Missing.

All the sun has gone and there is a low dreich in its place.

This morning, I went to get some more flowers for my stepfather. For some reason, I am convinced that he must have flowers. Then I went to the chemist. The lady in the chemist looked at my pretty bunch and said: ‘Oh, those are bonny.’

I told her my mother had died. I said I was taking my stepfather flowers and soup. She said her own mother had died this spring. We looked at each other, understanding absolutely what it was all about without having to elaborate. We stood in the brightly lit shop, a kind harmony running between us, talking about death. We usually talk about the weather, because we are British, and sometimes she smiles and asks after my mare. Today, we spoke about death.

She told me that her sister had died three years ago, and her mother-in-law the year before that, and then her uncle and her aunt.

‘It’s like someone is having a big clear-out,’ she said, dry as a bone.

I laughed. I looked at her. I pushed my fist against my chest, to illustrate my words. I said: ‘That is so many blows to the heart. Too many blows. What do you do with all that? And you are always so cheerful. You have a smile for everyone.’

She is one of the kindest and gentlest people in the village. I sometimes go to the chemist even when I don’t need anything much, because I like talking to her so much.

She gave me one of those smiles. ‘What can you do?’ she said. ‘You have to keep going on.’

I felt immensely soothed by this conversation, and rather tearful at the same time. Ah, the stages of grief. I’ve gone from shock, through an angry stoicism, past my usual competitive spurt when I think I can do grieving better than anyone ever did the damn thing before, into the momentary sunlight of hunting for beauty to balance the sorrow, to the plain missing stage. I just miss my mother. I actually had to tell myself this morning: ‘It’s all right to miss your mother.’ I don’t want to be a wimp and a bore, I want to come out of the darkness into the light, so I have to give myself official permission. The missing pulls at me like a slow ache, and part of me wants to fight it. But it cannot be fought. It must be felt.

I wish I had had one more conversation, asked one more question, heard one more story. I find her empty room so very, very empty.

I miss my mum.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are from yesterday, when the sun was shining:

What do you think?

I need to do some crowd-sourcing for one of the secret projects. Even though they have both now been read and green-lit by the agent, they still feel like secret projects to me. I rather enjoy this small absurdity, as if, in the mazy corridors of  my own mind, I am an International Woman of Mystery.

The crowd-sourcing is because I have read the experts, wrangled my own brain, mined close, observed experience, and now I want the view from the internet. This is where the internet is brilliant. In my own tiny corner of it, I find people I should never, ever meet in real life. There is the intensely kind lady in Sri Lanka, who is one of the original readers of the blog, and the brave woman who went through the Christ Church earthquake. There is the Dear Reader in Canada, who also loves horses. There is the number one Stanley the Dog fan, and the lady who adores chickens. There is my friend in the north, who knows all about animals breaking your heart, and missing departed fathers. (I say friend, because she feels like a friend. I don’t expect we shall ever see each other, face to face, but that is how this odd intimacy works.) There are my blogging sister-in-arms, some of whom I have actually met, but whose support comes most keenly through the ether, which is our place of mutual connection.

I feel that connection, with everyone who comes here, and one of the things I think over and over again is what a great leveller the internet is. We may have very different life experiences, but it comes back to that meme which did the rounds a while ago: be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. I feel that everyone here is fighting their battles. There is death and divorce, professional set-backs, illness and physical pain, aging parents and the daily frets of bringing up children. Everyone, it strikes me, is really trying their best, sometimes against long odds. There is a lot of quiet courage, and a lot of stoical grace.

Because of this, I sense there is a wisdom in this crowd, and that is what I want to tap.

My subject today is irritation. I was thinking about the things that drive me nuts in the head. I was thinking about the human things which are the most annoying. I don’t mean the big catastrophic faults, like war crimes and corruption and corporate greed. (Although, this morning, I felt a twisting spasm of rage at the man in charge of Nestlé, who has said that water is not a human right.) Those are horrors, and deserve a stronger emotion. I don’t even mean things like unkindness, which is a serious ill and should be regarded with gravity. I mean the small things which don’t really matter, but which produce a disproportionate response. I mean the things which make you want to throw heavy objects, and then, afterwards, you say to yourself in puzzlement: what button did that press?

On my own list would be: people who do not listen, people who are rude generally, but in particular to waiters, people who look over your shoulder at parties to see if there is someone more interesting or important to talk to. Also: personal remarks, bad-timekeeping, dangling modifiers, jargon, condescension, smugness, and being cheap. I get the nails on the blackboard feeling from people who say one thing and do another, who never listen to the other side of the argument, and who jump on bandwagons, particularly those that involve conspiracy theories or intellectually lazy received wisdom.

But at the moment, my number one, five star, ocean-going, fur-lined bête noire is: people who offer unsolicited advice.

Why should this drive me so demented? It really does not matter, in the wider scheme, not when Israel and Palestine are going up in smoke, and the refugee camps spread on the Syrian border, and Mr Putin grows daily more unpredictable. It produces a visceral reaction, a desire for violence, when I am by nature a pacific person.

I can perfectly well listen to it and let it go. I do not have to follow it. I can politely nod and smile and ignore it. But oh, oh, it makes me want to scream and shout.

I think: why would anyone tell another human what they should be doing when they have not asked? Why should someone think that other people are such idiots that they cannot manage their own life or make their own decisions or know their own minds? To me, it is the height of bad manners. The implication is that they are such fools that they need a dose of superior wisdom in order to straighten themselves out. It is, psychologically, an act of aggression. It is an invasion of personal space. It is a denial of autonomy and agency. It is a way of saying: I am brilliant and you are stupid. It is almost a negation of self.

I need to go back and have a hard search in the darker regions of my soul, in order to work out why this small irritation makes me go bat-shit crazy. Almost certainly it is some kind of failing in my own self. I have many failings. But one thing I can say with certainty is that I have never, ever told another person what to do unless they have requested the advice. I think it is an affront.

The line that comes to me now is – I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. I smile as I write it. No busybody, however well-meaning, can take that away from me.

I want your own irritations. Will you tell me? I am consumed with anticipation and curiosity to know what they are.

 

No time for pictures now, just this one of my best beloved:

We did our big practice run into the heart of the village, to get ready for the old people tomorrow. There were huge hissing buses, rattling dustbin trucks, squealing schoolchildren in high-visibility vests, men hurling building waste into industrial skips, and all sorts. The red mare spent her competitive life on quiet grass, working always with other horses, away from the hurly-burly of humans. Until she came to me, she had never been out on her own or seen anything busier than a tiny country lane. This was a lot of stimuli for a sensitive thoroughbred.

All the hard graft I have been putting in paid off. She was a little more reactive than I would like, which means I need to go back and check my working. She had a damn good snort and a look around. But the lovely fact remains that I took a fine thoroughbred into a completely new environment, riding only in a rope halter, and for all that she was sometimes uncertain and alarmed, she listened to me. I was very, very proud of her.

In a most touching moment, she stopped kindly and made friends with the small children, and she stood graciously and sweetly as they gazed up at her and stroked her nose. ‘She is very big,’ said one. ‘And very beautiful,’ said another.

Then we met a smiling old lady. Again, we stopped to talk. The lady told me that she had been in signals, in the army, in 1946. ‘With Louis Mountbatten in South-East Asia Command,’ she said, beaming. ‘It gave me a taste for travel. I’m off to Africa next week.’ I was so awe-struck by this extraordinary piece of information that I reverted to the language of my teen years. ‘That is so cool,’ I exclaimed.

She smiled up at Red, and gave her a gentle stroke down the neck. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid of horses. So that’s something.’

That is something. I rode home grinning all over my face.

A quick day

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I have now written today’s blog in my head about eight times. I cannot tell you how many philosophical, political and domestic matters I have covered. Unfortunately, events have conspired to keep me from the computer, so that now I sit down at five-thirty, and it’s pitch dark outside, and I am too tired for a long, involved blog. I know you shall be beating your fists on the table with disappointment.

Instead, here is a little digest of my Saturday:

I looked with pleasure at the elegant winter sun.

I ran errands in the village. Everyone was smiling. They said: ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’

I had a disastrous afternoon’s betting, which cut me down to size. But the racing was fascinating. I kept ringing up my mother and saying: ‘That’s one to follow.’ I always do this. Then I quite forget the One to Follow’s name, and it’s back to square one.

I got cross because a rather sneering journalist, of whom I had never heard, derided Britishness on Any Questions. Scottishness, apparently, is the one true thing. Britishness is just a pathetic nothing. I may come back to this subject. I thought she was wrong, but worse, she was very ill-mannered about it. There’s no call for that on the BBC.

I missed my dad. Time does not gentle the missing; if anything, it is keener and sharper now. But the recovery time is quicker; the gaps in between are more solid, and more real.

I laughed at the clichéd middle-classness of my food shopping. In my basket were: duck’s legs, puy lentils, Taleggio, rocket, dried mushrooms, and some yellow split peas. I am a parody of myself. At least I am not quite as bad as the very superior lady I saw in the Co-op last week, who roared at her husband: ‘Go and find the chorizo’. Chorizo in the Co-op? Good luck with that.

I awarded The Pigeon the Little Nell award for pathos. When I examined her sore foot she made little mewing noises, trembled, and gazed at me with ineffable reproach, like an orphan in the snow. The minute we went out into the sun, she got the scent of moles and voles in her nostrils, and galloped off like a two-year-old, with not a trace of lameness.

I listened to an endless debate about the direness of Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party. I can’t quite work out if it is real, or whether it is just a herd meme. It’s a much more interesting story, after all, than Mili Minor does Quite Well. I must say, he does not fill one with confidence and conviction.

I made some minestrone. I am in a serious soup stage, just at the moment.

That was about it.

 

Here are some pictures for you:

I hope you are having a lovely weekend.