Past and Future

2011 - a year stuffed full of events and surprises as a slice of Christmas pudding filled with fruit and treasurers, still topped with the flickering flames of brandy as it arrived on my plate. Among the raisins and cherries was the glint of a wedding ring, a silver ship, a car, a greyhound and a treasure I had always dreamed of but never expected to find, and tiny silver book. Five treasures in one year, such riches all handed to me on a plate.

The greyhound? I have heard it said that in a life time of living with dogs one will be more special than the rest and Muffin has found the key to my heart, he has been my constant companion through some very difficult years. I have never spent so much time in a car, computers and mobile phones are great aids to courting but the time comes when you want to meet face to face and courting over two hundred and seventy miles would be difficult without a car. The ship took us to far away places as we took time out to get to know each other. The wedding ring became mine in October and the book? My first novel, Phoenix House, was published in July. It is for sale on Amazon as well as in some of the shops in Dorset.
Being a new comer to all this I have a lot to learn about advertising and PR. I had read that I should have a presence on Youtube but had no idea how to go about it and spent much of the night before a pre-Christmas Book Signing in Weymouth lying awake and worrying. It was a vile day, bitterly cold with sheeting rain so few people had ventured out. Only half a dozen people came to the event but among them was a knight in shining amour. At least that is the way I saw his rain soaked coat for instead of a sword he was carrying a video camera. You can see the video on Youtube if you go to www.youtube.co/Zzippster and look for Carenza Hayhoe.
The story of Phoenix House begins for my heroine Ginny on the day of her grandmother's funeral. After a year filled with adventures she discovers that her grandmother isn't so very far away after all and that she has inherited her talent for writing. Now I have the problem of making sure I make time every day so that I can fulfill all Ginny's ambitions!

To find out more about Portland and Phoenix House go to www.carenza.net

The return of hope

The turn of the year, traditionally a time for review and resolve, so much has changed since I wrote The Fledgling. I didn’t know then it would be the last thing I would write for nearly three years for I would have neither the time nor the energy. All I could do was put one foot in front of the other and pray that I would be able to keep going as I experienced the depths of sorrow, grief and loneliness. I lived with the hope that the old saying ‘the darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn’ would prove to be true, but as days became months and months turned into years the darkness became darker and I came close to despair.
During the past year I have discovered you are never too old to laugh, love and start all over again. Creative energy has been regained and with it has come the restoration of the belief that there is nothing so bad that it cannot be turned over for good.

Good Intentions for 2008

Resolutions seem to fail almost as soon as they are made so instead I call them my New Year Good Intentions and, to black mail myself into keeping them, I will record them here. They all revolve around writing (what else!)
The first is to clear the work surfaces in my room and I have promised myself to do that tomorrow morning.
The second is to get up an hour earlier every day. 'Earlier tha what?' I hear you say so I will rephrase that and say I will set my alarm for six and write before breakfast. (Having made it a blog entry I shall have to stick with that, won’t I!)
The third is exciting and well under way. I am now committed to recording the folk lore and legends of Portland. Having talked to a number of old friends and got their agreement to being interviewed I telephoned the County Conservationist this morning. I have been invited to meet her and the Archivist next week. I am to be given all the support I could possibly ask for including the loan of equipment and instruction on how to use it. I explained that I have a digital recorder but it seems that there is still some uncertainty about the durability of digital recording and if tapes are properly stored under the right conditions they are still considered preferable. This means I will be able to take a belt and braces approach and use both sets of equipment. I did confess that I had a hidden agenda, that I like to think of myself as a writer and storyteller, and got even more encouragement - all very heart warming and exciting.
Another plan is almost complete. Having taken part in the Speak Easy Club in Wimborne where people who enjoy the spoke word gather once a month to read aloud, either from favourite authors or their own work, I began to dream of something similar on Portland. Stones Speak is to take place in Whitestones Café – Gallery in Easton from 7pm on the first Tuesday of every month. Creative Dorset is sponsoring the first evening and if anyone who reads this is passing they will be made very welcome, whether they want to read or just listen in a café atmosphere where the wine and coffee are equally good.
The Open University has promised a third level creative writing course scheduled to start in September. Finances permitting I am planning to make time for that too. 2008 is going to be a full and exciting year.
There will be no danger of taking life too seriously as my new companion, being a collie cross, is highly intelligent and constantly thinking of new things she wants to investigate. When she stands on her back legs she can reach almost as high as I can so nothing is safe. If she finds a ball of wool (and she has managed to find several) she forgets she was born a dog and thinks she is a kitten - it can take hours to unravel her knitting and restore it to a knot free ball.

A New Member of the Family

Life with an old dog is, on the whole, quiet and orderly. Losing an old dog is losing an old friend, the grieving process is painful. China and I had shared so many events,some happy, some very difficult. Last winter George became very ill and departed for the County Hospital in an ambulance six days after we moved house. For six weeks China and I lived on a building site, travelled daily to the hospital twelve miles away and lived on a diet of take away food. She was there for me come rain, come shine, always loving, never complaining. I shared all my secret thoughts with her knowing that nothing I said would shock, nothing would be repeated. I knew that she could never be replaced but equally I recognised that for me a canine companion is essential and I promised myself that when the day came I would find another companion as quickly as possible.

It only took two weeks to find Sky. I trawled the internet and found a photograph of a deerhound, greyhound, collie cross bitch, dark brindle and only two years old. No longer is our household quiet and orderly. This is a dog who requires toys; toys to toss and catch, toys to chew and toys to share in a tug of war. She provides endess amusement for George and plenty of exercise for me. Already she has become my constant shadow and has made herself completely at home.

Time for awards

Having not added to my blog for nearly a month I was very surprised and grateful to find that I have been nominated for a Roar Award. Although I have done little writing since losing China I have done a lot of reading and looking at other people's blogs and would like to nominate the following five blogs for their inspirational content:
cwnotebook
pernickety hat
caroleb
pushingpencil.
education-at-home.

My resolution for tomorrow is to introduce you to Sky who has become my new companion and shadow

Sometimes I find it hard to hang on to my dreams and when I found that the people who had been living in my cottage had trashed it I wondered why I had bothered to make it so special. Portland has always been the home of my heart but for thirteen years we lived in Gosport near Stokes Bay where the land is flat and the sea is usually mud coloured. Eventually my daughter said quietly to her father ‘You know Mother is still homesick?’
Before long we had found a tiny terraced cottage which the family hoped would cure the problem. ‘Granny’s Cottage’ was carved on a slat and mounted beside the front door and once again I had a home on the island. The second weekend we spent there my husband said ‘We might move back completely one day,’ and within the hour I had found the house which was to be our home for the next six years. We put our Gosport house on the market and sold it within forty minutes. We spent the next six months living in the cottage while we restored our new seventeenth century home and created an art gallery and pottery workshop on the ground floor.
Do I believe in ghosts? I’m not sure, but I certainly find some houses have an atmosphere all their own. I once lived in one which I found so oppressive that I began to think I was losing the plot until a very tough teenager said ‘funny place this, I keep thinking I’m going to bump into somebody.’ Granny’s Cottage on the other hand has an atmosphere of peace and calm despite the fact that lorries carrying huge blocks of stone pass by outside. Perhaps it comes from the monks of Wykeham who, over a thousand years ago, lived on the site. I decided to keep it and instead of letting it as a holiday home I wanted it to be a real home. The first tenants loved it and looked after it, so I was quite unprepared for what I found when the last tenants moved out. It took two months to put it to rights and I found myself borrowing rather a lot but the sense of peace has returned both to the cottage and to me. I have a new tenant who is clearly very happy there so my dream has been restored.

The phone rang ‘Your aunt died last night. Can you come?’ I hastily arranged cover for the family and drove the two hundred or so miles to the village that had once been my home.

I had thought my aunt’s life was tragic until the day when I was clearing her cottage out and found a few notes in her desk. She had written ‘I never regarded myself as disabled’ although she had been born with a congenitally dislocated hip which was not identified till she was two and led to twenty seven operations before she was five. In those days parents were not allowed to stay with children in hospital so at times of great pain she was abandoned to the care of strangers. She had been baptised Naomi Avis Primrose and my grandmother insisted that she was called Primrose despite her dark complexion and nearly black hair. Her father had been killed in the first month of World War I and her mother spent much of the remainder of the war in deep depression, quite unable to meet the needs of her little girl.

Primrose turned out to have a beautiful contralto voice and a good mathematical brain but with her limp and dark visage she had not the looks for the stage and in 1920, though she gained a BSc in civil engineering, there were no opportunities for young women. She was presented at court and did a season but most eligible young men were frightened of girls with brains, especially ones who had an aggressive determination to survive. World War II gave her the opportunity she craved and for five years her talents were in demand. Despite being in constant pain and having one leg substantially shorter than the other she clambered over bomb sites and cycled to work through the black out until she was knocked unconscious by a passing car and remained in a coma for five months. After that she became a recluse, living with her cats and seldom talking to anyone except in monosyllables.

The cottage where she died had been given to me by my father as a wedding present and because my husband had a sea going job I had lived there on my own when I was first married and my son had been born there. The cottage was full of happy memories. After a time I was able to travel with my husband so I was overseas when she, having run out of money, finally asked for help so it made sense for her to have it. The post mortem showed she had died of malnutrition and hypothermia. The family would have employed a local contractor who advertised house clearances to sort things out but I stepped in and said I would do it. The RSPCA took the skeletal cats away and I began my self appointed task.

The smell was terrible but by opening the doors back and front the air began to clear. Aunt Prim had stored carefully sorted rubbish in hundredweight paper meal sacks; one filled with dead matches, one with the inner match box, a third with the outer covering. Bright red Bournville chocolate wrappers were packed in one sack, gold wrappings in another. As I heaved the sacks outside the floor began to creak and crack until the boards, soft with wood worm and wet rot, gave way in one corner.

A village worthy came bustling in and began poking in corners. ‘No need for her to be cold’ she said as she lifted the lid of a metal meal bin ‘Look she had fuel for the boiler in here and there’s pies in this box. She didn’t have to go hungry.’

I didn’t point out that she had had a stroke and sat for a week in her own urine before anyone thought she might need help, no one brought her a blanket or a hot drink. She had nothing but her indomitable courage and determination to keep her going, and her books to keep her company.

I worked on through the day putting aside anything of value, her books, a small oil painting, a silver fob watch with raised numbers and no glass made for a blind person and ideal for someone working in the blackout. All the while I could hear rustlings as I disturbed the mice the cats had been too weak to catch.

Tied firmly to the top shelf of the book case was a blue felt parcel. Carefully I cut away the string and sat down for the first time that day to examine this thing that had been so precious that it had to be tied down. Layer after layer came off and I thought of the little girl who would have played pass the parcel long ago. Finally the heart of the treasure was displayed on my lap, a Victorian carriage clock in working order. I have it still.

Outside the sun was setting, the cottage bathed in golden evening light. The small garden that I had tended as a bride was a tangle of briars and brambles but half hidden and unnoticed by the front door I found a perfect white tulip. Next morning I cut it carefully and took it with me to the funeral. There were no flowers on the coffin. After the service the coffin was carried to the grave yard below the church. As the undertakers prepared to lower their burden into the grave I placed the single white flower on it. No, my aunt’s life was not a tragedy for she certainly would not have considered it so, she lived her life heroically and maintained her independence to the end.

© Carenza Hayhoe 2007

For many Portland is nothing more than a name on the shipping forecast. Some will say ‘Oh Portland Bill, yes we’ve been there and climbed the Lighthouse’ and you will find that is all they have done, they have never walked the cliff paths, explored the quarries, visited St George’s church built by a pupil of Christopher Wren or drunk a pint of real ale in The George, a pub that goes back to the sixteenth century. They certainly won’t have explored the village of Easton and had a cup of coffee in Whitestones Café Gallery.
On Thursday evening I went to Whitestones for the private view of Sea Art, an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by ten West Country artists and was thrilled to discover the work of David Brook whose acrylic paintings I would describe as pure poetry. Two particularly caught my eye, ‘Fish Surfers’ is full of vibrant movement, the three surfers riding the waves with confidence imposed by the painters brush. The image of two walkers caught in a world of their own under an umbrella while the rain curls and crashes on the rest of the world is a sonnet in paint. This is an exhibition to be enjoyed at leisure over a cup of Davd Nicholl’s delicious coffee, the images will remain in the mind long after the visit to Portland is over. http://www.whitestonescafegallery.com/