Looking forward

My mum used to say “Don’t wish your life away”. I can’t remember now, but I expect that was when I, or my sisters, were not attending much to what we were supposed to be doing, and instead imagining bright and wonderful things were just around the corner. The future, better than just slogging through the present, ever hopeful “it will be all right on the night”.

Oops I am doing it again. It is less than three weeks until I return to Block Island and anticipation of being there in April, forever balmy springtime, is filling my mind.

Reality – what’s that?

We have just had a rather wet miserable cold March week here in Edinburgh. I feel I am fighting a cold, it is cold, I am learning to know my new lodgers – who are very nice indeed – so if I manage to be present I feel I am indeed slogging.

Don’t wish my life away. Here is OK.

But a little anticipation is very nice indeed,

daydreamers of the bloggy world, how are you all?

Block Island. April 2012

There are of course other kinds of anticipation and many are to be found in the responses here as this weekend “anticipation” was Sidey’s theme.

What can we do?

Middle Meadow Walk, summer.

There are many and varied inspirations for this post – not least of which is my own sense of happiness and good fortune. This morning, walking in the snow across the Meadow Walk, I was stopped by (yet another) charity worker. She happened to be Greenpeace, for whom I am for, in general, but not with membership or money because there has to be a limit somewhere about who and what gets my support. Here in 2013 UK, there are often Big Issue sellers and others who are homeless, not to mention the rapidly developing numbers of our very own children who live below the poverty line, and I don’t do much for them either.

So, as a long-time member of the grateful brigade, the question is often present “What can we do?”

Which Charity?

What sort of support?

What difference does my mite make?

etc. etc. I have been very practical with a few chosen standing orders, and bits and pieces of volunteered time, and the occasional letter/email to someone somewhere who is an elected representative and so has some influence power brain into which consciousness might be put. Now I am wondering how to use this hobby I have, why not blog a bit more?

Here is information you may like to follow re a few disparate attempts to help others which have recently been higher up my attention threshold. Up with the consciousness level(s). Pay attention.

NIRDP – that’s about the often untold suffering of individuals and their families with “Rare Disease”, which as they say are each one rare, but taken as a whole lot, are not rare at all. (Have your tissue box handy)

Dairy of a Benefit Scrounger - blog about UK welfare as supported seen undermined distributed by UK government (health warning re blood pressure levels). There are petitions which can be signed.

Emma Thompson has battled with depression

HDS – such a new charity it hasn’t got a website yet but is on twitter @hdscotland – could do with support for its vision which reads something like “foster the dissemination of contemporary psychoanalytic and psychodynamic understanding to enable the emotional and mental health of the people of Scotland”. My informal rendering of this is that contemporary understanding is light years away from the Woody Allen view of Freud and all that. Just as the knowledge medical science has of bodies is far too good to be the sole province of doctors, and can be used by anyone, so the current and developing knowledge about unconscious states of mind and what is and is not good for mental health belongs to all of us. It is not called the ‘talking cure’ for nothing. Get into a conversation – NHS Scotland has produced some great TV adverts about mental illnesses, and the web is full of good info and pictures.

[If you are not in Scotland, remember to talk about mental health and illness wherever you are. Troubles are exacerbated by social misunderstanding and stigma, and in many ways mental ill-health is not different from physical problems like broken bones. The unwell person may recover, or relapse, soon or later, they may be kind/cruel, thoughtful/careless, brave/cowardly, etc etc just not at the moment able to function as they would if they were well. Pity is, medicine and treatment lags a long way behind orthopaedics standards of knowhow.  Remember, like the guy with the broken leg, the mentally ill person may be able to do lots of stuff and be good company, there is just something they can't do.]

Last but not least – the many many charities which aim to help across the world. For now, offer your support (click here) to one of these: Khwendo Kor, KK, which means “Sisters Home”. It was set up in 1993 in North West Pakistan, in response to an urgent need expressed by women for a forum to address their issues; it has developed into a sisterhood, guiding women to take practical steps for the betterment of themselves and their families.

My heart breaks for their courage and determination, especially as they have faced increasing need and are themselves the victims of terrible violence and damage to their work since the so-called war on terror increased the talibanisation in the area. [It is hard to feel charitable to those in the west who have put polarisation of peoples before listening to need - but that's me, not KK.] Read the KK profile. Read the case study file (tissues and blood pressure meds both needed), read their newsletters. See how they put good governance, ethics and respect for people at the forefront of what they do. And above all, they do it WITH people, not FOR them. In the west, we have heard a lot about Malala who is recovering from having been shot because she was outspoken about the need for girls education. Farida Alfridi, leader of another NGO, Society for Appraisal and Women Empowerment in Rural Areas (SAWERA) was not so fortunate. She also was shot, and died in July 2012. This photo from KK material shows the opening of the library dedicated to her memory (funding arranged by Maryam Bibi of Khwendo Kor).

The Farida Alfridi Memorial Library

I would like to hear from you all. What do you do?

What will help? However little it is, does it help?

What can we do?

Related articles

• Mental Illness and How it Affects my Writing Life (btinsleywrites.com)
• How new digital technology is helping young people to cope with mental illnesses (blogs.independent.co.uk)
• Support Grows for Patients With Rare Diseases (checkorphan.wordpress.com)
• Alone We Are Rare, Together We are Strong – Rare Disease Day USA (arianaleilani.wordpress.com)
• 20% of British children ‘living in poverty’ (independent.co.uk)
• Charities warn of looming child poverty crisis (independent.co.uk)
• Farida Afridi: Paying the Ultimate Price for the Women of Pakistan

Sunday shenanigans

This is a picture of a boat – Callum’s boat, moored off Scotch Beach and covered in kids. He brought it round the island from New Harbor, his own girls swam in, collected their friends and they all swam out again, with boogie boards to help the younger ones.

from Scotch Beach on Sunday 8th July

Then Callum was moored on the boat as he couldn’t leave it or kids unattended as they jumped and dived. Water there was about 15 feet deep, so when I arrived (by bike as usual) hot and sweaty, I swam out too. Later, Duwayne, then Tip and Wendy, so there were plenty adults around, so I came back to the beach to join the other grown-ups having their well-deserved Sunday relaxation. Later still, “everyone in” was called and everyone returned to the beach, some ready for the walk along to the pavilion for sustenance lunch ice-cream, some ready to laze in the sand. Some ready for b**r from the cooler [there is a no alcohol rule on the beaches here now after last year's disasters [see BI Times editorial], and the pride around this year on 4th July, safe and friendly fun day, where the new ordinances make people feel “we have got our island back”].

When the heat was leaving the day, Callum and seven girls swam back out (his rule, seven life-jackets, so I have my three and 4 more whose parents say OK) and the boat took off for the north, to cross the rip tide and back round to New Harbor where the van sat waiting to pile everyone in and re-distribute to their homes.

This morning at NIA class, Barby, 2nd grade teacher who lives out at the Neck, and of course knows everyone, told me how she had watched Callum and his ‘boat loads of girls’ go by yesterday. We exchanged pleasure and pride. Yesterday with other parents I had to keep quiet and hold my feelings (he’s mine you know) when I heard them say “they’ll be fine, they’re with Callum, he knows how to look out for kids” etc etc. Because it is true, he does know how to look out for kids. (As Wendy does too, carting all the towels, and coolers and stuff which couldn’t be ‘swum out’ back up to the road.)

I am thinking now of the differences in how people ‘have fun’, ‘relax’. Last year the island was distressed by binge drinking on the beaches, and the rescue services overstretched , just like back in Scotland, other places, not just youngsters, wherever there is a sort of sick demand that WE WILL HAVE A GOOD TIME. In contrast, a day like today, and other days I know with this family, this community, and also in other places I have known, where fun is not demanded, but people take a responsibility, and the fun arises spontaneously, with awareness shared of others’ needs (e.g. post Jack’s party). The kids also take responsibility, Fiona and Michaela (great strong swimmers) helped little Celeste swim out, going slowly with her on a boogie board, a different Jack lends his board to someone who doesn’t have their own, no-one is in mindless mode.

Some folk think the answer to the world’s problems, or local problems, is to have rules: Keep the mindless off our beaches. (Where did they go this year??). Although it helped us here, I can’t see it as more than a start, a temporary one, like kids getting a time-out. I know rules help to make a space, but they are only really useful when they are making space for inner safety, rather than raising a different problem or sending a problem somewhere else. (I recall the heavy disciplinarian schools I used to visit, really quiet classes, and absolute mayhem in the playground, with a long line of miscreants outside the head’s office at the end of ‘playtime’). No-one can genuinely look out for others if they don’t have enough security inside (though too many boost their egos, and think they do, like the head with the line outside her door). Somewhere it starts better when each of us has enough to be mindful, then now and again, undemanded, we might have a great time. It has been said long ago; it has been said by all faiths and by those with none, the struggle is with oneself, tell that demanding self to quiet down, just the way Callum says it to a more excitable (for the moment) kid.

I like this one google helped me find this morning

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”
― George Bernard Shaw

Yesterday was a great day, as they say here, have yourself a good one.

[just don't demand it!]

 

 

Simple and complex

A while ago, before I began following the Daily Post, the photo challenge suggested ‘simple’ as a theme. I was glad not to need to try that, as I can never see ‘simple’ without wondering if it is really.

Glass of water on the kitchen table

This is a glass of water, on my kitchen table.

Water – from the tap which is quite good tasting and certainly drinkable here, but I expect there are ‘things’ in it besides water. The Scottish Water Board or whoever they are now that everything is owned by some corporation registered somewhere in the some distant part of the world might be annoyed at this suggestion. H2O – not really simple! Scottish Water, not very simple either. Different meaning to simple there.

But when I, me, looks at this photo, I see the table. The photo can show grain in the wood, it’s an old table, how many other things have sat there? what tree grew and fell to make it? That’s not really what I see – for me there is the history of where and when I bought it (in a second hand shop up Causewayside, brought home in the boot, tailgate open, of the Honda, last car I owned) – settling in to here where I have now lived longer than anywhere else I have lived, why did I need a kitchen table…because my then just become ex got the other one…  all the people who have sat there since, Cindy writing her essays, Daowen teaching me chinese, … memories memories.

Who would know all that but me?

“Simple” or “complex” depends on the viewer as well as the view, does it not?

I got a phone call on Sunday, unexpected and delightful, from J my friend from New Zealand. She reads this blog, we email etc. but it is wonderful to hear her voice. We were chatting about the others we know and care about and some sadness at recent deaths, though these had been in old age. And we talked about the history of someone’s life, another person we both know. On the surface, a pleasant, quiet woman, maybe 80 already, maybe just getting there. But once you have talked with her a little, what a number of things have been in that life, and how many different experiences and places. This is my experience of everyone, young as well as old, once you start listening, the unique stories are there in layer upon layer of experience.

Just an egg…

Not simple at all – hugely interesting and complex, here is another photo pretty obviously  simple or complex depending on whether you are thinking outside or inside.

This notion of how anything can seem simple, or complex, depending on the way you happen to look, grew in my head because Sidey’s weekend theme this week in CONTRASTS. [I had been thinking of lots of stories from the sublime to the ridiculous, and not able to blog them as no matter how I looked they were embarrassing, to me or someone else. I am always wondering how to blog when anyone can look and read, and just love seeing how other people do it with such grace and/or humour that it works.]

One young person in my life at the moment is Paul, who was 7 years old last week, he and his mother share my flat, so I see him every day. In a short life he has been living on three different continents, he has experienced very different education systems and styles, he is bilingual, and he is well-adjusted, cheerful, likes football and swimming and in conversation will come up with all sorts of questions. He knows life is very interesting and varied. I think everyone does, even if they do not have the range of different experiences he has had. A first look says he is not-scottish, different, a second says he is like any 7 year old boy, a third he is lively and also ‘good’, aware of adults and well behaved, a fourth… well just look, listen, get to know.

However, not everyone seems to manage living with different experiences, and not everyone seems to experience difference happily, with interest. Contrast is a good theme – lets go for celebration of difference. Look for the inside or the outside, on the surface or under it, find stories hidden in the grain of the wood, use imagination and empathy, hurray for difference. Hurray for the contrasts we find everywhere.

[Doesn't mean they are all easy to live with, or that some can't be judged as NOT good at all, like the obscenes of poverty/wealth, destructive behaviour, ... just look for the layers before judging... and what a lot of interesting stuff there is around.]

 

 

 

 

Dawyck Botanic Gardens

Dawyck Botanic Gardens is 28 miles south of Edinburgh at Stobo, near Peebles.  To visit it was totally unplanned – by me anyway – a wonderful surprise for the day. I went to the Peace and Justice Wednesday morning meeting, today’s meeting about slavery in Scotland, listened to a really interesting talk and then when leaving R invited me to join herself and M on a trip to Dawyck to see the snowdrops. They had planned their trip ages ago. I nearly didn’t go, having lots to do, but then thought that I had just heard a talk about loss of freedoms which have been in the past and continue in different contexts in the present. For some reason this meant that NOT taking opportunity when it arises, especially as I am indeed free to do so, is just silly. Quite. What a beautiful place it is.

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If you are interested in thoughts following the inadvertent juxtaposition of Research into Slavery, Iain Whyte‘s talk and his book, and a beautiful garden, here goes. First, the Palmerston North Library book group once upon a time had a theme of Slavery. I remembered a particular novel by James Robertson, called Joseph Knight which revolves around a slave of this name who won his freedom in Scotland. From that and Iain’s talk it is so heartrendingly clear that the ‘system’ then slavery, now ?bankers?corporate-profit?whatever? , is complex, not simple, and that nearly everyone is somehow involved. Just like now, e.g. I can’t get a ‘clean’ pension and no way am I doing without it! Most of the ‘Occupy’ protesters are probably involved somehow too, which is not to downgrade their attempt to bring about change. Getting started (against exploitation, discrimination, unfairness, cruelty, wrong…) seems often to be working against one’s own interests, indeed probably is working against oneself in a some way or other.

Getting rid of slavery in 1807 – in Britain – was the passing of a law against a particular trade. It didn’t say people wouldn’t wear clothes made from cotton …, it didn’t say people couldn’t treat other people like objects or exploit them any way they felt like. It didn’t say how difficult it is to make change as so many parts of society are interconnected (read Robertson’s book). It took an awful ot of work and courage and determination. In the garden I thought: establishing this garden was not cheap. I wonder where the family who started it made their money. In the year 1807, this wonderful garden was already over 150 years in the growing, there are trees, and plants, from many parts of the world, as well as the snowdrops we had come to see (300 varieties in Scotland according to a leaflet but I would not know if they were all visible today at Dawyck). Wandering around, I began to wonder if the Veitch family or their successors, the Naesmyths, had been goodies or baddies in the slave trade. Goodies or baddies in any context? Maybe someone can tell me, because google was not able to offer advice on this matter – slavery for or against. (A question not answered by google – oh boy, what next??) In the 20th century the house and garden was owned by the Balfour family – then the garden was gifted to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, who now care for it.

So my thoughts are that I am glad the garden is there. It lifts the spirit. That it exists, lifts the spirit, so many people have cared for it and many have also enjoyed it. But the talk from earlier in the morning is threaded through, those who worked for the abolition of slavery had courage. It was not always physical courage which was needed. I think one of the least vaunted kinds of courage is the emotional sort, standing up for what you think is right, standing against what you think is wrong, even though many, maybe your own family, or your colleagues, think you are an idiot for making a fuss. Dealing with your anxiety that maybe you are just making a fuss, or being foolish, the world’s like this innit?

Well the people who fought slavery stepped out of line in small or big ways, and the people who created a garden also stepped outside the ordinary. We can do with both.

 

 

 

Edinburgh Tourist (1)

When I was in Shanghai, of course I thought I needed to get out and about and see what the city had to offer. Now back in Edinburgh, which has been home now for longer than I have lived anywhere else (Co. Tyrone, Belfast, Leeds, Birmingham and London in that order, last and first the next longest), I have been enjoying it as always.

But of course, there are places I have never been to before and I inadvertently found one today. Now I think I will become an Edinburgh tourist. I took myself off to listen to another of the lunchtime concerts – St Cecilia’s Hall – John Kitchen on harpischord and Mark Bailey on cello playing Bach sonatas. In all the time I have lived in Edinburgh, I had never actually been to St. Cecilia’s Hall before and now I know it is home to a wonderful oval concert hall and also to an unbelievable collection of instruments, harps, lutes, guitars downstairs and harpsichords and spinets upstairs.

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From a helpful leaflet I discovered the hall has a great history too, beginning in 1760′s as a concert hall, then owned by Baptists who sold it to Freemasons, after which it was a school for over 40 years before becoming the Excelsior Ballroom in 1933. The blurb says it was very popular during the war years (easy to believe this) but then declined until in 1959 was restored as a concert hall and then bought by the University of Edinburgh. I wish I had a picture of the oval hall and cupola above as imagining all the dancing while listening to the sonatas was a dream.

And, although often incensed about current monetary driven practices and the quantitative counting of the RAE (paper paper research assessment exercise) and the Drive for Excellence as though there would be such a thing if everything or everybody was excellent, there are some things which the University of Edinburgh does do very well indeed. The generosity of performers and establishment re the lunchtime concerts is one of them. The keeping of various galleries and museums all around the city is another.

So I have hopefully labelled this post number one as I intend to become an Edinburgh Tourist and see what else I can find.

Gym, Swim and more

Glorious Victorian building with glass roof to see the sky when swimming

You would be proud of me – or at least I can now be a bit proud of myself. I got up this morning and cycled to the Warrender Swim Centre (a favourite in the variety of Edinburgh fitness offerings) and signed up for a ‘fitness membership’ which inludes gym and swim and aquafit classes and all that, at any of the Edinburgh Leisure venues.  As the aquafit class was currently running and full up, I didn’t bother with the swim this morning but did the various machines that do not involve putting pressure on the heel, then I cycled home again.

Resisted having a little extra sleep and went to the Reid Hall lunch-time concert instead, and listened to Rachel Wheatley singing love songs from Mozart, Strauss, Faure, Liszt and Debussy with Jan Waterfield on piano. That was better than a little sleep, very relaxing. How anyone can sing so beautifully for an hour I do not know, except that I imagine it takes years of practice and slog. Thank you Rachel.

Funny not-funny story – I met an ex-colleague at the concert. She said she wasn’t supposed to be there as she and her husband had booked a cruise, to make up for the cruise they were supposed to be on last autumn which was cancelled due to minor accident to that ship. This time they had booked with a well-known company: Concordia. I said let me know where you are going next (so I can go somewhere else).

Not the best choice

Walking to … and from … school

After birthday excitement, where presents continued to be very successful choices, foot high roaring dinosaur for Louis and noisy truck for Ali, and appreciative boys for grown-ups, the next day was Thursday 1st September and first day of new school. Now, the ‘old’ school was just five minutes boy-walk from our door, so was very convenient, and the new one has been granny-tried every which way, and the distance was going to be half-hour if we walked, half-hour if we went on the bus (walk to stop, wait, bus goes three sides of a square, walk from other end) and if-it-rains we will get a taxi – unknown wait time at 8am? Granny solution (bike and boys on the back chinese style) has understandably been vetoed by parents, so Cindy and I thought we would do the first day by taxi, so the would arrive happy and fresh. She had been asked to bring them a little late, as ‘new’ boys, and had arranged to go in to her work late so she could come with me and do the necessary talk to teachers etc in chinese, without mis-understanding.

Well, you have heard about best-laid plans I am sure. On Thursday all was fairly well as arranged except that Granny had not yet been informed that they began school late on their first day, so was saying no play with new toys till after school, and then had to change mind and say Yes play with new toys because Mummy is not ready to come with us yet and we are going later. The effect of this is very happy boys, Granny  you were wrong, and they had a very nice time playing. When Mummy said she was ready and Time to go, Zou ba Zou ba, they were keen to put on shoes and get out the door to ‘get in the taxi’. But, on the street, not only one taxi, but loads of them and cars and lorries and all, all totally immobile, and honking horns as loudly as possible as the chinese drivers do, and Cindy and I just looked at each other and said “Walk!”. The cause was an accident further along, and with sympathy for whoever was involved it could not have been better for us. The walk was instant enjoyment, going past all the horn-honkers, dodging the bikes and motor bikes which also took to the pavement, and generally losing their (minor) apprehensions about new school in talking non-stop about the mayhem which lasted all the way to school.

So, it also became clear that ‘walk-to-school’ was not too hard for little legs. The walk home, which we had not had any worries about because there would never be any urgency about getting home, has also been even better than anticipated. There are three landmarks they know well. From the school, ZiWei Shanghai Experimental Kindergarten in Guilin Street East, we walk to the Guilin Road crossing, a big big road with traffic lights and the ubiqitous red man green man which no driver in China pays any heed to whatever, but we look for him anyway, and manage well enough in the torrent of bicycles which go on green. Next stop is ‘the river’ which has a nice bridge to cross and look through or over, shaded walk-ways and parkland to the PuBei Road bridge on the East, and a market running alongside the river on the west. After that, still on Guilin Street West, which is one-way and mainly residential, we come to very familiar territory, our favourite “running track” recreation ground. Louis and Ali could find their own way home from here, but they do not, they stop and in we go for lots of energetic play and fun so that when we got home yesterday it was nearly 6pm and they were very happy to settle down and play with the new toys. Just as well, as Granny was feeling ancient.

The recreation ground was buzzing with just-out-of-school children, and we met some of their previous classmates from KidCastle kindergarten. Louis was brilliant, sharing his new dinosaur with them all for playing, and Ali thoroughly enjoyed a see-saw and a lot of running around with some other kids. I hadn’t seem them interacting separately with others before, great to see. They still get a huge amount of attention from the other parents and grandparents, and both boys are now answering confidently in chinese, but are puzzled and ask Donal and I why everyone talks to them so much. (Maybe they will get fed-up with it like I do.) We try to explain why people always ask ‘where are you from?’, ‘do you speak chinese?’ etc. Half British, half chinese, half New-Zealand boys, Louis always says he is a New Zealand boy, but they sometimes want to be American like Ruby and Rory and Fiona, and we only mention Ireland now and again, where grandpa George lives, or Scotland where Uncle Neill is. It is just as well they do not do math yet, too many halfs all round. Cindy has just come home with a world-globe.

Whatever they are, they do seem happy.

xxxx