Letting go, running on. Part 1.

It feels like I have sat down at my computer to write a thousand blog posts since the last one but yet have produced and posted nothing of interest. I have to admit to have been somewhat preoccupied and this preoccupation has left me at times terribly busy and at others numb with boredom. Inert with the effort of drawing down the patience for waiting. Inert with the fear of hearing bad news. It appears that following one's dreams takes a little bit of effort!

Let me explain myself a little better.  While on holiday on Donegal, myself and Mr S found ourselves madly in love - with on first appearances a beautiful shabby old lady, a century old house in a stunning location. In fairness, the estate agent did say on the 2nd viewing, So all the work doesn't put you off? No, we laughed as I ran my hand over the stunning marble art deco fireplace, aware that the room I was standing in had walls crumbling and fragile with damp, the high plaster ceilings criss- crossed with delicate wooden batons which lifted the room height visually even higher but stained with water.

The kids ran around, mad excited eejits,  at once picking out bedrooms and planning to play hide and seek in the gardens and ride their bikes along the quiet country road. Little O planning on going fishing on the river that runs parallel, E where she would put her desk under the eaves. I could see clearly past all the neglect and decay, I could see great over-stuffed sofas, book-lined walls, generous window seats with views out over the mountains, the clink of glasses and the chatter of all the guests we would have to stay. Comfortable bedrooms, a roaring fire and long lazy breakfasts. A proper country retreat. All it would take was a little bit of effort, sure hadn't we done this all already with our own house?

We put in a cheeky offer. Accepted with thanks. A builder came round to check out and cost the rebuild of the wonky chimneys and the source of much of the damage, Affordable. He said, Aye it is a fair enough house for having been left. Brilliant, we said, here is where the kitchen will go, we will put an en-suit there, we can't wait to pull up all the old sodden carpets and pull the peeling paper completely off. Delighted we asked ourselves, will we even bother with a survey?

There is a season.

Oh my, September has slipped by so quickly this year, in a swoon of golden light and a myriad of small tasks. It was hard getting back into the busy routine that marks the start of the school year but adjust to it we did and are all the better for it. Slowly, the house is being put back to normal after all the renovation activity and slowly all the plaster dust is being eliminated.

I have been preserving and gardening, simple life affirming tasks that I love doing when all is peaceful in the house I finally got around to making my marrow and ginger jam which has been a taste revelation! Spread on hot buttery scones the taste is of delicate sunshine with a little hot lick of the ginger, so so good. I posted the recipe last Autumn here. I have been planting in my poor neglected garden, 60 tulip and narcissus bulbs all waiting for the spring and a couple of bare root roses which I hope will inject some much needed summer colour and scent.

My tottering pile of granny squares is making me feel quite smug and is keeping me from getting back down to concentrating on practicing my sewing but I can feel the weather turning and cannot wait until all the squares are joined up into a lovely cosy blanket. In between all that, my Open University course has started again and I am loving it so much this my penultimate year. This module is a history module, my first love and we are studying Europe from 1914 to 1989 which gave me quite a start when I realized that the scope of this course ends the year I began to study history the first time around!

We have celebrated Life, E turned eight that the end of the month and is getting so tall sometimes I glimpse the teenager that will appear in my life one day, yet sometimes when she cries for me I sense that my wee cuddly girl will be around for a little while yet. The tooth fairy arrived and she was allowed to ride in the front seat of the car for the first time, big steps for a little person. O found it a little harder to settle back to school this year, he was upset at leaving his teacher from last year and while his current teacher seems fine, he had a special connection with his first year teacher that was always going to be impossible to replicate. Sometimes I do contemplate going back to work but it is such a privilege being here for them when they come home and to have the time to listen to all their little worries and triumphs.

We have also brought in a tiny harvest from our poor neglected allotment, we say this every year but next year we are going to be top growers. I was just delighted with the sunflowers this year and we had a good many cucumbers, courgettes, and the pumpkins are looking good for Halloween. Unfortunately O has adopted that wee pumpkin that you can see on the plate there, 'Pumpkiny' has been going to school with O for the past couple of days and I am wondering how to break the news that I want to roast and eat him...

We have saluted Death, my Grandfather's brother J, was laid to rest in the Co. Tyrone soil that sustained all eight of his brothers and sisters, his Father and Grandfathers. He was almost 95 and jokingly referred to himself as 'The Last Man Standing,' With his passing ends a generation of men and women that connected our familial memory to a past that is retreating all too quickly into our folk history. A history of collecting well water, gas lamps, drying clothes on the blackthorn hedge, thatched roofs and baking soda bread on the griddle. The Child of Prague on the wall and a best suit for Sunday. His family placed his cap, walking stick and wedding photograph on the altar, J and M smiled out from the frame, the joy of youth captured in a shutter click, filmic in their simple 1940's suits and sharp good-looking features, hair swept back. A blink of an eye is a life yet isn't there something so comforting, so right about a life lived well.


Thank-you so much for reading. have a fantastic week! xxx

Hidden Mother: Imagining the Past.

 (Image from Tuesday-Johnson.tumblr.com)

This blog is supposed to be a little bit of this and a wee bit of that, books, cooking, a bit of craft nothing too taxing or controversial but I am beginning to understand that the process of writing sometimes is not that agreeable to self-bound perimeters. Sometimes subjects collide in such a way that they crowd other thoughts and will not go away almost like the residue of a half-forgotten dream that invades the rest of the day. But to begin to write it out; I have to retreat a little into digression.

I am a self-confessed vintage and antique junkie, there is nothing I like better than a dusty old junk shop, charity shop or even over-priced high end retail establishment dealing in exquisite Georgian furniture that I could never afford much less fit into my little 1930's dolls house. I love vintage French linens, 17th century glass and pottery, Victorian jewellery, hand-turned treen, mid century Danish design, 1950's kitchenalia. I get a little bit silly over vintage clothes, Victorian to Mod, it doesn't really matter just as long as it is a little bit atmospheric. Or probably as someone said (only a little disparagingly) just as long as it has belonged to a dead person.

Occasionally a new fetish befalls me, lately I am fascinated by those 1960's tourist scarfs, my favourite is this one from Panama. One day, when I learn to machine sew it is going to be a big squashy cushion on my swing seat.

Holding it in my hand I feel connected to another age, one of glamour, long long sea journeys and perhaps a brief encounter. However there is a down side of the acquisitive collector -apart from the financial-it is the story of regret of 'the one that got away' the 'if only I had bought that' piece. I have two such pieces that occasionally pop back into my head and I sigh and have to console myself with a frustratingly unsuccessful (re) search on eBay.

One was a Victorian mirror, it was framed in pewter-coloured iron and bedecked with such a perfusion of climbing cherubs, vines and flowers it was a perfect riot of over-the-top-ness. It was for sale in a little shop in South London, it was heartbreakingly inexpensive but back-creakingly heavy. My lifestyle was unfortunately peripatetic in those days for such a weighty addition. The other was also a Victorian piece, a large beautifully framed portrait of a baby, and what a gorgeous, chubby cheeked child it was. Sweetly dimpled, it smiled right out from it's smooth rose-wood and gilt frame.

I have no real idea why this piece continues to fascinate me. I was outbid which was annoying I suppose and I am attracted to the idea of living in a house with a history and filled with ordinary domestic objects with a past, not necessarily my own historical narrative. it is also fascinating to conjecture why this portrait had become detached from its own familial narrative. Then while 'searching' for a similar portrait, I happened to stumble across some 'hidden-mother' photography.

Divested of their contextualizing and literal frames, these images are strange and other worldly, alien and un-readable. Usually they are written about in connection with that other artistic anachronism, the Victorian post-mortem. However, the explanation for these images is quite mundane and common-sensorial. The obscuring of the 'mother' was down to a desire to capture only the image of the child and to hold them still for the exposure times. Nevertheless, there is some quality about these photos that really fascinate me so I am so excited about Linda Fregni Nagler's new book 'The Hidden Mother', which is reviewed in today's Guardian. Thank goodness for Christmas coming up.

Occasionally, I worry that all this desire to construct an atmosphere of nostalgia is somehow linked to my own very real and occasionally still raw disconnection from a part of the fabric of familial relationships. At the weekend my daughter was compiling a list of all her family members (we are part of a very big and blended family) and asked me if she could add at particular name, my mothers name. I have not seen her for twenty -two years.

For twenty of those years I have attempted to remain pragmatic about this situation and sought to build my own family and forge my own connections and have not really had time consider the absence of this relationship. But E is now at the age of hard to answer questions and so my mother is slowly becoming more present in our family life simply because of this absence. She is becoming like the ghostly figures in the photographs, a hidden mother, present but without an appropriate frame.

 (image from http://piximus.net/media/6724/the-hidden-mother-13.jpg)