'and you can piss off' as soon as she sees you. The more I clean the more uptight she gets - 'just go away, cunt'.  then she'll goes outside, sucking insistently on a long dead roll up as if trying to breathe new life into it, trying to calm herself down with a ciggy. Popping back in to see if I've finished yet, and if I haven't crying despairingly 'Oh, for fuck sake' and slamming the door behind her. Once, whilst I was diligently cleaning porcelain in a toilet, she flung 'and you can go fuck yourself'  as she tottered by, to which I responded by blowing her a raspberry. Half muffled through a door closing behind her I could hear her shouting 'that's not funny'. The care home Manager said to think of her as like a frog. Baffled at first, it occurred to me later that indeed these are instinctual utterances similar to those of a croaking frog. Instead of 'rib beeb' out will pop a pungent swear word. Expletives turning into abrasive affirmations of presence, rough signs of her affection, or perhaps a mistranslated appeal for love.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 18 ~ Before & After Dad Died

Dad and I in Southwold

The Sleeping Prelude

Dad fell again, breaking his hip this time, dispatched to Scunthorpe General Hospital to have it replaced. The second fall in a year. Yet another long car journey up north to see how he was. We visited him three times in hospital that weekend, but each time he was sound asleep. One could have been forgiven for thinking he was already at the final precipice of death, as he drifted in and out of blurred wakefulness. When the nurses tried to stir him to eat, drink or take medications he'd wildly gesture them away, sometimes swearing as if in a drunken stupor.

However, all we got was one croaky 'hello' on our second visit after a bit of jokey cajoling from me. He was still there, but buried beneath what felt like a wilful blanket of slumber, a dogged refusal to come back into full wakefulness. A few weeks later his condition was much the same even though he'd returned to St Mary's Care Home. Experienced carers recognised the nature of what was taking place, what this state of almost perpetual sleep was a prelude of. So the nature of his care regime was consciously moved from being palliative to end of life. When that end might be was anywhere between a few days to a week, in fact that point was reached a day and a half later. Dad passing away during the early hours of the 27th July 2018.

Dad always had this streak of passive resistance in him, that manifested when he felt he was being pressured to do something he didn't want to. Were any family member to have the unenviable task of trying to persuade him to act on an issue, you'd see the familiar 'I'm shutting down now' look pass over his face. He would be doing no such thing. With hindsight, I'd say Dad had on some level 'shut down' on living much longer, at least as long ago as last year. He'd deliberately stopped taking his medications then, which within a few months did lead to his heart attack and first fall.  After each fall and hospitalisation he fought off anyone attempting to comfort or make him better. Even if these were partly symptoms of his Alzheimer's, Dad's existential will was still being pitted against those of the medical staff's best efforts.

After some dithering on my part I decided not to do the final dash to the death bed thing. Every visit lately had already felt like the last. The personality I'd known had dwindled away. Each time I'd said goodbye with the intuition I might not see him again. After his heart attack last year I'd had a conversation with Dad that trod gently upon spiritual earth. Though befuddled around the edges by the pain relief drugs he was on, his conversation nonetheless contained beads of clarity. He spoke of seeing people he'd not seen for decades, 'As if they've just walked in from around the corner in the corridor, and they leave the same way, They've never been that far away apparently, just around the corner'. He then did an unheard of thing, for my Dad, he held my hand affectionately, whilst he told me of  how 'its so lovely standing at the top and look down the Hebden Valley and the sun rising on the horizon, its so bright'. Those were the sort of parting words that I could treasure.

The House That Dad Built

Even before he died it was clear Dad would never return to his home. In the early 1980's he'd spent two years designing and building it, using every ounce of his spare time. He'd have been in his mid fifties then and it was the only time I saw him close to complete exhaustion. But he was driven by a lifetimes dream to build his own home. Dad could have these flights of fancy, that my Mum would sometimes have to bear the consequences of. Mostly these weren't of the scale of building a family house, but smaller enthusiasms, such as a new job, or things to do, to collect, the fresh skills he wanted to learn. Dad was the ambitious amateur, not put off by lack of precedence in talent or expertise, he took the attitude that things couldn't be that hard to do, he'd just give it a go. So the house became filled with the detritus of numerous past projects, plus the collections he'd begun but subsequently lost interest in. When I looked around the house with a more acquisitive eye I was left wondering what, if anything, of these possessions I'd want. Just a few tools that either I don't have or are better quality, and a few odd bits and bobs, not really much else.  I didn't share many enthusiasms in common with my Dad, apart from a love of history.

The house is structurally sound, though some of the woodwork in the eaves need attention. Internally it has an older person's aesthetic. Designed to meet their domestic needs, this was the house of Mum and Dad. Potential buyers will need to factor in the expense of altering all of that. Now he's died the disposal of his former possessions stepped up another gear. My Sister, Brother in law and their family because they live closer than I, have borne the lions share of this great task of clearance. I travelled up the Monday following his death to do what I could in the seemingly never ending chucking out of a life times collection of junk and clutter.

Dad in 1999

Knowing Dad Through The Stuff He Kept

As a Joiner by trade, my Dad accumulated racks full of wood, shelf after shelf of half rusted tins and jars containing half corroded nails, screws and fittings. Not to mention all manner of things that he put aside because they might prove useful someday. Going through endless amounts of tat, sorting out recyclable items, is rarely rewarding work. Behind it the emotional thrall of throwing away the symbolic remains of your parent exacts its own particular psycho-physical toll of weary lifelessness There is so little room for sentimentality here, or ecological concerns about how much stuff you are consigning to landfill. You just need to get shot of things, keep your head down, and at some point you'll emerge out the other end and be able to move on.

Clearing a parents house draws you closer to them, by virtue of entering into their private world. Glimpsing what they thought important and how they chose to document it. Dad's approach was, as ever, all his own. My Sister unearthed over twenty plastic folders stuffed with family photos that I went through selecting out what I wanted. Though things were well labelled and filed, the way he arranged the contents within wouldn't always conform completely to logic. As Alzheimer's began to alter his ability to organise, arrangements became more random, prone to following the whim of the moment. Interspersing random newspaper clippings and plant catalogue extracts with family photographs, each moving freely in and out of sequence, backwards and forwards through time. The effect of flicking through these files was like viewing life through a kaleidoscope.

A typical man of his generation, Dad was self-contained, with a secret emotional life, but with an easy going manner and a lovely helpful man to encounter. As my Uncle Trevor put it, 'though a quiet man, he was good, honest and true.'  To me he will forever remain a bit of a mystery. One of the challenges in being his son was trying to understand what moved and made him tick. He'd never proffer spontaneous utterances about what he thought or felt. This made it hard to emotionally identify with him, keeping any desire I had for a better connection at a distance. Being demonstrative or tactile wasn't in the lexicon of his behaviour, his parental feelings for you tended to become manifested through practical tasks. If you wanted a gauge how much he loved and cared for you, you'd have to read between the lines of the jobs he did for you, what he made for you, or by what things of yours he kept. He could be inflexibly opinionated if you didn't manage to avoid 'certain subjects', though he was at base extremely kind, infinitely patient and caring, for whom nothing was too much bother for those he loved or appreciated.

After repainting the entrance door, and clearing, pruning and tidying up the garden as much as I could, I was ready to approach that seemingly disordered pile of stuff scattered across the desks in Dad's den. His den was his bolt hole, a place of retreat. Often he'd spend hours up there, whenever he wanted a bit of peace and quiet, away from the infinite spontaneity of Mum's conversational drift. Emotionally I was holding it together quite well, until I stumbled across a small white plastic bag. Inside this was a small black cap for St Augustine's Primary School, with its school crest of a book, cross quills and a crown above a heart surrounded by flames, The symbolism of which appears to me now to be prescient of the sort of qualities I've tried to develop in myself. This was my first school cap, that I can be seen proudly wearing in early photos.  Such a little thing, to touch so deeply.

The Crest of St Augustine's C of E School, Halifax, Yorkshire

The Heart - the symbol of St Augustine of Hippo
The Sun - part of West Riding of Yorkshire's Coat of Arms
The Black - represents the black cassocks of Augustinian Monks.
The Crown -from the See of Wakefield's Coat of Arms.
The Pens - represents Learning
The Book - represents the Augustinian Rule.
The Crown - represents the Highest Thoughts
The Silver - represents Truth
The Flaming Heart - represents Love
The Blue - represents Loyalty.

Me in 1963

A Gathering Of Those Who Remain 

When you die in your nineties most of your contemporaries have already pre-deceased you, or like two of his remaining sisters, are in Residential Care Homes. So apart from my Auntie Joan, herself 89, but still able to drive across country to a funeral all the way from Chesterfield, and Dad's remaining brother Uncle Trevor, forever mischievous and lively even at 86, it was largely a gathering of my cousins and my Sisters family. Though a handful of people from the Scunthorpe Male Voice Choir that Dad had been a member of, and Natalie his main carer from St Mary's Care Home also turned up.

After a brief committal service at Woodlands Crematorium, it was back to Crowle Methodist Chapel for a remembrance service followed by a buffet at the 7 Lakes close by. A good turn out of people from the Methodist Chapel congregation was handy as most of my family would know none of the hymns Dad had chosen. Yet hymns do have a power to them, no doubt originally composed with the aim of stirring up responses from out of the intransigent mud of faithfilled depths. I certainly started feeling emotionally wobbly whilst singing them. They felt a fitting musical salute to Dad, a bracing praise of vocal trumpeting for his life. You could always find where my Dad was beavering away at a task, by locating the sound of him humming to himself. The tune he was humming was usually well nigh impossible to identify, it more resembled the hum of a contented bee at work collecting pollen.

Parental Influences

The best of my parental influences have served me well, a mostly happy childhood brought up in a peaceful home where I felt loved and appreciated, fed, housed, educated and nurtured. Giving me an ethical basis for getting on in life. There are always less helpful traits you pick up from them along the way; in my case it was being overly self-conscious, anxious, struggling with my self-esteem and confidence. These have proved testing to find ways to overcome, bypass, or at least learn to be less angsty about them.

Throughout childhood a repeated refrain was how much like my Mum I was, mostly it was in physical resemblance, but inferred to be in personal and emotional character too. This became like a family cliche, tending to disguise my own sense of agency and ignoring where I was actually very like my Dad. Though over the years I've discovered for myself what I inherited and learnt from him. I'm clearly an imperfect melange of both my parents personalities, with things that are all my very own mixed in. A bit of a dreamer like my Dad, but one who has been known to cramp the flourishing of those dreams behind an anxious fence of practicalities, that is quintessentially my Mum. Learning how to be more laid back about such things, as Dad seemed always to be, has been a job of work.

I've turned out to have a mix of practical and creative talents. The practical tending to dominate if I let it, doing the logical, responsible thing to which creative fulfilment, artistic endeavour and aesthetics will always play second fiddle. 'Its all very well you day dreaming Stephen, but you have to earn a living.'  says the Northern puritan work ethic hard wired from my upbringing. However, not pursuing dreams, to stifle them rather than actively get behind creative urges has often swamped the joie de vivre in a jungle of melancholy that I had to learn how to hack my way out of. How best to keep practical and creative impulses in a healthier, sympathetic relationship, is still my work in progress.

Moving On

They say we inherit from our parents all that is resolved and fully realised in them, and the rest, though perhaps stuffed into the corners of a battered old holdall, is where all their unresolved unrealised desires fester. The task for any son or daughter is to unpick yourself from the complicated tapestry of what your parents psychologically bequeath  you.  To find what is of value to you, to either cast aside the rest, or set about with a passion to resolve the unresolved, to realise the unrealised, through your own life.  Inheritances don't need to be treated as fate, with an awareness of other possibilities, we can take our parental legacies as a gift that you can either welcome, refuse or exchange.

As only the psychological and photographic archive of my Mum and Dad are now left, it remains to be seen what will flourish in the currently self-transforming perspective, where only their dual absence tangibly remains in reality.