Perfect Autumn Moment

I just looked up from my desk here in the study in a grump. And what did I see? The wind has started to rise (gales forecast for tomorrow) and leaves are floating and dancing right in front of my window, over the shed rooves and out across the pond, lovely bronze leaves the shape of viking boats and babies' hands. The dying daylight has a rusty orange tone to it. The way the leaves are dancing makes me think of snowflakes, the fat kind, and the way they too whirl and swoop like prima ballerinas. Just when I am in the filthiest of moods, when I need it most, Gaia reminds how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place.

An Autumn Walk

I woke to a bright, mild day and decided to take a short walk after lunch, just down the track to the bridge and back, a matter of 20 minutes if you don’t linger. I chose to linger. The sky was a crisp blue with no trace of cloud, and the sun low. The beauty of the autumn trees is beginning to fade here now. The poplar plantation is now a forest of feathery silver trunks with only a hint of ginger left at the highest tips of the branches. The oaks are still clinging to their leaves jealously, always the last to go into green in spring, and the last to drop in autumn.

I stood for a while and looked out across the lake, over the parkland. They are grazing sheep periodically under the limes and oaks at this time of year, and we often drive past their ghostly shapes at night, little green eyes fluorescing uncannily in our headlights. No sheep there today; they must have been moved on to the next pasture in their rotation. I watched the water plunging over the weir for a while, letting the soft roar and the damp, mossy-smelling air soothe me. Then I leaned over the rail to look under the bridge, as I always do, to see what flotsam has been washed underneath.

There was a little whitened body, caught on some twigs in the stream, all fur denuded from its flanks. Some of the flesh was gone too, revealing skull, a hunched backbone, and delicate little back leg bones. It was curled up in that familiar foetal position. I could not make out what it was, a hare or rabbit perhaps, too stripped by the action of the water for a clear identification, unless one was an expert on animal skeletons, which I am not. Those empty eye sockets looked blankly up at me. It bothered me to see something dead in the water like that. The crone stalks the countryside at this time of year, I thought, reminded of the mummified rook hanging by its feet in a barn belonging to a friend, put there to scare away its living relatives from the grain stored inside.

I walked back along the track, skirting the field at the back of the farmhouse where a solitary heifer stalked me, keeping pace with me as I stomped along on the other side of the hedge, its ears akimbo. When I reached the gate at the furthest end, I stood and we stared at one another. It eyed me nervously. When I left it returned to a hoarse moaning, crying out for company. The cows in the shed on the other side of the field moaned back.

Gratitude

I got wet last night. I mean, soaked.

We went to a friend's bonfire night party. There were fireworks, beautiful, whizz-pop fireworks. Trouble is, you have to light fireworks outside, and it was raining. So we just stood there in the garden and got wet. And squealed, and went 'oooo' and 'aaahhhhh' at all the right moments. Like you do. With rain dripping down the backs of our necks. And then we went back inside and steamed while we ate delicious party food. (Many thanks to Dan and Bridget, great party!)

When I got home, I realised I couldn't remember the last time I got wet like that, stood out in the rain like that. I am one of those very English people who is neurotic about the weather forecast and always comes prepared with a plastic mac and an umbrella. I hate getting my hair wet and I hate getting rain on my glasses so I can't see.

But actually, its just a bit of water.

And strangely, it was nice to do something different. It reminded me that I was alive. I was grateful for the rain.

The other day I was listening to a friend complaining. She is a relentlessly negative person. I sat there for about an hour and suddenly looked at her and thought, you haven't said a positive word for at least sixty whole minutes. Not one.

One of the things my ME has taught me is there is always something to be grateful for. No matter how dreadful things have been in my life (and they have been), there is always something to be glad about. It may only be how good toast smells in the morning, or sitting down and putting your feet up with a cup of tea, or the sound of a blackbird singing at twilight, but there is always, ALWAYS something. No matter how small.

My Great Auntie Kitty taught me that too. When I knew her, she was in her eighties, crippled with arthritis, and pretty much blind. She had spent her life looking after others, despite being disabled from childhood. A lifetime of pain and sacrifice. But she was the most positive person I have ever met. She told me that every night, before she switched the light out , she would think of three things to be thankful for. Just three. Some days it was hard to find three, but she always did it, no matter how much she was suffering. I was only about 7 years old, but i have never forgotten this, and always try to do the same. And it works.

It was getting wet last night, and my moaning friend, that made me think how much gratitude has become part of my life. Positive thinking is my life's pattern. That doesn't mean I don't have the usual grumps, moans, dramas, panics. But I have so much to be thankful for, and I am. I really am. Even if it is only the unusual sensation of cold rain running down the back of my neck!

Happy Halloween!

I've just come home from a wonderful evening out with my neighbour and her little boy at the Bungay Pumpkin Night. Its a celebration of Halloween. Dress up, trick or treat, bring out your pumpkins and have fun! I took my camera, and I am so glad I did. I was completely shameless about going up to people and asking to take their pictures. Everyone looked so amazing! And the pumpkins! There is so much creativity out there in our little town. I was sorry I hadn't dressed up, but I was wearing my bright red coat so I pretended I had come as the dwarf in 'Don't Look Now'.... Never mind. Happy New Year everyone!

Trying too Hard

How do you make lemons into lemonade?

I've spent two days this week pretty much flat on my back. Utterly burnt out. 'Malade com paraquette', as they say. Unable to even think straight, let alone read or write coherently. Today I felt a bit better and threw myself back into doing mode. Duh!

Back to square one...

I'm trying to do a rewrite of my novel, which is currently involving a major rethink. Not just of the book itself but of how I work as a whole. Its slow going. Think Plate Tectonics. Moving continents. That kind of thing. I am having to change my whole practice, and that is hard.

I guess I am truly part of the MTV generation because things never go fast enough for me. I want this change to happen NOW! Like, as in YESTERDAY! But major life changes don't work like that. I am too impatient. A Zen Master would have beaten me to death with my broom in exasperation by now. Why do I never listen to myself?

The way to make lemonade out of this particularly frustrating and sour lemon is to sit with it. Let the process happen. 'Be Still and know that I am...' as my Guardian Angel keeps telling me, while He is pinning me to the floor so that I can't do anything else (He is a very proactive Guardian Angel).

I wish I had a really good photograph of a lemon to go on this post, because that's how I feel now. A complete lemon. For not working it out sooner. For being too impatient. For not listening to myself. And then for beating myself up about it when I realise what I have done. What a goon. Never mind, onwards and upwards. And off to find a lemon to photograph!

Halloween Time Again

Hope you like my creepy self-portrait. Its been a tough couple of months, and I am busy trying to work on my redraft of my novel, with slow results. Not much time for other writing, hence the lack of posts here. Still, this time of year always starts to get my juices flowing. The clocks go back, the evenings close in, we light the fire and snuggle down. An interior time of year. That is when books are made.

It is also Pagan New Year. I am thinking of all the things I am leaving behind as I leave this year, and the new seeds I want to plant in my life for the next. A time of new beginnings. The veil is thin. I am aware as always of mortality, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth around me. Putting the garden to bed at this time of year is the outer manifestation of this process - putting one's life in order before going down underground, into the Other.

Letting go seems to be the theme that is coming up, over and over again for me right now, whether it is the constant nagging memories of failure from my the past, of emotions, of people (including me) who are getting older, of old patterns of ill-health that no longer serve me or just entrenched patterns of tension and stress. I think that even if we are chucking stuff out, it is important to remember that it was once crucial to us, and to honour the part it played in our lives. So I am trying to do that, slowly, carefully, sitting with what I am trying to release, knowing that letting go will lighten the load.

We all need to let go of things so that we can make room in our lives for new, exciting things. What are you letting go of right now?

Thresholds

A lot has happened since I last posted. Suddenly I am aware that I am passing across one of life's thresholds. Everything is changing.

The other day, I took my wedding dress to a charity shop in Norwich that specialises in bridal wear. It will be sold in aid of the local cancer charity, The Big C Appeal, which has raised vast sums so far to set up a support centre for cancer sufferers and their families at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, as well as for other projects around the county.

It was a huge wrench to leave it behind in the shop. I burst into floods of tears. The volunteers are used to this reaction, though. They were very kind. And it had to go. It was huge. It was taking up space and gathering dust. Now it will bring someone else happiness.

It was not until I had sat in the garden in the church across the road and cried my eyes out that I began to realise what I had let go. The wedding dress is a symbol of youth and beauty. You wear it on the best day of your life, when you look your most lovely. By releasing that dress into the world, I was letting go of that young image of myself. But I needed to mourn its passing too.

On that day, in 1996, I became Mrs Barrow. Together, Pat and I created for me (for us both, in fact) a new identity that has progressively allowed me to become more myself. It is because of the love we share that I have grown into the woman I am now, older, yes, but also wiser, thank Gods,and more at peace.

Now I hope that someone else will come along and love that dress as much as I did, that it will carry someone else into the life of love that I have been priveliged to enjoy. And I hope that the money it raises will help someone else to face a threshold, to embark on a journey of release, whether it is letting go of cancer, or coming to terms with letting go of life.