MORE SWIMMING STORIES

My Mum and I were the swimmers in the family-I think I remember her carrying me down the steps; me splashing, laughing and waving my little arms eagerly.
She often told me stories of swimming, young with friends in the Wannsee outside Berlin on a Saturday afternoon, diving off rafts in the middle of the water.
I was fearless kicking, splashing, and diving between my Mum’s legs to pick up sixpence from the bottom of the pool.
I’d go to the open air pool on my bike,riding carefully behind my big brother. I’d stand on the side pretending to be a racing diver and plop in.
One day I climbed slowly up to the top board, a hot day, everyone eating their Neapolitan ice creams between wafers looked so tiny below me.
The water sparkled blue/green.
I closed my eyes and jumped. I’d do it again tomorrow for that feeling; body straight arms together, flying through the air towards the sparkly blue/green water. I was concentrating on breathing as I came up breaking the surface of the water with bubbles. I climbed out, legs very wobbly, hoping I’d impressed my brother.
He turned round, surprised to see me, he hadn’t noticed my feat of courage, he was facing the other way, smoking, chatting up girls, all older, all teenagers ,all cool.
I pedalled home as fast as I could still in my swimming costume, long dripping wet hair.
I had to tell my Mum.

She was thrilled!

I went swimming last night
I always carry a swimming costume with me in case.
I nearly drowned twice in the sea-in Crete; the big waves in the storm beckoned me in.
In Israel when the undertow was too fast.
I have swum in the North Sea in February and shivered all afternoon, sipping brandy out of a plastic cup.
I cut my leg, dashed against rocks by an unexpected fast current in a river in Yorkshire.
I’m never afraid in the water
 floating is an old friend from long ago.
I like the sun beams dancing on the sea
Swimming with my friend side by side in a warm calm sea at sunset
The horizon ahead
I said‘Let’s swim out’
Swimming out- to freedom, carried by gentle waves
Don’t look back
The horizon’s ahead
Don’t look back

MY YEAR IN CIRCLES

Christmas 2004: Joolz, my art therapist friend, gave me a pristine pack of sparkling gel pens and a new notebook with a quote by Picasso on the cover;

‘The inner me is necessarily in the canvas because I am the one who makes it’.

‘I’m doing circles this year,’ she said, ‘One a day, why don’t we both have a go?..They’re called Mandalas’.
So I did.
Every evening through the long winter I drew and coloured a circle.

Between December 29th and April 4th the colours were cool, mauve and blue, lots of grey, bare stick like patterns, sometimes vivid zig zags cutting across an icy background. My circle were small, constrained; images often radiating from the centre, sometimes spilling over the circumference and trailing down the page.

In my first circle I wrote

If this was a sand painting the tide would wash over it.

The wind would blow it away

On New Year’s Day we went to Cleethorpes to look at the sea and I drew my circle in the car, whilst clutching a steaming cup of cocoa. I wrote around its rim of orange and blue patterns:

The renewal of cells-the dance of the hormones

The sound of sleeping, the silence of winter

The rhythm of our heartbeat

The sound of the tide in and out

January 7th: my mauve circle had some green leaves tumbling over it, with red edging and across the top of the page:

Today the wind was blowing; the dark clouds across a pale grey sky.

Trees were swaying and bending their naked branches against the sky.

The mothers clutching their children’s’ hands were bent sideways-whisps of hair blowing wildly whilst passing old ladies holding onto their hats with narrowed eyes.

I was driving to work

‘I’m waiting for snowdrops’

Suddenly on April 7th my circles were huge on the page, and painted in bold watercolour stripes and swirls; between April and July they became increasingly vivid, sometimes a mass of green and blue pastels radiating from the middle with yellow edgings, other times flowers were dropped on to the circle, delicate cowslips, a giant pansy leaf, bright blowsy red tulips falling over the page., little notes were pushed into the page s saying,

Drip drip orange paint on a thick brush.

I’ll paint in pink and silver everyday.

Drip drip on the face of the sunflower (a huge messy painted orange sunflower filled that page)

In July I started painting the faces of huge daisy shapes everyday another rainbow colour formalised by silver gold copper tips and edgings on the petals:

I have to keep painting the flowers before they go

Later in the year the circles became smaller again, back to the gel pens, constrained, images of rain and grey skies and restriction, sometimes hurried.

The next Christmas arrived; we brought our circles and marked the celebration after work with cake and coffee in her little art room. We opened our books. I gasped at the maze of fiery geometric shapes that were Joolz’s. She watched the seasons unfurl as she turned my pages , the light pour on to the page and then slowly recede again as the next winter drew near.

Joolz had not revealed to me that traditionally mandala work was mainly around geometric patterns and my year of circles burst forth on to the page with a range of loose and random images that came from somewhere within myself.

I know they reflected the seasons, my relationship with the natural world and their affect on my mood .In my circles I saw light and dark, liberty and constraint, sadness and joy, fear and hope..

Mandala in Sanskrit means ‘essence’ and ‘having’ or ‘containing’. It also translates as ‘circle-circumference’ or ‘completion’, .both derived from the Tibetan term dkyalkil khor, a concentric diagram having spiritual and ritual significance in both.

I learned that Carl Jung (1995) had become fascinated by circular Mandala images, which are used in meditation practices in Hindu and Buddhist religions. They are found in Christianity under the form of frescos with animal images representing apostles (and the zodiac). Carl Jung saw them as an expression of the unconscious.

‘. I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point -- namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation.


I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate.’ (Jung.1995p.228).

This piece first appeared in ‘Therapeutic Journal Writing’ by Kate Thompson 2011

PRINCESS BUTTERFLY

I slide in front of my PC and feverishly start royal watching.I do this when I am stuck with my writing or simply too hot.This current  craze  started shortly after my prolonged scrutinies of Kate’s wedding dress.

Now I’ve now moved on to hats, Beatrice's in particular. I love that girl. Not afraid of looking bonkers; carries a space age sculpture on her head. Never mind Pippa’s rear view shimmying down the red carpet, that girl with  her startled rabbit in trhe headlights expression, the round kohl eyes and an entire space craft balanced precariously on her forhead. I Google  feverishly 'Beatrice's hats' and  gasp, there she is! Heres a visionary ; one who  knows how to create a woman's dream!

This time  she has a swarm, a pride, a school of multi-coloured butterflies on her head! I swoon with joy.

 Go girl go. 

 Leave  the  family chrysallis far behind  and  spread your multi-coloured wings. Do your butterfly thing for every woman in Marks and Spencer’s elasticated trews, in a crimpelene cardigan and especially for me,   longing  to  carry a mass of fluttering  rainbow creatures on my head ; when would I wear this  dream ,this paradise, this exquisite expression of my inner world?
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon in February,walking the dogs on Hampstead Heath!

The Butterfly Princess 

Manolo Vardes' Head with Butterflies, Chatsworth 2010

Blah blah from the countryside

Today I wrote blah, yesterday I wrote blah, blah; tomorrow I will write blah blah blah and so on; recording the mundane details of a boring life. Texting and  twittering; recording minutiae on Facebook. I browse with disdain,the young ones  looking forward to the Apprentice,they love their families,the car breaks down,they list the occasional cool film,comment on a new download, funky nail varnish;  so banal and tedious.
This is a rant from an ageing hippy
I often reflect on what I leave out in my own blog or journal, more observations from up my arse.
The little dog bites the big dog's tail  because he's bored.
Who wants to know this crap, whether we discussed curtains for the new room,  the wild flower seeds will be sown today, in newly turned over soil, rich and dark, briefly devoid of menacing weeds.
This is an ageing hippy drifting...
Who wants to read the  rumblings and grumblings of a fading sixty year old, or the tweetings and bleatings of the thrusting generation with their misspellings, misquotings, sharp comments, quicky snappies of mad coloured hatties, temples in Thailand,blonde lovers in the snow, cartwheeling on a beach in Brazil.
Young and old,little puppy and old dog,fading eyes, fading hearing, strong beating heart. The puppy's floppy ears twitch at the footsteps of an ant far away.
They came out in their thousands to celebrate the  hot sunshine, swarming over thin floorboards .Maybe they arrived on the puppy's paws, the monster baby disrupting their hills and valleys.
The morning glory seeds have all taken and await like delicate soldiers in their pots until they're strong enough to spread their roots  and climb their canes, a new china blue flower will turn its saucer shaped face to greet the morning sun; a reason to rise early each one blooms only once. I wait to watch how the light shines through translucent petals.
This is an ageing hippy, perhaps writing a memoir, blah blah


 Carry /inks and watercolour

KNITTING

Mary Hardcastle’s mum was a knitter, like my mum. She tucked her needles under her arms and clickety clacked grey socks. Sometimes she used a round needle, with a safety pin. I was riveted. So this was English knitting. Was the round needle English? The grey wool or just knitting socks?

They tried to teach us knitting in school, the English way, everyone brought grey wool and cast on in slow motion.

I struggled with English knitting.

A pair of giant needles lay on the teacher’s desk with a square piece of plain knitting in lime green string. Every time one of us dropped a stitch we had to stand in front of the class and knit a row of lime green.

I often stood there, six years old, scabby knees and grubby socks, one up, one down. I worked the needles painfully, attempting to reach the end of the row with all my stitches intact. At the end of term the teacher presented me with the green object, ‘a dish cloth’ she said, 'you’ve done most of it, take it home to show your Mother'.

My mother was the creator of pink wool dresses, soft jumpers with scalloped edges, fluffy striped scarves, the knitter with flashing needles.  They knitted the continental way, the women in my family, holding the needles close together whizzing along rows creating my new jumpers. I watched wide eyed, sometimes holding the wool skeins between my little arms, whilst they wound the wool round and round into new balls.

My granny was the maker of my precious royal blue pixie-hood with scarf attached. She also made wild multi-coloured pomp poms and embroidered delicate flowers on my cardigans.  I stood on the table as together they measured the length of small knitted dresses. I stretched out my arms so they could attach the sleeves, one holding the pins in her mouth, the other holding my arm straight chattering away, foreign sounds and foreign laughter. Continental afternoons, with continental cakes and continental knitting,   only the grey English winter drizzling outside the window

I walked disconsolately out of school, tearing the lime green yarn with my teeth, but it was stringy and hard. I slipped into a shaded driveway and dug into a stranger’s flowerbed with my bare hands, burying the shameful object, like a puppy, this secret of my failed knitting.

Older now, I watch the new knitting movement explode. Knit and bitch groups of young women sit on sofas in smart bars clicketting, clattering, knitting and chattering away. I venture into a new wool shop and embark on new knitting for a new era. Large needles, I can't go wrong, knit something with big holes in the pattern and dropped stitches won't show.

My mum, now 90 casts on, nimble fingers weaving the yarn under and over; I struggle to learn, good for my own ageing brain, I think, different use of neurotransmitters, I can do this.

Looping the yarn in front of my knit two together confounds me, After several hours I go back to the shop. The lady’s nostrils flare, 'you have made a mess '; she unravels the mess and my years unravel back to the shame of my childhood. 'The casting on’s wrong.'  It can't be, I still believe unequivocally in my mum's flying fingers as she magicked stitches on to the needle....'The yarn is on the wrong side, start again'.  I walk out of the shop defeated

I google ' knitting ' on the internet and an American website shows videos starting with casting on, progressing to the dancing needles, intricate patterns and multi-coloured yarns of my knitting dreams.

I click on the continental knitting video and before my very eyes flying fingers appear, casting on just like my mum. Hands hold the needles with the yarn on the left side, like my Mum and my Granny before her. The women in my continental home were oblivious that in the outside world, knitters held their yarn on the right side. No-one in my English school could know that in my home the world of colour and pattern was created holding the yarn on the left.

I was a little girl in the middle, one foot on the foreign soil of my refugee parents and the other foot making a wobbly print of belonging on its English home soil.    

The internet sorted out my yarn issues and I have completed my first knitting, a shawl on big needles, no dropped stitches.

I am a proud continental knitter, my yarn confidently on the left side, as the women in my family knitted before me. I have earned my rightful place on the knit and bitch sofas in the new multicultural age of   English knitters.

THE GREAT NORTH SWIM

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER

For the first time ever I was to be an athlete. I was in training all summer, building up my stamina in the swimming pool, in a river, in a lake, every day another length, another second faster, I was in  training for the Great North Swim.

I was  never  a sporty child, never singled out for running at school, legs too short for netball. The hockey field squelching with mud on a wet February afternoon was misery. I’d slink away to the trees, with my friend Pat, we’d light up a cigarette between us and watch for boys on the horizon, looking cool in navy woollen knickers and a white air-tex gym blouse.

I danced through my young years leaping about in African print caftans , curtains of dark  hair and bare feet – succumbing  stoned  to the rolling stones and twirling through time, every day a Ruby Tuesday

I missed a step one drunken evening and broke my leg with a resounding crack so I spent my middle years  trudging uphill and down dale, trailing after my strong Peak District lover,  a flask of coffee and brandy in my backpack, a determined smile not to be beaten by the descending grey mist, a dark sky and the wind whipping our cheeks.

So no sporting conviction from me, until now - past my prime, heading over the hill, a small round figure grappling with rubber, squeezing into my wet-suit, falling to the ground as I tame my flippers.  

But hey, just find me wading fearlessly into the surf on the edge of the cold North sea, hear my gasp as I plunge into the icy river and roll over and over in the current  as it rushes down from the hills.  Watch me glide confidently across the still mirrored surface of a lake surrounded by mountains, calm wide strokes as I swim through reeds and rushes, a kingfisher flying past my ear.

Yes, I am an athlete in water; I swim out to the next adventure.

It was to be the culmination of a summer of training - a mile every other day - preparing  to swim across Lake Windermere.

For the first time ever I  would stand breathless, gasping, beaming, clutching my medal of endurance and achievement.

For the first time ever there was blue algae on lake Windermere.

For the first time ever The Great North Swim was cancelled.

But I’m still a swimmer

I’m still an athlete in water, swimming out to the next adventure.


struggling into our wetsuits



J and me in training 



Threads from Alsace

DREAMS OF A CHERRY ORCHARD
Cooked black cherry jam again yesterday. I love jam making it has its own rhythm, watching the cherries get ripe over two months, tasting and deciding the time to pick, standing with baskets under the tree deciding whether to leave the stems on or not. There is a crop every two years.Is that the natural cycle? or  because last year the last frost came late, caught the blossoms in the springtime and arrested the fruit?

John holds the higher branches down and I pick, wearing a large straw hat because the sun is  beating down on us. He cannot get a ladder firm against the tree and breaks two branches whilst grasping the glistening ripe red fruit. The cherry tree is fragile and we have planted it on a steep bank so it is also quite inaccessible, we must share its harvest with the birds.
Later I sit on the terrace with mounds of fruit in different containers and stone the cherries. I am plugged into my i-pod listening to a podcast on pastoral literature which makes me think of 17th c painting, French pastoral scenes with shepherdesses wearing white wigs and sweeping dresses with huge blue bows and ribbons attached to their crooks.

I sit there for hours,  juice squirting into my face onto my arms and shoulders; its in my hair and down my cleavage. We have masses of fruit. Yet I still glance towards the top of the cherry tree ,tantalised by the fruit I cannot reach, whic peeps out from green leaves beckoning to the crows.

We weigh the fruit and put into our huge copper preserving pan with lemon juice.It heats slowly, we stir slowly,breaking up the cherries.We use  my mum’s old recipe written out by hand in German. We stir and break up the cherries, already there is liquid, we let it reduce in the pan and then pour in the pectin sugar. The tension rises. Will it set? Bubble bubble toil and trouble, we stir until the gloop has  a rich dark  colour. The edge of the bubbles are purple, .these are morello cherries ,sharp, tart and delicious bubbling in a hot mass in our copper pan.

Whilst J stirs I sterilise the jars , pouring boiling water over them ready to be filled.

We have to do it twice,the first time it didn’t set. We poured the mass of syrop and broken cherries back, boiled it up again to reduce it more and tried again. We tested by putting some liquid on to a cold plate, anxiously waiting to see if a skin forms, how much it slides down the plate until we decide its there, its setting, its on its way to be jam.

The boy next door came in the afternoon and hooked his little basket on a branch of our cherry tree to pick the higher fruit,we couldn't reach. I longed for him to climb to the summit but he carefully placed his ladder against the tree and climbed as far as he could,  but none of us reached to the sky.

I stoned again as the evening shadows lengthened in the field, we cooked bubbling liquid as darkness fell and a storm rose in the sky.

Today we stand proudly counting the jars of cherry jam, their lids tightly sealed in rows ready to be labelled.

They will be presents for the people we love, their favourite jam,

I look out of the window, the cherries are still there at the top of the tree. I look out at our field, and dream of a cherry orchard, watching  the grey mists covering it in the winter-time.