One of my heroes, Beaumarchais

I must have been about ten and my sister eight when one of us somehow heard the word Figaro sung three times…the third Figaro drawn out. I remember us singing at the top of our voices, “Figaro…Figaro… Figaaaroooo”. It must have been irritating to anyone within hearing because to fully enjoy the three notes you have to sing them over and over.

I’ve no idea how the word or tune came to be a part of my life, but Figaro stuck. When the movie Amadeus came out in mid 80’s and one of his operas briefly mentioned in the movie was The Marriage of Figaro. Being in my teens, it dawned on me that this must be where the word came from. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the entire opera. I thought I had and then I found out that my copy was missing parts and I can’t actually remember if anyone in the Opera actually sings, “Figaro Figaro Figaaaroooo”, but it was no longer a meaningless word. It was name. It was a person. Read more…

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This evening I went for a walk hoping to find something to photograph, but as the light was fading I didn’t really have much hope. I stopped at the bridge where a little stream runs under the road and nearly didn’t see the family of swans; two parents and three or four half grown signets. Lovely! I tried to take some photos, but there were too many branches in the way. Wanting to walk a little farther, I turned off the road to walk up past the fields where its peaceful and safer (I was nearly hit by a car crossing the road because I didn’t look right until I stepped into the road - escape from death number…can’t count that high!). It didn’t actually occur to me to look at the setting sun until I’d taken some pictures of a dead looking field and noticed steaks of light on the clouds. It was then I turned around and saw the sun setting behind me. I walked up farther to where I could get a clear view and took some lovely photos of the sun setting over Stamford. I nearly missed seeing the sun itself…I roll my eyes at myself…but then I saw it peeping out from under the low cloud and I hurried back to take some more photos and admire the view. Here are some of my favorite shots… Read more…

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Late this afternoon I went down to the kitchen to make some yogurt soda bread and poached eggs when Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A seemed to haunt me with forgotten rainy day as I stopped to stare out the windows at the wet sky. I suddenly had an urgent compulsion to walk in the rain with my camera. It was very irritating that the bread had only just gone in the oven (I bake small lumps in a muffin tin dusted with flour so it only takes twenty minutes and it tastes really good!). It was about an hour before I’d finished eating and managed to get out the door, but it felt exhilarating to put up my umbrella and walk in the rain. I think I over did it after being poorly this last week, but I really enjoyed it until near the end when the wind picked up while I was trying to take a few photos of the medieval priory and the rain blew in under my umbrella. Read more…

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I’m one of those people who if walking or riding in a car after dark, will compulsively stare into strangers windows. If the curtains aren’t drawn and there’s light shining out of it, I will peer in as I pass. I never stop, that would be creepy, but I turn my head and wonder who lives there and how they can stand the colour on their walls, mentally rearrange their furniture or marvel at the loveliness of the decor. Randomly trawling through the blog-o-sphere, as I was just doing, has the same feeling of peering into people’s windows except instead of getting a glimpse of someone’s life you see them metaphorically dancing naked to their latest favorite song. You can’t be sure if they’re exercising or knowingly flaunting themselves in the hope some nut case stares into the window and sees them. I wonder how many people stare into my blog-window and think, “I’m glad I don’t live next door to her.”?
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I’ve been in a strange morose state the past few weeks (months?). The thought of blogging or writing to kith and kin seems to switch on the fog machine in my brain. It’s belching out fluffy gray clouds as I write. The spell of morose mental weather could be caused by the actual weather which has been mainly overcast for weeks. I’m one of those people affected by positive ions in the air (due to certain types of weather)…really…and no, I don’t hear alien voices…none with strange accents anyways (writers always hear their characters talking). So I’ve been a morbid wench (What is this ache, twinge, throbbing pain? I’m going to die…my Goblin will be lonely…until he finds a new wife…etc), but at the same time I’ve been slowly writing or rewriting. My brain clears when I work on my stories, but not when I try to write a birthday letter. I find this really irritating as the longer I don’t write the letter, the longer I’ll feel guilty, the more I feel guilty the more I procrastinate. Screams rend the still night air…

Letters aside, I managed to walk into town this past week. I stopped off at the charity shop and found a book called, The World of Leonardo. With a picture of the Mona Lisa on the cover I assumed correctly the subject was Leonardo da Vinci. Thumbing through the book this evening I came across the little sketch of a mask (the photo). In the book, underneath the image was a caption which clears the fog in my brain.

“Designed for some long-forgotten festival, this mask is one of many Leonardo undoubtedly made, along with complete costume designs, stage scenery and court decorations, both in Milan and Later in France. It has been linked with a cryptic inscription found elsewhere in his notes: If you value your liberty, do not reveal that my face is the prison of love. ”

The only thing that makes sense is that he’s writing to his heart (or a heart). It brings to mind someone hiding their feelings behind an emotional mask not because the sentiment would be unwelcome, but out of fear of ending up a fool. Has your face every been a prison of love? When I lost my youthful heart to a young Goblin (not the one I married) I thought I was glancing at him across the school court yard (or whenever he came into view) without revealing my feelings, but I have a cursed expressive face. I fear I was a double fool. I’ve never imagined Leonardo da Vinci making a fool of himself. I suspect his emotional mask was useless, unless he never made eye contact with his beloved. Anyone who’s had their heartstrings yanked by invisible hands knows how unlikely that is!

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My oldest rememorabilia...a gift I received on my fifth birthday. A Wade figurine made in England.

There’s a seaside bookshop in Suffolk that always has several cardboard boxes of cheap books outside. I always stop to have a nose. The other week I found a 1914 edition of three of Henrik Ibsen’s plays one of which was A Doll’s House. I’d read the play several times about twenty years ago, but I could only remember that the play touched me…not what happens in the play or how it ended. My memory of the story seemed to remain with my last copy which most likely ended up in an Oregon seaside dump along with most of my other books and childhood treasures. In my minds eye, I can see the mountain of garbage. Screaming seagulls, white against the gray sky, fighting over scraps of discarded food while deep underneath never to be seen again are my precious memories.

Have you ever noticed how objects seem to magically store our memories? Lose the object that reminds you of the memory and the memory can fade until its lost in the mists of never-happened-land. There’s something powerful about objects we imbue with a memory. I’ve always valued memorabilia. As a child of about eight or nine, I found the school memories book my mother had bought for me when I was five, and finding it empty I collected the important papers I’d kept from my previous school years and put them in my book. Over the years I continued collecting. I still have the contents of that memory book. My diaries and other important paperwork went home in a special box. My regular diary along with my early stories and drawings survived, but my Literary Diary (which I’d kept from 12-26) had no obvious value to my mother so it went into the trash. My Literary Diary was an important list of memories I’d attached to books. Now the only books I can remember reading before 27 (when I started a new diary) are the ones that really stood out. This is probably not a bad thing. If I can’t remember reading the book, then it probably wasn’t part of a significant moment in my life…or was it? I’ve no idea. I can’t remember. Read more…

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I woke up early after a muggy night and rolled out of bed to put the trash out. Once outside it was so much cooler and pleasant than inside the house I stayed outside to weed the garden and pick up all the trash that had blown into the yard over the last month. I even washed the front door. I don’t know if the large spider survived, but the door looked better without so many cobwebs. I can’t figure out why the spiders keep making webs on my front door. I use it nearly every day. (The web weavers spin their energy on webs sure to be torn before their finished while the flies escape into the house to torment me. I spent £2.49 on fly traps…I’ve caught one fly.) I knew today would be stressful because I was expecting a package. I end up caught in a mental loop of “Will they find us? Will they leave my package on the doorstep of the other house in town with the same name? Will it come broken? Will it be the thing we ordered…” Yes I’m paranoid and I couldn’t go back to sleep. After coming back inside I opened all the windows upstairs and spent the rest of the day intending to go back to bed, but I didn’t.

The package finally arrived around 4:30. A half hour later the Goblin decides he needs something for the computer and wants a chocolate milkshake so half asleep I get in the car and we drive off to Peterborough. By this time I’m so tired my legs feel full of sand. We had an unhealthy fast food dinner and as we weren’t far from Fotheringay (where Mary Queen of Scots lost her head) I asked the Goblin if he’d drive me over so we could see the landscape in the setting sun…I assured him it would be romantic. He’s such a lovely goblin! He muttered that I could climb what I wanted, but he’d be staying in the car. We got to Fotheringay and there was a giant fat cloud hanging overhead so the landscape looked flat and dull. I told him the fat ugly cloud had ruined my plans and to drive on, but if he saw any wheat fields with the setting sun on them I’d be very happy if he pulled over and let me take some photos. We weren’t far from Apethorpe when he said…we’ve never gone this way…let’s take this road. Read more…

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This morning I wanted to make a comment on the article in the New York Times ‘Accepting that good parents may plant bad seeds’ by Dr Richard A. Friedman (a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College of Manhattan), but there was no comment box. I wasn’t deterred; I have a blog!

Dr Friedman writes, “For years, mental health professionals were trained to see children as mere products of their environment who were intrinsically good until influenced otherwise; where there is chronic bad behavior, there must be a bad parent behind it.”

I can’t help, but think that most people who go into the mental health profession (if they were taught this and believed it) must have predominantly been either only children or from very small families who didn’t regularly go to church and interact with numerous other whole families over any length of time. I have six siblings. I’m the second child, the oldest daughter. Every week we went to church and interacted with a  group of families. I knew the families as a small child into young adulthood many of them in public and private spheres. People have always fascinated me. Over the years I watched and listened; I know good parents can have bad children. I know bad parents can have good children. I also know that good parents aren’t always as good as they think they are. Read more…

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When we woke early yesterday it was already hot and our brick house was the proverbial oven with the unpleasant addition of a few flies who continued to mock the ugly dangling sticky traps we hung the day before. I’d just started working on Dancing the Maypole when the Goblin came in to inform me he had the urge for one of his favorite burghers in Solihul (about twenty or so miles north of Stratford Upon Avon). My characters were left mid sentence for an air-conditioned ride. Having reached our destination, while we waited for our food I casually mentioned that since we’d come all that way for a burgher, would the Goblin feel up to driving me somewhere I could take pictures? (He’s been unwell so I didn’t want to pressure him.) He said he’d manage a detour home so I was quite happy to traipse around in the heat on a full stomach looking for a casual sun-hat for the Goblin. The only one he liked was £40. (Who said you can’t spin straw into gold?) He decided not to get it and I sighed in relief as I didn’t like it and we were soon back in the car. When he took the turning South to Warwick and Stratford Upon Avon my first thought was, ‘Warwick!’ As we approached the turning to Warwick I said, “Ooh Warwick! I’d love to go there…I read about in my Medieval book they have some medieval effigies…” I don’t think he heard me. When the Goblin drives…he drives!

He turned off for Stratton Upon Avon. I was disappointed, but I hadn’t yet visited the church where Shakespeare’s buried so I knew I’d find something to photograph and I’d enjoy it, but it wasn’t meant to be. We entered the city through some portal into an alternative dimension where Shakespeare (and decent architecture) never happened to that spot on the Avon river. We drove in horrified circles getting more claustrophobic and dehydrated. When we saw a sign directing weary travelers back to Warwick I shouted (the Goblin’s hard of hearing), “Let’s go to Warwick!” I’m surprised the tires didn’t make a loud screech as he turned right at the round-about and floored it away from the depressing vision behind us.
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Sometimes progress is a small pile of pencil shavings. It might take a stretching of the imagination, but you could change the world with a freshly sharpened pencil. You could use it as a weapon and put out the eye of an attacker. The villain starts wearing an eye patch which engenders sympathy and kindness from strangers and soon makes friends with people who aren’t remotely villainous. He (though it might be a she) reforms their evil ways and goes to clown school where they meet someone in need of pirate Vaudeville act. The villain takes along his pet budgie and is such a success he’s soon a TV star making millions of people laugh. An unhappily married couple watch the show and that night make love instead of war. Nine months later the woman gives birth to the person destined to discover that rocks are the untapped energy source which will make oil redundant. All because you sharpened a pencil.

Yesterday I finished reworking Chapter 26 of my book, Dancing the Maypole. All I have to show for four weeks of effort is a small pile of shavings, but I have great hopes that my sharpened characters will keep telling me how their story unfolds and soon I will finish a book. My book might then make someone laugh. That reader might have a good day and impulsively befriend someone who’s shy and lonely who’s then emboldened to start a disco club for shy people Read more…

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