Love.

One of the things that people assume one lacks, if one should take the peculiar decision not to marry and have children, is love. There has been a lot about loneliness lately on the wireless. I heard at least three programmes speak of it, as I drove the five hundred miles to London, and the five hundred miles back to the north. (I think there must have been some terrifying survey, revealing the secret lives of lonely Britons.) I was talking about it to one of the best beloveds, when I arrived to stay for my first night in the south. Without thinking, I blurted out: ‘the only time I’ve ever been lonely was when I was in a relationship.’ He looked mildly surprised. He is a family man to his fingertips, proud and adoring of his four funny, bright children, affectionate with them, like a bear with his cubs.

It is true, though. It takes a top skill set to live with someone and love them well, every day, and I don’t have that set. I always chose absolutely hopeless fellows – charming, even glamorous, but unreliable and often quite fucked up. I instantly committed the grave sin which makes all the poor old shrinks in Hampstead shake their heads and suck their teeth: I gave all my power away. I fell into crazy, hopeless, unrealistic love, and wondered why I always felt so uncertain. Then I gave way to noisy despair as the whole thing fell apart with a rocking clang of inevitability.

But I have the love of thirty years. Those were the ones I saw this trip, the ones I have loved since I was eighteen years old. We have so much history together. We have, as Nanci Griffith sang, seen each other straight and seen each other curly. We’ve been young and hopeful together, wild and immortal. We’ve stayed up all night and driven through Italy and danced and drank and laughed. We’ve seen each other through heartbreak and desolation, through failure and triumph. We know each other so well and love each other so well that we start talking the moment we see each other, after gaps of many months, as if it’s only been five minutes. We smile goofy smiles of fondness and understanding at each other. We exult in each other’s successes and happinesses, wanting them as much as we want our own. We ruefully admit that we are chipped around the edges, a little battered and bruised, but still in there, pitching. We admire each other’s strengths, and do not judge each other’s weaknesses.

They are magnificent, these friends.

I don’t just feel the love when I see them, and then settle down. The love hums in me for the whole time we are together, beaming steadily from my expanding heart. It stays, strong and true, in my chest, on the drive home, as I think of them all, and how lucky I am to have them. It is profound, enduring, tested love.

And then, as I motor through the Lake District, where the snowy hills are so white at first I mistake them for clouds, I get the love of natural beauty. I look at the sheep on the fells, and the old stone walls, and the green, green grass, and I feel that love.

When I pass into Scotland, I cry actual tears of love, because this is my place and I chose it and it took me in, folding its blue mountains and its glacial valleys around me. Sometimes I whoop when I pass the Welcome to Scotland sign. Sometimes I get goosebumps. Sometimes I sing. This time, I had a little weep, because love can sometimes make you cry with joy.

And, of course, at the very end, there was the canine love, as Stanley the Dog capered and leapt about me, in a frenzy of delighted disbelief. You came home, he said, with his dancing eyes. There was my sweet little house love, with the books and the pictures and all the colours. There was the paddock love, as I arrived in sudden sunshine, and found the red mare, sweet and docile and furry, slowly eating her hay under her favourite tree. There was family love, as I saw the Mother and Stepfather and Brother-in-law and Younger Niece.

It really is an awful lot of love, for one person.

I am bloody lucky, and I don’t take it for granted, not for one moment.

 

Today’s pictures:

I took my first ever selfie (terrible word; someone should think of a better one) this trip, just to show that occasionally I can brush up and go out without being covered in mud. Although there was a tremendous moment when I parked in Dean Street, and a little bit of Scottish hay fell out into London’s glittering West End:

PS. Very tired after my lovely but long week, and I know that I’ve buggered up some of the tenses, and there will also be typos, but my eyes are too squinty to proof-read. Forgive me.

Return

Back from London. It was grey and windy and wet. I strode about in my sensible boots with a huge black umbrella and an absurd velvet coat. Old haunts, old friends (one all the way from California), old jokes, red wine, good food, good conversation. A lot of affection, which is the very thing, just now.

The dear old city looked a bit drowned and defeated in the weather. But just as I think oh dear, poor, soggy London, there is something hopeful – a whole gaggle of children, excited and bright-eyed, in the National Portrait Gallery, a kind taxi driver, pretty Christmas decorations, a man solemnly eating his breakfast in South Kensington whilst wearing a trilby hat.

I thought, oddly, of my father. He was not a London man, but when he had to go up for lunches or meetings or haircuts he used to go through Paddington Station, just as I did today. Whenever I am there, I get a flash of him in the smart blue suit he wore for going to the smoke. Sometimes I see an old fella who looks a bit like him, and I get a catch in my throat.

Our ghosts, I think; how we carry them with us. I think: we must keep them very close to our hearts.

 

Some old pictures of my dear departeds:

Those are the old loves. Here are the new ones, from a bit earlier in the year. I think of them and smile and wonder how they are getting on without me in blustery Scotland. The weather has been bad there too, but I see the forecast is for sun. My girls will like that:

Oh, and I have new hair. Short as a brush and striped in three different kinds of red. (My poor mother; she dreams of the day when I shall revert to my natural blonde, and be her little golden girl again.) My hairdresser, who has known me since I was twelve years old, turns to his new assistant: ‘This one,’ he says, gesturing at me. ‘You can do anything with this one. Dotty as you like.’ He means this as a tremendous compliment. I take it as one.

The Day After

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Well. My dears. What a swellegant, elegant party that was. The strains of that song have been running in my head since I woke up. I have been wandering about the bathroom singing: have you heard of Mimsie Starr, she got pinched in the Astor Bar? And: that French champagne, so good for the brain. (Are you all running to find your old copies of High Society?)

Anyway, it was lovely. Almost the moment I walked in, I was introduced to a historian. This is the kind of thing that makes me very, very excited. Oh, I shouted, can we talk about the repeal of the Corn Laws? He looked very slightly panicked. It is at times like this that I realise my social graces are rather rusty. Which is a polite word for it.

Luckily, he was very happy to discuss the Battle of Cable Street, so we talked of that instead. Also: the true meaning of fascism, and why people use the word so loosely these days. (This happens most particularly in relation to Barack Obama, whom his critics accuse, oddly, of being both a fascist and a communist.) Then we talked of why everyone insists there must be a one-word answer to the riots, when it is patently clear there is not. There is hardly a four hundred word answer. 'Nuance,' I kept yelling. 'COMPLEXITY.' Poor fellow, he was very brave about it.

Then I drank a lot and was quite camp. Which is my second favourite thing after discussing the Second Reform Act.

There were a lot of glamorous and interesting women in outrageous frocks. There were actors. That is always a huge treat for me. I don't get actors, where I live. There was paella, and jokes. It was perfect.

Now, probably to your relief, I am going somewhere where there is no internet. I am going to sit quietly and read that papery old thing that is a book. There will be no blog, no Twitter, no breathlessly checking what Michelle Bachman is up to, with those great staring eyes.

Forgive the break. I shall be back in a week.

PS. Suddenly realised you may be wondering why I was shouting and yelling. This is part of the problem of not going out very much, and living six hundred miles north, surrounded by hills and sheep. When I come back to the smoke, I get very over-excited, and start shouting. Also there is a lot of talking very, very fast. And, I hate to admit, occasional shrieking. I really am amazed I get asked anywhere, ever.

Arrival

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Tired now, and no camera, so it's just a few fleeting impressions of the day.

The first moment - coming outside at 5.45am to find yellow Scottish sun, a cold dew, wreaths of cloud rising up at the base of the hill. My garden was very still and stately. The Pidge looked at me with her Disney I-know-you-are-leaving eyes.

There was dazzling light on the North Sea, which was the colour of sapphires, as the train slid towards Stonehaven.

We passed a long stretch of bright sand and black rocks, stretching out into the water like fingers.

My sister sent a text, just south of Montrose. She was walking my Pigeon. I said 'Aaahh' out loud, into the train carriage. Slight looks of astonishment, from the other passengers.

At England, someone switched off the sun. Berwick was brown, Newcastle sombre.

The city was hot. My northern sensibilities were startled, after days of eleven degrees.

The streets were oddly quiet, as if the old town were holding its breath, after its week of tumult.

I thought of the riots, but everywhere there were smiling young people, looking as if they were perfect advertisements for their generation.

I spoke to one of them. He was nineteen, working in Soho. He had been in work since he got his first Saturday job when he was fourteen. 'My dad always taught me you don't get anything unless you work for it,' he said. I fell slightly in love with him. 'People keep talking about this lost generation,' he said. 'But I'm not lost.' His voice rose in indignation, that anyone should think such a thing. 'No' I said. 'You are found.' We grinned at each other.

The Bar Italia is just the same. Outside the pubs, Ordinary Decent Britons are drinking their Ordinary Decent Pints. In Berwick Street, a twenty-something fellow with wild dreaded hair gave me a blinding smile. It reminded me of that part at the very end of Absolute Beginners. (The book, obviously, not the film.)

Dear old London, I think, the city of my wild youth. She will survive.

My friend The Playwright calls, from a windy street. 'I hope my bon mots are not being blow away by this gale,' he shouts. We both know it would take more than a bit of wind.

I have a party tomorrow. I am going to put on a face pack, so my skin looks dewy. And I shall be working on my bon mots.

The news smashes through my window and takes my television

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I wrote yesterday that the news seemed very far away. The weekend had been taken up with gentle domestic things: getting ready for the young cousins, making soda bread, taking the dog to the vet to have her nails clipped. On Saturday, when it all first kicked off, I was actually watching large men in kilts and singlets hurl cabers the size of telegraph poles across a grassy arena, to polite Scottish applause.

Then, yesterday, at tea-time, I tuned in properly. I was finishing work, and I thought I’d just check BBC News 24 on my computer. Suddenly it was no more watching the swallows, remembering my darling old dead canine, and yearning a bit for her, my heart aching in my chest. The news was jumping out of my screen; it was scrolling past on Twitter so fast I could not keep up with it. I felt shock, disbelief, rage, fear, and a terrible empathy. They were burning people out of their houses.

As I watched, half of Croydon seemed to go up in flames. Clapham was next, then Ealing. The city that I had lived in for twenty years, that I still know and love, that is still stitched into my heart even though I am now six hundred miles north, seemed at war.

Twitter was the most extraordinary. The BBC anchors, in an odd, old news way, kept trying to blame it for the chaos. In fact, it seems the looters and burners were being directed by Blackberry messages. The Twitterers were rising up to help. Bulletins went out to avoid London Fields, where people were being dragged off bicycles and having their telephones stolen. People were helpfully advising on which bits of Camden were closed, and which danger zones to stay away from. There was a retweeting of a message to check in on elderly neighbours.

Three particularly brave reporters I found were sending out tweets from the heart of the action. Kaya Burgess was in Portobello (boys with machetes marching up Westbourne Grove), Paul Lewis was in Hackney, and then Ealing, Mark Stone, who became a bit of an instant Twitter hero, seemed to be everywhere.

I flipped back and forth between the news and the Twitter feed. I could not sleep. I really don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. I felt a sudden wash of shame for my poor old country. I have always rather avoided national pride, it seems so illogical. Nonetheless, I do feel it. It is a little bit of magical thinking I cannot quite rid myself of. I love dear old Blighty, and her people. Even though it is nothing to do with me, a mere accident of birth, I feel happy and blessed that I come from the land of Shakespeare and Milton.

So, last night, there was an equally illogical shame. What will the world think? I wondered. What price Shakespeare and Milton now? (There was a terrible moment of gallows humour when reports came in that while shoe shops and telephone shops were trashed and raided, the bookshops were left quite alone. Ha, shouted the Twitterers; proof the rioters are illiterate.)

But then, the Good started. A video began circulating of a woman bravely berating the looters, shouting furiously at them, asking them what they were thinking. A new Twitter handle sprang up called Riotcleanup. They encouraged people to gather in the morning to help tidy the mess. The next day, reports started coming of hordes of people pouring off the underground at Clapham and Ealing and Croydon with brushes and dustbin bags. The Ordinary Decent Britons were fighting back with brooms.

This amazing picture starting being passed back and forth:

One young man was interviewed in Liverpool. He was about seventeen or eighteen and he had come to help. The BBC reporter seemed slightly baffled to find a clean young person, who was not wearing a hoodie and looting shoes.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, quite nonplussed.

‘Well,’ said the good young fellow. ‘It’s my city too. You wouldn’t leave your bedroom in a mess like this, would you? So I just came to see what I could do to make it better.’

There will be an awful lot of shouting, over the next few days, over what this was all about. Was it fear and loathing, deprivation and despair, an entire generation somehow dispossessed? The left will say government neglect; the right will shout family breakdown, sense of entitlement. One Labour MP is even blaming the bankers, for setting a bad example, in the smash and grab business. Ken Livingstone spent the night on television, scoring cheap political points. ‘Being Mayor is not just about opening fetes,’ he said at one point, quite inexplicably.

I don’t think there is any easy answer. I cannot tell you why some of the young people are like the decent boy in Liverpool, and some are saying, as Paul Lewis heard last night, ‘Hampstead, bruv. Let’s go rob Hampstead.’

I concentrate on the small acts of kindness. People are setting up drop-in centres, for those burned out of their homes. They are donating bedding and kitchen equipment for those who lost everything. One blogger is taking donations for a 90-something barber in Tottenham, whose barber’s shop had been there for forty years, and was smashed on Saturday. In the heat of the battle, householders in Hackney and Camden were making tea for the police, who had been working 24-hour shifts. The riot clean-up squad is already talking about making their impromptu community action a permanent thing. The good people have their brooms at the ready. I may be a cock-eyed optimist, but that is the Britain in which I choose to believe.

 

Tea for the police, presented on a riot shield:

(Photograph by Joel Goodman.)

 

Meanwhile, here, in the far north, everything is very quiet. A little evening sun has broken through the cloud. The wind whispers and shivers in the trees. The jackdaws are quarrelling in the silver birches. I have the outrageous good fortune to go outside and see, not burnt buildings and smashed windows, but this:

Something lovely, at least, on which to rest your poor, seared eyes.

Last night, one tweeter, exhausted by the bad news, sent out an ironical plea for pictures of kittens. I cannot quite do kittens, but I can do the next best thing, which is the enduring beauty that is The Pigeon:

And above it all, imperturbable and unchanging, is the hill:

I hope that you are safe, wherever you are.

A moment in the park

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

In London for a moment to see my agent, do some godmotherly duties and generally remind myself that I am occasionally capable of taking the straw out of my hair. The dogs have only ever been in London once before but they have embraced Hyde Park as if it were their very own. Of particular delight is the number of squirrels. In Scotland, our little red squirrels are so tiny and timid that we only see them about once every three months; in London, the grey squirrels swagger about in the open like mafiosi on a job. The dogs stare, narrow-eyed, in some disbelief, before setting off at a nought to thirty gallop, stomachs low to the ground, in fierce pursuit. The squirrels disappear nonchalantly up into the trees, leaving the dogs barking hopelessly into the high branches. I am told this is not at all park etiquette, but hell, we are all three country bumpkins, and the whole thing reduces me to helpless laughter.

This morning, we had a lovely outing to the Serpentine, where I used to go rowing with unsuitable boys in my lawless teenage years. There was a patient man putting out rows and rows of deckchairs, which I found rather touchingly optimistic in October.


Post squirrel-hunting, the dogs had a little rest by the water -

Then we admired the geese, crossing the road -

And said good morning politely to an extremely smart horse and carriage equipage -

And admired the sweetest house in London, and wondered who lived there, right in the middle of the park, like something out of Hansel and Gretel -

And then we sat on a bench for a while and watched the old gentlemen walk by, and contemplated the general loveliness of London's open spaces. I felt very happy and very lucky. I have caught up with old friends and relations, spent time of high quality with my adorable goddaughter, had the most civilised and delightful dinner in the Cafe Anglais, drank slightly too much Chateauneuf du Pape, and set the fear of god into the urban squirrel population. I think my work here is done.

Tomorrow I go to Cheltenham to appear in the literary festival, and then it is back to the hills, and you shall get your proper blogs again when I am once more established at my desk.