On, on

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Out in the world, people are doing serious things. The Conservatives are having their party conference. Journalists are asking questions about the strategy for growth. Boris Johnson is making excellent jokes.

Here, I think: I know I have to cut that paragraph, but oh, oh, oh it hurts.

Sometimes, I watch myself circling around a point, like an aeroplane put in a holding pattern. Round and round I go, and never quite make the runway. I stomp into the kitchen. Come on, I say to myself, as I make a ham sandwich: what are you really trying to say? Then I imagine I am being interviewed on Woman’s Hour. Under the forensic examination of Jenni Murray I may not waffle or equivocate.

This is actually quite a useful tool for writing in general. If you find yourself going a bit opaque or abstract or tangential, all frailties from which I suffer mightily, imagine you are going to have to explain yourself to Jeremy Paxman. Imagine that arched eyebrow of surprise, the quizzical voice, the terrifying Paxo ‘Really?’ spoken in his ironical falsetto. That will sharpen you up.

Sometimes I debate with myself. I do it whilst I am cooking. On the one hand, I say, out loud; but on the other hand…I think the out loud thing is quite important. Thoughts can cohere when said aloud into a room.

It’s a bit one step forward, one step back at the moment. I feel stretched, like a bit of old elastic in the hands of an antic child. Come on, come on, I say; it’s only a book. Yeah, yeah, I say, that’s like saying it’s only your arms and legs.

I woke this morning filled with inchoate rage. It’s a concatenation of things. It’s racing deadlines and people behaving badly and things not working and demands being made and irrational upsets. It’s life, mostly. Sometimes anger is the correct response. I am not especially good at it though. I think I grew up with the notion of girls being sugar and spice and all things nice, which is what held sway at the time. Even though I was a furious tomboy, always climbing trees and ripping holes in my trousers, there is still a lingering sense that fury is not what the ladies should do. (Although I do not quite know why I think that, even subliminally, since I do not regard myself as A Lady.)

Anyway, I took this morning’s anger, sat down at my desk, and threw it all at my work. Yeah, vague sentences, take that. Ha, ill-conceived notions, have this. Tap tap tap went the fingers; delete delete delete went the delete button.

And by lunchtime, I had some sense of achievement, and I felt human again.

 

No time to take the camera out today, so some quick pictures from the last few days, because you must have something pretty to gaze on:

 

Daily Pigeon glory, as now mandated by law:

I know I say this practically every day, but oh oh that face. I start to think that she has gone into adorable overdrive, just to see how much I can take.

The hill:

Blah

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Actually, it's more like BLAAAARRRRGGGHHH.

I must admit that I am very slightly prone to theatricality (as some of you may have noticed). I like a bit of hyperbole. I am down with excess. So, I can deal fairly well with big emotions. I like great big, clean, painful emotions that are about one thing, that come roaring and screaming out of you, that mean something.

When I say well, I don't mean necessarily with marvellous grace and cleverness. I mean that I sort of know what to do with them, and I always know that they will not finish me.

What I really hate are the messy, muddled, bunched up, neither flesh fowl nor good red herring emotions. The ones with a bit of resentment and a flash of envy and a dose of grumpiness and a pinch of recrimination. And it all gets stewed up in a box and sits low in your stomach, heavy as a lurking alien life form, and you've got to get your bloody work done, and stupid people are just asking you stupid questions, and making demands on your time, and can't everyone just bugger off and leave you alone?

I think that's how it goes. (You can see that metaphors get mixed too, and figures of speech strained to breaking point.)

Then, because I am not dealing with the mid-level emotions very well at all, I get cross. I tried walking it off; did not work; then I tried eating a lot of popcorn; utter failure. I tried Pigeon love and mushroom soup. Nope. Nothing. Still crazy.

The crossness escalates into something all its own, as if it is being fuelled by a Martian energy source which will last TO THE END OF TIME.

Luckily, the Beloved Cousin emails. Apparently she is furious too, and shouting at everyone, and then madly apologising. 'Everyone slightly confused,' she writes.

'Don't worry,' I write back. 'It's good for them. Will butch them up.'

Then I write 777 words, and think about chapter fourteen, which is a screaming mess. If I were brave and decisive, I would just scrap it altogether. It's not really awfully good. It's not dazzling and dancing with original thought. Also, this would save a lot of time: it's just one, slashing delete.

But oh no. I am determined that there are some dull emeralds in all the dung, so I have to go over and over it again to try and find them.

Also, I forget that cutting is never as straightforward as you think. You triumphantly carve away a section, feeling like a fifth musketeer, all flashing blade and insouciance, and then you realise that, without it, the next sentence makes no sense at all. Worse, there will be something three chapters later which refers back to it, which relies entirely on that section to make any sense, and now the anchoring section is gone, and the other thing is just hanging out there.

I think I had better stop now. I am suddenly aware that none of this has made any sense at all. I should cut it, but as always, some bizarre prompting nudges me into showing you the mazy wanderings of my furious mind. Why? Why? But I suppose all the advice on blogging always says you must give the punters what they want, and you do seem to like honesty. I really hope that you are not going to come to regret mentioning that.

 

Photographs now:

Autumn trees:

Promised lichen:

Moss on wall:

Young horse chestnut:

Even though it is October, the hydrangea is optimistically putting out new growth:

These are very naughty. I scavenged them from the wild. They seem happy, though:

The last three salvias:

And my three old lady chairs, to do with. From here, I can sit and stare down the beech avenue:

Geranium:

LOOK LOOK, The Pigeon is UP ON THE WALL:

She has her special I'm up on the wall face on:

Then I make her lie down on some leaves. She gets bored, and starts sticking her bottom in the air as an indication that she is finished. I think she looks exactly like Jennifer Lopez and start laughing:

Then we throw quite a lot of sticks. A dear reader sent me a link to a heart-rending piece in Slate about giving your old dog one perfect day, so now of course I am determined that every day shall be her perfect day. So I threw and threw the stick. And then I threw it again:

Not terribly good picture of the hill:

Better tomorrow. Promise.

A Sunday ramble

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Sometimes I wonder about the things I write. The blogging rules are that there are no rules. It’s a wonderful explosion of pure democracy, of individual expression. There is no right or wrong, no lines beyond which here be dragons.

I think, I think, that in the back of my head the maxim of William Morris lives strong. He said: ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’ I like the idea of taking this line and setting it free. It’s not just houses, I don’t think. I think it is life. (I think of beauty here in its absolute widest form; not the cramped idea of beauty which currently holds sway, but all the unexpected beauties that you find in the most unlikely places.)

So, I think that a blog might aspire to be beautiful and useful. If I can write a singing sentence, or put up a delightful picture of the Pigeon, that’s the beauty part covered. The usefulness is a little more vexing. There is the obvious: a recipe here, a note on the writing process there. But when I do revelation, snapshots of my state of mind I think: is that really of utility? I tip-toe along the fine line between the exploration of the human condition and the abyss of self-indulgence.

When I give you what I sometimes think of as my wailing posts, like I did yesterday, I get a little shiver every time I press the publish button. Is it too much? Did you really need to know that? Am I growing dull and repetitive?

Then the Dear Readers come along and save me. This morning, a comment winged its way into my inbox. A reader had found something in that rambling post from yesterday that made her feel better. It was as if someone had sent me a virtual bunch of flowers, a big fat bouquet of peonies wrapped in an existential ribbon. This will not happen for everyone. I suspect there will be days when people think: enough with the dog stuff, or the mortality riffs, or the deadline panics, which is what it has been about for me in the last month.

I suppose all this is very like life. I have a slightly craven desire to please all of the people all of the time. One of the things I like about middle age is that one really realises this is not possible, or even desirable. One of the things that I have long known intellectually but only recently really understood viscerally is that no matter what you do, you cannot make people think of you in the way you would always like. No matter how much you try to cajole and charm and please, they will have their own stubborn opinions. There is nothing you can do. Some of them will not get you. They will think your opinions wrong, your life choices absurd, your dress sense frankly peculiar. I think the great revelation that comes when you motor into your forties, is that you can let them. And that is all right.


Of course, even as I finish this I think: that was a bit of a rambly ramble. What was I really trying to say? Am I just indulging the unformed musings of my untethered mind? Shall I rip it up and start again? The finger hovers. Oh go on, say the impatient voices in my head. Publish and be damned.

Still too dreich for taking the camera out, so here is a little selection from the archives of the last couple of weeks:





















A little robin found his way into the house this morning. I opened all the doors and windows and whistled at him until he found his way out again. There is always something rather thrilling when a trapped and panicked bird escapes into the open air, back in the medium in which it belongs. I wonder if it was this fellow:



And now for the loveliness that is the Pigeon:







A three-day-old hill:




Housekeeping note:

I am greatly enjoying doing my new blog, which I told you about earlier in the week. It turns out to have nothing really to do with me at all, so I can turn away from care and frets and just put things there which are pretty or interesting. It seems a bit mad to have two blogs (when there are people who get along perfectly well with none), but such is the lure of my irrational mind.

If you have not had a look, go here, and see what you think.

Bugger

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Another of the good men has gone.

I heard the news last night, as twilight fell. I said: ‘Oh, no,’ out loud into my silent room.

He died the day before yesterday, much too young. He was 51.

He was not an intimate friend; not a call up for a chat on the telephone friend. He was someone I knew from gilded times: parties, dinners, late nights, a trip up the Nile. We were connected by a twining web of mutual friends. He was one of those ones who always seemed to be smiling. I think of him smiling now, handsome, slightly boyish, a little ironical, enthusiastic. He was always pleased to see you. He laughed and teased and gently mocked himself. He was dry and wry and clever and funny.

Bugger, bugger, bugger, I thought. What is this bloody grand plan and why does it not work better?

One death carries all the deaths. When I went to those three funerals in May, an old friend said to me: ‘So is this it for us now? We meet at funerals?’ So there is a faint sense of rupture. I was bashing back to normal so hard; I was boring myself with sadness. I always had a theory that the thing that gets you over heartbreak in the end, is boredom. Come on, you say to yourself: I’ve done this now. Time for the next thing.

Earlier yesterday, I decided to drive back from the oculist along the scenic route. All routes round here are scenic, but this one is even more beautiful than the others. It is the south Deeside road, and you snake through the grand glacial plain, with the line of falling blue mountains shining to the south, and the lush fields of the flatland gleaming to the north.

The sun was blazing down, the most Indian of summers, and it was so lovely it made me catch my breath. I thought of my dad and my dog and I missed them. I suddenly realised that I had rather missed too the high swell of emotion that has lived in me for the last five months, but which has lately subsided. It sounds a really odd thing to say; why would you miss grief?

I have been in the mind over matter phase; the pull your socks up time. In the manic finishing of the book there is no time for the contemplation of sorrows. But perhaps you can put too hard a lid on that box. Perhaps it is not quite right to push away the memories and the yearning; they should live in you, as a mark that the person who has gone existed. (The person, and the dog too.)

The death of the good man ripped the cover away like someone had pulled off a Band-Aid. I went out into the evening air and thought of life and death, and the people who are not here any more, who should be. The regret for them all gathered itself in me, under the dove-coloured sky. I listened to Natalie Merchant on my iPod. I watched the Pigeon gallop down the grass to stare at the sheep.

Yes, I thought. This is how it is with me now. It is all mortality. It brings me back to cliché. It makes me think: live your life.

Then, this morning, I was all business again. There was a four hour editing conference. I did not mention the good man who has gone. I made jokes. I talked seriously of work. I killed darlings. I laughed.

After I put the telephone down, I went to the village to run some errands. I ran in to see my mother. I threw the ball for the Pigeon. The rain came down and I watched all the plants in the garden raise their heads in gratitude.

I went back to my work. Then, someone sent me a slightly terse email. It was not cross or rude. It was just terse. Yet, it whacked into me like an arrow to the heart.

Here is what I am learning about loss. The weeks go by and time does its thing. You come back to pleasure and balance and sense. The ordinary rhythms of life reassert themselves. But the thing that lingers is a hidden frailty. You, or really I mean I, have no defences. That is what gets quite stripped away. The actual grief shrinks from torrent to brook, but I think it is the lost layer of skin that takes a long time to grow back.
And finally, I think, rather wildly: surround yourself with beauty, surround yourself with love, surround yourself with kindness. Surround yourself, as much as you can, with the people who understand.


Now for the pictures. I would love to show you what the first day of October looks like, but it is raining too hard. So here are some photographs of the week:



















The Pigeon, in all her lovely incarnations:







Yesterday's hill: