My Mind is a Museum

My mind is a museum - ‘Let’s pretend.’ D’you remember when your world was new and how those two words promised the very best games? Then anything was possible so let’s pretend that I can invite you into my mind. If you wander around on your own you could easily get lost, much of it is like an old fashioned agricultural museum with stacks of ancient tools that no one wants these days, a bushel basket for harvesting apples or carrying logs to the fire in winter in one corner, a yard broom and a mattock in another. Round the corner there’s a door leading into the kitchen were coals are glowing inside the open door of a blackened range. On the floor is a rag rug with a tabby and white cat curled up enjoying the warmth, beside her is a basket of clean washing. On the top a kettle is just coming to the boil and two flat irons are warming. Michette will soon come in to make the tea, she’ll pick up the iron using a special pot holder, one I made myself, so she won’t burn her hand, then she will spit on the bottom of the iron and if it makes a sizzling noise she will pick up a shirt and spread it out on the ironing board and the room will be filled with the smell of warm cotton as she smoothes away all the creases. This all belongs to a time long ago, I can have been no more than six years old for I had just begun to sew, but everything is still as clear as yesterday. Laptops and mobiles were beyond any imagining, doors that opened as you approached them were the stuff of fairy tales, but I grew up knowing how to light a fire with a handful of twigs and as the sun went down we lit oil lamps and at bed time carried a candle up the stairs to bed. Every year there are fewer and fewer of us who remember a life like that when pans of milk were set beside the stove for the cream to rise till it was thick and yellow and a crack with thick sides appeared right across the pan showing that the cream was ready to be skimmed off. Thick clotted cream with a spoonful of strawberry jam on new crusty bread, does anything taste so good today? Last week I was asked where I came from, ‘I can usually tell from the way people speak but I can’t pigeon hole you’ said my friend, ‘Central China,’ I replied, ‘I was born in a French Convent on the banks of the Yangtze.’ ‘But you don’t look Chinese.’ ‘I’m not; my mother got me onto the last ship to leave Shanghai as the Japanese were coming in over the northern border. I was one of the lucky ones; a little baby didn’t last long in a concentration camp.’ But that, as they say, is another story.

A new husband and a new way of life. At first we were very comfortable sharing a working space, two desks in the small conservatory at the back of the house but the day came when Barry found my oil paints and easel abandoned in the corner of a room upstairs and suddenly there wasn't room for me and my desk any more. Luckily my daughter came to lunch the following day - 'There's only one answer,' she said, 'you've got to have a shed.' At that moment a knight in shining armour came round the corner disguised as near neighbour (knights in shining armour are usually heavily disguised these days) and within a couple of months he had built my dream castle. It is still called The Shed and to some it may be just a small wooden box but to me it's a palace and perfect. Now we each have our own space we have found the recipe for a very happy marriage.

Another New Beginning

In the beginning I was a student, a septuagenarian, an undergraduate and a full time carer. Despite a very full life I still found time to be a writer and thanks to a lot of encouragement, a friend who is a suburb illustrator and a wonderful publisher Phoenix House became my first novel. In 2010 I found myself stranded on an unknown shore, a widow without a purpose in life, plenty of time but no sense of direction. Fortunately fate took a hand and suddenly I was in the middle of a real life romance. Even at three score years plus rather more than ten it is possible to fall in love and suddenly every day was full of light and laughter and three years later it still is. The only people to suffer are the characters in my two unfinished novels who are mouldering in the bottom drawer of my desk wondering if there is any future for them. It is time for another new beginning, a resolution to rescue my characters and report on my life and theirs every week. I used to write in a hut beside the sea, I now have a shed in the garden but that is a story for next week.

Catching the magic

At last the sun is shining out of a clear blue sky and instead of the constant sound of the howling wind (yes howling really was the only word to describe it)the only sounds now are from crying seagulls. Snowdrops and miniature daffodils are smiling through the grass outside The Shed and spring really seems to have arrived. Portland has been very lucky, although the Chesil Beach was pounded by huge waves and the road that connects us to the mainland was closed several times our problems have been nothing compaired to those on the Somerset Levels and in the Thames valley. Our garden fencing has been blown down but that can be easily repaired. My only real problem is returning to a regular writing pattern, I've done enough research to get on with the next adventure in the life of the Pullen family. Four years have passed, Ginny and Rick have both left school and Lou is about to be the only one left at home with her father. The whole family are sitting round the breakfast table in Cliff House, I can hear them all talking but this morning I can't sit down with them; I can't catch the words and string them together. To loosen up a pianist plays scales and arpeggios, a dancer works at the barre and in the days when I made pots for a living I would wedge up half a hundred weight of clay before sitting at my wheel and throwing a series of jugs. With a dozen jugs in front of me confidence returned and nothing could stop my inspiration. It always worked but now the slightest thing breaks my train of thought and the magic goes.

Duckey Stones

The gales have subsided at last and the sky has been blue all day but I fear it won't be for long. This time the sea defences have held up but piles of rubbish have been washed ashore, mostly plastic rubbish, nylon lines and fishing hooks, drift wood and corpses including a headless dolphin and two cows. The cows were probably grazing somewhere on the banks of the Exe, wandered down to the river where the bank broke away and the cows slid into the river to be washed down to the sea. Time was when more exciting treasurers could be found, for the very lucky a Spanish Dubloon might waiting for the sharp eyed treasure seeker, more often it could be a Duckey Stone. A couple of generations ago children would use these to play what in our day we called Jacks or Knuckle Stones. To some the Duckey Stone was no more than a piece of dull grey metal but to the wise it had once been a Maria Therese Dollar. Perhaps there are still a few lying among the pebbles - who knows?

The Storm has passed

I've just been looking at Stuart Morris's video of the storm raging around Portland Bill on You Tube. Words can't do it justice, I strongly suggest you type Stuart Morris, Portland into You Tube. Today the sky is blue with a few fluffy clouds but did you see the weather forecast yesterday evening? There was a very deep low lurking out in the Atlantic so I fear there will be more to come. We seem to get major storms and floods about every twenty years. I remember the one in 1989 when Chiswell was really flooded but the Navy was still here and came to the rescue with rubber dinghies taking people from their homes to higher ground. When the storm died down they helped dry out the flooded homes, took carpets to the helicopter hangers and hosed them down to get rid of the salt, then dried them and helped to relay them. The older generation shook their heads saying 'You don't have carpets in Chiswell!' All the older cottages had a stone slab in the middle of the floor which could be lifted to let the flood waters get away, in Chiswell you just learned to live with the weather. After a storm like the one we've just had beach combing can be very rewarding - who knows a few ducky stones may have come to the surface. Ducky stones? I'll tell you what they are in my next posting.

In December 2012 I was complaining about the rain, it was nothing compared to what has been happening in the last two weeks. Great grey rollers have been racing across West Bay topped by white horses and for those with eyes to see, the ghosts of the past sailing ships have been careering to their doom. Beachcombers have been staggering up the Chesil Beach with armfuls of drift wood, some hoping that perhaps the storm will uncover treasure from the wrecks of the past, maybe a duckey stone or two? Phoenix House was published as a paper back couple of years ago and I thought my cup of happiness was full to over flowing until my wonderful publisher Graeme K. Talboys said he had turned it into an ebook. That was the moment when I felt that Ginny Pullen and her sister Lou had really come alive; already I am planning to put writing time into my diary, the need to tell the next chapter of their story is about to take over my life, however my first task is to rescue the characters in the two novels I was working on two years ago. At the same time I intend to continue reasearching into the folk lore and legends of Portland, instinct tells me that my findings will play a very important part in the Pullen girls lives. For over a year I have had little time for writing or posting to this blog - apologies to any one who has taken the trouble to visit, I can promise that, disasters aside, I shall be posting regularly from now on.