Cat's cradle

This Easter weekend is a time of reflection and new beginnings for many. For me it's the cusp between leaving one job on Maundy Thursday and starting a new challenge on Tuesday. A year as an archive trainee with the National Archives, based in Manchester. I had got my head round the commute - short car journey, long train journey through the Hope Valley, and short walk in Manchester. Then the snow started last weekend. It snowed, and snowed some more, and the wind blew drifts that cut off Buxton completely and Bakewell to some extent for days.I had thought that I would have a good six months of not worrying about the weather, and the blizzard conditions threw me. I realise that I don' t like to feel life is going out of control. I love change but not unpredictability! It's got to be manageable. I think it's because I have spent over 28 years as the responsible adult - a role that kicked in with my birth of my first child. I then remembered the events of my first honeymoon - in truth my only 'honeymoon' in spite of being twice married. We set off for a friend's parents' house in Burton Bradstock, Dorset in late June. The weather was lovely. We had an old Ford Corsair and a very pregnant cat on the back seat. We couldn't leave her behind. She gave birth to her kittens that evening, whilst we were staying in the best man's flat in London. Back in the car with the cat and kittens in a cardboard box, we carried on with our journey to Dorset. We were stopped by a policeman on the motorway. We had to explain that we couldn't open the window to talk to him because of the cat family on the back seat. In Chippenham an essential part of the car fell off. Somehow we found a garage. Somehow we had the phone number of the best man's brother in Bath. We found a phone box and called him.He came and picked us up in an MG Midget.Cat, kittens,cases - how on earth did we do it? The cat and her kittens were fine. The house was lovely, an old mill by a stream. Later that week we headed back to Chippenham by public transport, leaving the cat back at the mill. How did we find the timetables? How did we co-ordinate the journey? On the way home we stayed with friends in a rural cottage in Shropshire.The cat must have been stir crazy and she escaped overnight. Search parties went out.Food was left by the car in the hope that she would return to the only familiar object in the landscape. Our friends began to look for a foster cat for the kittens. She did come back, clawing our friends hand badly when he grabbed her. We got cat and car back home, the kittens thrived and found homes. I don't remember feeling anxiety at any stage of this scenario. It unfolded , we dealt with each aspect of it as it arose, and everyone survived, including the car.Don't worry, be happy!

Studio in the Sand

As I watched the snow fall yesterday afternoon, wondering if my son would make it to Leeds to see one of his favourite bands, Gaslight Anthem, I switched on the radio. The dial was turned to Radio 4, and coincidentally Robin Denselow was presenting Studio in the Sand, his programme about the music of the Sahrawi.I say coincidentally because many years ago, 1980 to 1981, I lived and worked in Morocco. Morocco had claimed the Spanish Sahara in 1975 and the Polisario movement for independence had sprung up as a response. The conflict was kept under wraps in Morocco, but we all paid an extra tax out of our salaries which we knew was going to fund the war. I had Moroccan friends who told me about the Green March, when young Moroccan conscripts had been mobilised into the desert. In pre Internet days it was hard to follow progress of the conflict when I got back to the UK. The Sahrawi had been under Spanish colonial rule in that part of the Sahara before this. I spent Christmas in Tenerife the year I worked in Casablanca, and the plane stopped in Layoun on its way to the Canaries. Whilst there I met Domingo, who wrote to me for a while when I returned to Morocco. He sent me a couple of photos of him as a child in the family villa in the Spanish Sahara. Imagine going from the green lushness of Tenerife to the Sahara for your holidays!So aside from an interest in the music, I knew a little of the political history behind Robin Denselow's inspiring programme. Music and culture is an important part of the Polisario stand for independence. Young people were being taught sound engineering skills, to record and perform their music.Women are important carriers of the cause and the culture, in contrast with what is happening in many Islamic communities. 'The Sahara is not for Sale' is the battle cry song. A half hour programme - 3.30pm on March 23rd, Radio 4 if you want to listen again - only scratches the surface. As I remember it, the conflict was about who had control of valuable phosphate deposits in the Western Sahara, and none of my Moroccan friends approved of the action. Conscription for an unacknowledged war brought its own difficulties. Perhaps the hope was to develop music festivals in the area. Sadly the recent problems in Mali and Algeria have put everything with the studio in the sand on hold. I am glad to be reminded of the successes and resilience of a people I once knew something about.

Blue sky thinking

This time last week I spent a wonderful afternoon at Tremenheere Sculpture Garden outside Penzance, with a newly discovered old friend who lives in the area. The sun was shining, daffodils were growing in the surrounding fields, and St Michael's Mount was a magical mirage out in the bay.The cafe and gift shop were in a simple light bright and colourful building, reminiscent of the Level Centre in Rowsley where I used to work. It had the same spacious, contemplative feel, almost a place of worship. Which is interesting, because the surrounding gardens were once the vineyards for the monks at St Michael's Mount. The sculpture garden is small and very beautiful. Different from the Bretton Hall sculpture garden, which to me has a very Yorkshire feel to it - sheep and rough pasture. This garden is exotic in its gulf stream lushness. There's something of a fantasy or faerie landscape there. The sculptures are amazing. A James Turrell skyscape, similar to the one at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the old deer shelter, but oval and mediterranean in it's white and sky blueness. His water reflective installation was closed last Saturday, but I have a sense of what it might be like. Many years ago when I lived in Morocco some friends took me to see a famous cistern in El Jadida. It had been used as an underground store for water since Roman times.As you stepped into the space, your mind played tricks. The water was so completely still that the walls and vaulting were a perfect mirror image and you couldn't tell if you were on your head or your heels. Unforgettable. David Nash's blackened oak trunks looked like a family group in a clearing. A camera obscure messed with our minds - slight panic as I tried to find the door handle in the pitch dark! The whole experience was a treat for the senses. Today I am looking at three foot of snow in my Derbyshire garden. Cornwall really is another world.

Ghost walk in St Ives

St Ives was full of memories - memories from the past and memories made for the future. We missed Shanty Baba's Sunday Ghost Walk, but we heard him perform his beautiful piece about the shifting times and tides of the town. I will never forget the Thursday night Frug at St Ives Arts Club, a place I had always wanted to visit. It exceeded all expectations thanks to the mix of artists, musicians, poets and players there. The Bootlegger DJ and his amazing collection of blues and psychedelic 45s, played on a customised record deck that featured mermaids and pirates. Natives of St Helen's connected in St Ives.Poetry was performed. Virginia Woolf's lighthouse could be seen from the upstairs window. Mere days before our visit the waves had crashed over the roof of the boat boarded building. Barbara Hepworth had danced on those floorboards, by the red velvet curtains. Who had babysat for the triplets that night? Every view of the sea was an artist's impression. I watched old cine films from the 50s and 60s, shown in a church with a welcoming congregation, braving the torrential rain for a fund raising evening. Many in the audience recognised friends and family, local characters and events. Fisherman in shirts and suits, baiting their lines. Little girls in white dresses dancing round the Knill monument to a tune played by an ancient fiddler. One of them grew up to become the wife of the man sharing his father's old cine films.Streets of fisherman's cottages still had lines of washing strung across them. Cats thronged the quayside. It was poignant, a time past, alive in the present for those watching. Perhaps film really can steal your soul.I stood in Bernard Leach's pottery watching old film footage of him at work, his boots in the corner of the room next to me. Dead man's shoes. We visited Barbara Hepworth's garden and studio, where her presence is palpable,not just in her work rooms, but in the simple single bed with its blue and white cotton bedspread, still made up in the summerhouse.There were postcards in a file, written by children who I am guessing must have visited with their schools. Arthur wrote in his newly acquired handwriting , after the heading 'Dear Barbara" - "I am sorry you are dead'. I know just how he feels, but the wonder of this liminal place on the cusp and threshold of so many worlds, sea and shoreline, past and present, land and sky, is that it's all still there just waiting to be recognised. I was sorry to miss the Ghost Walk. It was a ghost walk in St Ives many years ago that inspired me to start mine in Bakewell, and that in turn helped me to do an MA in folklore and cultural tradition.The rest is history.

Teach your children well

In 1970 I was 16. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young brought out Déjà Vu and my boyfriend of the time introduced me to their music. I knew about Graham Nash because of the Hollies and I lived in Manchester. Graham’s love song for Joni Mitchell, ‘Our House’, was our dream, but we never did get to live together. A few years later I went off to teach English in Morocco humming ‘Marrakesh Express’ as I got on board that train for Casablanca. As I got older and thought about having a family, ‘Teach your Children Well’ was the song that expressed my feelings about having and bringing up children. I have three, and spent many years as a single parent, supporting them, loving them, keeping them safe, providing a roof over their heads, encouraging them to be themselves and follow their dreams, whilst trying not to lose sight of my own in all the responsibility. In 2011 I had the amazing experience of seeing Crosby and Nash at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and their set included ‘Teach Your Children’, as powerful then as back in the day when I first heard it when I wasn’t much more than a child myself. A couple of weeks ago my nineteen year old son left home. My older two are in their mid and late twenties, and had left to go to university. Neither have come back home, and both are doing well, following their dreams. My youngest son didn’t want to go down the university route and I was seriously concerned that he would find it financially impossible to strike out independently. A live in job has now given him the chance, and I am thrilled. Then suddenly it hit me that I am now on my own – always a parent, but no longer the responsible adult. I tried not to feel tearful, and was doing OK until I realised that I had fulfilled my teenage dream to teach my children well.

Once a Catholic

Pope Benedict announced his resignation this week. What is going on with the Catholic Church? The first pope to resign since 1415. It’s an historic occasion. Back in early April 2005 I was sitting in a café in the sunshine in Dharamsala, Northern India. I was spending a week there, taking the opportunity to see the Dalai Lama and the home of the Tibetan government in exile. It was the fulfilment of a long held ambition. I had read Heinrich Harrer’s ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ when I was about seven years old, and was entranced by the story of the Dalai Lama. The news had just broken that Pope John Paul II had died. An Irish couple shared the café table with me, and we discussed popes and Catholicism. They had been in India when the previous pope had died, on their honeymoon. Here they were, visiting India for their own significant anniversary, and history was repeating itself. I was very aware that with the death of the pope the only spiritual world leader on the planet was living and preaching a matter of yards from where I was sitting. I appreciate that the Dalai Lama has handed over political power to Tibetan representatives, but he is still considered to be a spiritually motivated political leader by many, including the Chinese government. A couple of years later I visited Rome, and went to St Peter’s Square on the Sunday morning to see the Pope give his blessing from his balcony. I was there for the rugby, and it was my non Catholic companion’s idea to go and see the pope. Catholicism is still something I resist and reject in many ways, and a pope’s blessing would not have been high on my list of ‘to do’s’ when in Rome. It was fascinating to see the crowds of tourists there, most of them spiritual tourists I am sure. There were the obvious groups of nuns, but there were also young people bursting into happy hymn singing for the occasion. It was a very different way of identifying yourself as a card carrying Catholic. Some years later I attended a series of lectures at Nottingham Arena, given by the Dalai Lama on one of his visits to the UK. There was a question and answer session, and someone asked him about the difficulties he was experiencing becoming a good Buddhist. The Dalai Lama gave some very interesting advice, and I am sure many people there may not have welcomed it. He recognised that many of the people who are drawn to Buddhism in the west are spiritually inclined, and this inclination comes from having been born into a recognised religion. Basically he said follow the religion you were given by birth, work to make it what you need it to be. For me this was a very radical statement, and I think for many there it went over their heads. It set me thinking. I have been drawn to Buddhism throughout my life, perhaps as a result of reading Heinrich Harrer’s book. I have even thought of becoming a Buddhist nun, but I have never taken the decisive step of becoming aligned to any of the Buddhist organisations that exist in the West. I am one of the growing number of people who describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious. I have struggled with Catholicism most of my life to. As a teenager in a convent boarding school I became very sensitive to its hypocrisy, and resisted having religion shoved down my throat. Luckily at a girls’ school it was only religion that was. As the years have gone by a series of scandals have hit the Catholic Church, usually involving priests and those they were responsible for. I am sure it was ever thus, but there is a culture of revelation now, both within the church and in the wider media. The Magdalene Laundries, ‘Oranges and Sunshine’ and the scandal of Australian orphanages, powerful films like ‘Doubt’, the Jimmy Savile scandal – people forget he was a Catholic. My own education and upbringing was as a Catholic in Manchester, with a lapsed Catholic father, but my mother took us to church every Sunday and we went to Catholic schools. It was an appealing culture influenced by the Irish backgrounds of many of our school friends. Convent boarding school was something different. The nuns there were part of the culture that could maintain and condone the Magdalene Laundries. Teenage girls in the late nineteen sixties and early seventies were seen as the embodiment of occasions of sin, damned before we had started, in spite of going to confession and communion weekly. There was an insidious cruelty, sometimes physical, but more often than not psychological, part of the creation of the famous Catholic Guilt. Everything we did was wrong, and we were worthless sinners. There was a comic element to all of this too – boxes of tampax and non-regulation underwear were confiscated when discovered. Psychological cruelty started at the junior branch of the school, where children were made to sleep in a room they thought was haunted as a punishment. The nuns wouldn’t have believed for a minute that it was haunted, but they knew the power of fear. Throughout my four years there my younger sister was a pupil at the junior part of the school. My middle sibling and I were at the senior school, literally across the road. We were not allowed to cross that road to visit or maintain family contact with our youngest sister, who started at boarding school when she was seven. The older I get, the more horrifically unkind and uncaring I find this attitude. At worst, religious Catholics, especially the clergy, consider themselves above the law of humanity. They can go to confession, make penance, have their sins forgiven, and guarantee their place in heaven with the Nine First Fridays. How ridiculous is a religion that bans contraception, makes the use of condoms a sin, even where Aids and HIV is rife, insists on celibacy for its clergy and dares to tell people how to manage their personal relationships. As teenagers we were intrigued by the rebel Dutch priests who broke away from the church and married in the sixties. I wonder what became of them. It’s no wonder that the abuse of power has resulted in priests sexually abusing those in their care, whilst vilifying same sex relationships. How can I reconcile myself to the faith and the church I was brought up to be part of, as the Dalai Lama suggests? Strangely, I find myself drawn to fellow Catholics, especially lapsed ones. There’s the shared childhood history, attitudes of generosity and acceptance, ‘do as you would be done by’. It’s the ones who have rejected the pomp and circumstance of the religion who seem to live the most thoughtful and caring lives. The Catholic Church has done much for the poor in some parts of the world, and priests have been punished for being political rebels. Perhaps a new Pope, elected in these strange circumstances, before the death of the old Pope, heralds in a shift of attitude. I don’t imagine that he will be anything other than conservative, whichever country he comes from, but at least the possibility of a non-European Pope is being talked about. I have enjoyed the Father Ted related Facebook posts, proposing Dougal or Father Jack for Pope. In fact ‘Father Ted’ with its very Irish Catholic scenarios and humour helped reconcile me to Catholicism when I first discovered the TV series. Recently there has been a lot of publicity about American Catholic nuns working for ecology. I have bought the book ‘Green Sisters’ and look forward to reading about them. The Catholic Church has been responsible for so much harm in so many ways over the centuries. I’d like to think I could reconsider its role in my life, as the Dalai Lama suggested, even if it is simply to reconcile myself to the fact that I was once a Catholic.

Taste and Trust

This week has been full of the scandal surrounding horsemeat masquerading as beef. I am a natural vegetarian. I never liked the taste and texture of meat as a child and growing up in the hippy era, it was easy to avoid it once I left home. I have eaten meat to avoid embarrassment when it has been cooked for me. I know it doesn't make me ill or sick. When I worked in Morocco I would be invited home by some of the students, and meat was what was served to guests. I have cooked chicken and bacon for my children. It's a matter of taste most of the time, and ethics some of the time. Vegetarian cuisine is so much more varied and international, and because I am squeamish easier for me to cook. I appreciate that the powers that be are saying horsemeat isn't harmful. The jury still seems to be out on whether it might sometimes contain potentially harmful drugs.I also recognise that there are many creatures that provide food in different cultures, including squirrels, rabbits, ostriches, hares and even rats and dogs. It's a cultural thing.When I lived in Casablanca there was a horse butcher's stand in the Marchee Central with a beautiful plaster painted model of a horse's head to advertise its wares. When my friend's son made the connection he turned vegetarian. Meat was raw there- exposed to the flies, out on the street, whole sheep or goats slaughtered in public, bunches of chickens hanging from their legs on motorbike handles. In this country we have become very distanced from our food sources, not least because of the popularity of processed food, especially meat products. At boarding school we were served beef and gravy that came out of a tin. I am convinced that those slices of meat were horse. I have never seen beef with that sort of muscle fibre. Years later on family holidays in Anglesey, I was aware that some of the horses grazing in the fields next to the caravan site were on their way from Ireland to the continent as a food product. Not so many years ago I was told I could purchase a rescue pony for my children via the business connection of a friend. The business sent horses and ponies from the UK to the continent for slaughter. Earlier this week, with all the fuss about horsemeat, I wondered if I had remembered this offer correctly. The local press ran an article today about proposed protests at a Bakewell based business, doing just this, so I guess that would have been the source of my rescue pony. We don't eat choose to eat horses here - at least not knowingly. While I am sure there are meat eaters who would be curious or unconcerned if they did, this is about trust. It's not just about whether anyone has been harmed by it. It's about food being what it claims it is, doing what it says on the tin. In this time of banking scandals and government spin and u-turns we are treated as fools in so many ways, but please don't assume we are foolish.I will never forget reading a very small article in a national paper when the scandal of BSE broke. I was weaning my daughter on home cooked vegetarian food at the time. Heinz had released a statement to reassure customers that their baby food did not contain brain or spinal cord. I wonder how many of us had ever considered that it might.