Saturday 28 July 2012

The Quiet Man





"Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep to your roots"
(Victor Hugo)

For a quiet man of small physical stature, my Dad had a big, raucous laugh, ala Sid James in fact. I've inherited this sudden and often totally unsolicited guffaw: my poor Mum would frequently choke on her veggie lasagna when something random had suddenly tickled me. My Dad also had a big heart, a great wit and a vast conscience. Today would have been his birthday: he would now be quite an old man if he hadn't died a relatively young one. I watched my Mum weather the seasons of her life, but to me my Dad remains a man in his prime, looking out for us. He died unexpectedly and quickly just a month after my sixteenth birthday; I've been without him for more years than I physically "knew" him, but I feel my Dad's presence grows stronger each year as I grow more accepting of myself.
I share Dad's sense of humour and of the absurd; watching clips of Dave Allen or early Billy Connolly, I can hear Dad's belly laugh clearly. For the black sheep of a wealthy conservative Belgian hierarchy, he had a fine collection of Irish rebel songs and socialist literature. Quiet time in his study was for poetry and his beloved Gregorian chant. All these things now have their place in my home and in my heart. I fancy that I share his affinity with animals, although I'm a veggie and Dad would always readily tuck into a rare steak like a true blood Belgian. I've most definitely inherited his love of food; the cooking and the eating of it. Chips with real mayonnaise, homemade soups and dark chocolate... possibly not all at the same time, unless it's been a particularly trying day.
My Dad was rather partial to Brigitte Bardot, Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey), Agnetha from Abba, Mother Teresa and Nana Mouskouri: he maintained that Mum was everything he'd looked for in a woman! I now see my Dad as a wonderful blend of Hercule Poirot, Jack Lemon and more than a dash of Desmond Tutu: in fact Dad helped Bishop Tutu improve his French when he stayed in South London; Dad said he was one of the naughtiest adult pupils he'd ever taught; they got on brilliantly. For all my inherent Irishness, my mother's colouring and many of her traits, I see more of Dad in me with each passing year. To Dad, I owe my sense of injustice but also my faith, most of my political leanings and some little eccentricities that even I find amusing. Now that the old family house is long sold, it's probably safe to admit that Dad did all the electrical wiring himself with a book from the library and a lot of expletives; I've just proudly packed a hole in my old lathe and plaster wall with papier mache whilst singing along to Lady Gaga.  
I acknowledge all this with delighted surprise and a huge sense of comfort. I've often said that Mum was my anchor and Dad my compass in life. My mother was initially dismayed that I seem to have inherited her own mother's Celtic "spookiness", but it rests easily with Dad's very earthed spirituality. My father's Catholicism was devout but still somewhat customised! As a man who'd wanted to become a monk before he met my mother, he would rattle off letters to The Catholic Herald about the viability of clerical celibacy long before it became "fashionable" to do so. Yet he would still place causes before the saints, taking us on annual family holidays to Our Lady's shrine at Banneux near his hometown of Liege in the hope of curing my sister's chronic bronchitis and later my dreadful short-sightedness. My sister's bronchial troubles did indeed clear up suddenly one year, never to return. For my own part, one of my eyes mysteriously converted to long-sight while the other is still steadfastly near-focused: trying to identify the number of any approaching bus is always a bugger of a job for me.
Whenever I did something beyond her ken, Mum would tut that I was my father's daughter alright: now, I know that she said it with bemusement but also affection. I used to say that I was at that surly, unsure age when Dad died and that he was just getting to know me as person. I felt very robbed. All these years later, I feel I truly know my father; I hope he likes me. The echo of the quiet man is a fine act to follow.

"...in history, where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good can take precedence over he who was great"
(Victor Hugo)


"Kyrie Eleison" The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos
The late great Dave Allen on Religion
"Mama Never Told Me"  Sister Sledge
"Mama never told me
to look out for the quiet man;
Mama couldn't help herself
'cos my Daddy was a quiet man!"

Sunday 22 July 2012

Happy Feast Day, St MM's!




Today is the feast of St Mary Magdalene, one of my favourite saints and also patron saint of St Mary Magdalene's church in Upper North Street here in Brighton. The church also celebrated it's 150th anniversary this year and has a strong history of traditional worship.



A very Happy Feast Day to Father Ray Blake (a formidable blogger) and his parishioners!




"Today" - the Eucharist of the ordinary



*For all of Brighton's early wakers and walkers*

"We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the Eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us."

(John O'Donohue)

 




"Today"
Today is a new day;
it dawns fresh and blinking,
whether rain or shine.
It is Hope on coltish legs;
it waits for you to name it
Sunday, Monday, whatever:
it cares only to be made good.
It is naked of yesterday's sins;
only you could make it bad.
                                                          Gigi




Photo: Gigi, album

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time."
(Abraham Lincoln)

"Yesterday is but today's memory, tomorrow is today's dream."
(Khalil Gibran)

"Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, whether you like it or not."
(James Russell Lowell)

"May you live all the days of your life."
(Jonathan Swift)

 

"Feelin' Good" Nina Simone

The piece of cod that surpasseth all understanding?



Many thanks to Leigh for the following fishy story: really funny!


Far away in the tropical waters of the Coral Sea, two prawns were swimming around; one called Justin, one called Christian. The prawns were constantly being harassed and threatened by the sharks that inhabited the area.
Finally one day, Justin said to his mate Christian: "I'm fed up with being a prawn. I wish I was a shark and then I wouldn't have to worry about being eaten."
Suddenly, a large mysterious cod appeared and said: "Your wish is granted!" Lo and behold, Justin turned into a shark.
Horrified, Christian swam swiftly away, afraid of being eaten by his old mate.
Time passed, as it does, and Justin found life as a shark really boring and lonely. His old mates simply swam away when he came close to them.
While swimming alone one day, he saw the mysterious cod again and decided to ask to be changed back into a prawn.
He begged the cod to be changed back; lo and behold, he was a prawn once more!
With tears of joy in his tiny eyes, Justin swam back to his old friends. Looking around the reef, he realised he couldn't see his old pal Christian.
"Where's Christian?" he asked.
"He's at home," came the reply, "Still terrified that his best friend changed sides to become a shark."
Eager to put things right, Justin set off for his friend's abode.
As he opened the coral gate, memories came flooding back. He banged on the door and shouted: "It's me, Justin! Come out and see me!"
Christian replied: "No way man! You'll eat me - I'll not be tricked into being your dinner."
Justin cried back: "That was the old me! I've changed................

(wait for it)

........... I've found cod - I'm a prawn again Christian!"









  • Friday 20 July 2012

    The Ever Fixed Mark

      
    "Love is not love
    Which alters when it alteration finds,
    Or bends with the remover to remove:
    O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
    That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
    It is the star to every wandering bark,
    Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."

    (from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116)


    I do not consider myself to be a competitive person: I like to feel that people and situations that are meant for me will not go by me; I find that comforting and also rather aesthetically (or even ascetically!) pleasing. I hope that I've never consciously "competed" for friends, partners or social standing. I clearly don't have the cut-throat attitude apparently currently required in Brighton at the moment to snatch a half decent job from the burgeoning queue! I intensely dislike the paraphernalia attached to going to "the sales"; no overnight sleeping bags then handbags drawn at dawn to battle for bargains, not for me. In fact, only rugby union seems to ignite the lesser-known cussing, shouting, jumping up and down Gigi. We all have our weaknesses.
    I know this will make me sound like the biggest eaves-dropper in East Sussex, but yet again I overheard something thought provoking on my journey back from Hampshire the other day. Two tall-haired and teeny-shorted girls in their late teens were loudly discussing their game plans once they disembarked at Brighton, for securing the same boy. These girls were friends, to all intents and purposes, even sharing copious amounts of Red Bull and almost as much lip gloss and eyeliner; war painting each other only to become opponents in battle. I found this dreadfully sad: I wanted to say something to them but I was too scared they would join forces against me and leave me a mess of pulled hair and Rimmel stains.
    They were literally egging each other on about tactics to use on this lad, yet each girl was vehement that once one of them was victorious (if not happy and glorious), the loser would immediately hate the boy and become a sworn enemy to the other girl! Beyond the sheer ugliness of this situation, no matter how much macquillage you apply to it, there's also a total breakdown in reason. I let them clatter off the train ahead of me, holding on to each other for support. For all their manufactured preening and glued on bits and pieces, there was something very feral about them: these girls were  born competitors. I mentioned it to a lovely female friend of mine who has a teenage daughter. She said she was aware of an almost innate rivalry in her daughter and her school friends. It seems alien to us now but may well have been prevalent when I was a plaited and pleated convent school girl. Her daughter's favourite song through her recent boyfriend troubles had been "Fight for this Love" by one Cheryl Cole, complete with high-heeled combat dance moves. Ms Cole may well be a role model for not-so little girls after "fighting" for her marriage to her footballer husband in spite of his alleged multiple discretions: thank God she now seems to have chosen a more dignified choreography, walking on with her beautiful head held high and any undoubtedly lucrative kiss-and-tells tightly zipped.


    Part of my physiology, not least because I'm trying to be a decent Christian, also means that I don't stop loving those who've hurt or even betrayed me. We've all seen friends we've introduced suddenly finding each others company more stimulating than ours. We may have seen the top marks, awards and even promotions bypass us on the way to someone we simply can't not admire or respect. Heartbreakingly, we may feel a person is the key to our future, assuming the sentiment is shared until we see them in the company of someone else they clearly have a history with. If we truly feel real, unconditional love, romantic or otherwise,  it doesn't swiftly cease because the Happy Ever After isn't forthcoming. I've never understood that "If I can't have you no-one else will" mentality that drives some men to kill their girlfriends and some mothers to sacrifice babies to spite the father.
    We humans are largely animals with lip gloss, mobiles, city jobs and laptops who still react to fear, threat or pain with aggression. I understand this and also that many people will therefore view sensitivity, patience and composure simply as weaknesses rather than profoundly concentrated strengths. Many berate the dangers of passivity because the missile-seeking radars (or even just the beer-goggles) have failed to identify constancy, quiescence, acceptance. I have stood up for or even stood in front of people (or causes) I care about before and I know that I will do it again. But defending for love is not the same as aggressing for it. Certainly, I've grown up believing that if you have to compete for attention or affection, it's probably not worth the having. Blood on a prize is never that attractive.
    I've included This Mortal Coil's version of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" in this post; personally I feel this is the most hauntingly beautiful version. The song is a conversation between a distraught, lovesick sailor and a siren (or mermaid) who appears to have also fallen in love with him. Early Christian opinion of mythological beings was coloured by the Etymologies of St Isidore of Seville, who described sirens as part virgin and part clawed bird. They were said to have wings and claws because love can fly and wound: of course love hurts, but I prefer to think of the mark of love as an exquisite badge of honour rather than a livid battle scar; Shakespeare's "ever-fixed mark".
    Obviously, I have no idea which of the two teenage divas from the beginning of this post managed to get her man, nor if the victory would endure for a night or an entire season. All things considered, I doubt very much that such a battle could have birthed a lifelong union of soul mates. Maybe the boy wasn't remotely interested in either of them, which happens a lot in Brighton, allowing the girls to totter home together with their friendship intact, if not their pride or nail polish. I sincerely hope the evening ended well and safely for all concerned.
    For my own part, I really must get my TV and aerial fixed before the start of this year's Tri Nations Rugby Championship: I simply can't be doing all that shouting and air-thumping in public.




    "Whit's fur ye'll no go by ye"
    (old Scottish proverb, mainly said by my granny and my mother)

    "Song to the Siren"  This Mortal Coil  

    Tuesday 17 July 2012

    The Saint of the Jet Stream





    "St Swithun's day if thou dost rain,
    For forty days it will remain.
    St Swithun's day if thou be fair
    For forty days 'twill rain nae mare"


    Certainly in Brighton and around Hampshire, where I've been staying for the past few days, it didn't  noticeably rain on St Swithin's Day - 15th July. Of course, it poured with a vengeance the following day, surely not the last sodden Monday before the end of the "summer holidays" in the UK. Originally called Swithun, his name has become synonymous with British weather lore, and possibly further afield. However, he's scarcely mentioned in any document of his own time. He's known to have been Bishop of Winchester between 852 to his death on 2 July 862: his death is entered in the Canterbury manuscript the "Anglo Saxon Chronicle" for that year. Over than a hundred years later, Swithun was adopted as patron of the restored church at Winchester, formerly dedicated to saints Peter and Paul. His body was then transferred from an almost forgotten grave to the new basilica at Winchester in 971, an event which does seem to have inspired contemporaneous reports of numerous miracles.
    Swithun's revival then gave rise to a mass of legendary literature. Notably, from a monk called Goscelin of St Bertin, we learn that Swithun was born in Hampshire in the reign of  Egbert of Wessex and that he was later ordained priest by the Bishop of Winchester. Renowned and respected, he was regarded as a close friend and adviser by Egbert, who appointed him tutor of his son Aethelwulf. He would later be appointed Bishop of Winchester under the patronage of Aethelwulf. In his new office he quickly became known for his zeal in building new churches and his passion for restoring old ones. He was also a pious and humble man, known for making his diocesan journeys on foot and inviting the poor to banquets which excluded the rich.
    Swithun's best known miracle was his restoration of a poor widow's basket of eggs that workmen had maliciously broken, although there are many other stories of his compassion and humility. Before his death, he instructed that he was not to be buried within the church, but outside in a "vile and unworthy place". Initially, Swithun was accordingly buried out of doors, where it might be subject to the trampling feet of passers-by and to the inclement weather from on high. In 971, his body was moved to a new indoor shrine; his weather-lore legend might be traced back to an uncommonly heavy downpour on the day of his re-interment, seen as a sign of the saint's displeasure that his remains were being moved against his wishes. Other chroniclers have suggested that the legend derives from the tremendous rainstorm which occurred on St Swithin's Day in 1315.
    However, the meteorological interpretation is relatively straightforward. Most people are familiar with the concept of jet streams: powerful air currents caused by a combination of the earth's rotation and atmospheric heating from solar radiation. The position of the northern hemisphere jet stream around the end of June and into mid July indicates the position of  the frontal zone of our weather system: this in turn determines the weather patterns (hot / cold, wet / dry) for the rest of the summer. Whoever originally told the tale of the St. Swithin's Day deluge may well have been aware that the summer weather patterns established at the beginning of July tend to persist throughout the subsequent few weeks. This is statistically proven in 8 out of 10 years.
    Little wonder that Swithun's weather rule is also known in other western European countries. In France, they say "Quand il pleut a la Saint Gervais Il pleut quarante jours apres - If it rains on St. Gervais' day (19th of July), it will rain for forty days thereafter". Unfortunately, or fortunately depending upon your viewpoint, I know nothing of St Gervais!





    "Pennies From Heaven"  Billie Holiday

    Saturday 14 July 2012

    Show us yer teeth... let the sunshine out



    "The sun never says, after all these years of shining on the earth - 'You owe me'.
    Think about a love like that - it lights the whole sky"     
    ( Hafiz)

    For the past few days in Brighton, the sun has barely peeped from behind the rain clouds before sinking into the watery horizon. This is British summertime of course - although we've now overtaken the longest day. Almost instinctively, and in the absence of a working television, I've been trying to find music to play, pieces to read and people to speak to, to bring a little sunshine to my day.
    You know how someone can brighten a day by walking into a room?  I'm fortunate enough to know a few people like that. My friend Chantal is one such person. She's been through the darkest times in the past two years and yet her smile can lighten up a room, through her own distress or even physical pain, reaching those around her. As soon as I see her smile as she says "Hello lovely lady!" I have to smile too.  Yesterday, oblivious to the rainclouds and tidal chill in the air, she was wearing a 1950's dance hall dress, six inch stilettos and a jaunty rose in her hair.
    The transvestite driver on one of the local bus routes turns the corners of my mouth up as he flicks his long blond hair from his perfectly made-up face with rather capable workman's hands. He stands chatting to the other (male) drivers outside the garage, sharing a joke and a cigarette. He wears a mini-skirted, customised women's bus company uniform: this is Brighton after all! In his own possibly size ten stilettos, he stands a head taller than most of his colleagues; I get the feeling they look up to this warm and personable character in more ways than one.
    I've known my friend John for half of my life and I know him to be a respected forensic scientist but really not an armchair electrician. Yet this week he persevered with a rewiring project on my spare room for hours, saving me possibly hundreds of pounds but costing him an entire afternoon through to dusk, not to mention his frazzled nerves. When he announced he'd succeeded, I rather ungraciously blurted out that I didn't think he'd be able to do it; he simply smiled and said "Neither did I!"
    My recently bereaved but irrepressible friend Lin texts me simply: "Are you alive? I do hope so. Bored x" and I smile. I've had calls from Australia, Singapore and America over the past few rainy days, when I felt trapped in the house by the inclement weather and an even more inclement sore throat. OK, the call from Singapore was a wrong number, but the lady on the other end of the line said she liked my voice and wished I was her friend; this made me smile. I've been answering my emails and texts rather belatedly: whenever I see someone sign off with "Your pal", "Your friend" or "Hugs", I smile.
    While my immune system's been struggling over the past few months, friends old and new have been sympathetic, supportive, bossy; but always with a smile. I don't know the name of the Yorkshire lass in my local Sainsburys who calls me "Goldiepops" when she sees me, but yesterday she added "Give us a smile if you've got happy blood!" and so of course I did. And this little blog has now gone well beyond 6,000 page views since I put tentative fingertip to keyboard on 15th February this year: I'm rather amazed as I thought no-one really knew that "The Water is Wide" was here. Every time I looked at the page views last week, I felt my mouth twitching. 
    The other day, I received my third wedding invitation in as many months; the diversity of the couples, all tying the knot this October, is heartwarming. All three (very different) cards were handmade and opening each one was like splitting into a shaft of sunlight. I had a delayed journey to Hampshire this afternoon; a couple of a certain age rushed onto the already crowded train at Havant and promptly fell giggling onto me and my little flask and paperback. My spontaneously pursed lips quickly eased into a wide smile when they both apologised at the same time, gushing that they were a little bit all over the place because they had just decided to get married after twenty years together. He told me "It seems a little sudden to me, but what the hell? We're in love!"
    The evening I started putting this post together, a cab stopped outside my little house to wait for some of my neighbours; I could hear music blaring as he screeched into the puddle outside my front window. Usually when this happens, I find myself subjected to indiscriminately pounding drum and bass music; and no, I don't really know what that is... Wonderfully, he was playing "Sunshine On Leith" by The Proclaimers, and it played all the way through thanks to the tardiness of the girl across the road. I love The Proclaimers; I love this song because I find it's waltzing rhythm combined with the Reid boys' rugged harmonies and broad Fife accents almost mesmerically warming. I'm particularly fond of the chorus, which I find deeply poetic yet poignantly every-man:

    "While I'm worth my room on this earth,
    I will be with you.
    And while the Chief puts sunshine on Leith
    I'll thank Him for His work
    And your birth and my birth"
    So Thank You: for reading this blog, for being a friend already, or one I haven't met yet, for being kind or funny or wise or simply unique. And Thank You for smiling when I trod on your shopping on the bus or tripped over my own wedge sandals in the supermarket; when I absent mindedly took a bite out of your cake in the M and S cafe and when I smacked you in the face on the pier while trying to wave a fly away from my own.
    A genuine smile costs nothing but is always utterly priceless. I grew up in south London, which wasn't always the most comfortable place to be, but smiling was part of the dialect. "Show us yer teeth", for the uninitiated, simply means this life is short: smile while you can. And it's possible more often than you might think.





    This post is largely dedicated to Ms Chantal Gregory 
    Photo: Chantal Gregory, album

    Show us yer teeth!
    Photo: Gigi, album


    "Sunshine On Leith" The Proclaimers

    Thursday 5 July 2012

    Nunsense





    Many thanks to Ramon, my blogger friend in the United States, for sending me the following joke: as he points out, you don't have to be Catholic to appreciate this, but... 

    A man suffered a serious heart attack while shopping. The sales assistants called the emergency services, and the paramedics rushed the man to the nearest hospital.
    He awakened from open heart surgery to find himself in the care of nuns at a local Catholic Hospital. A nun was seated next to his bed holding a clip board loaded with several forms. She asked him how he was going to pay for his treatment.
    "Do you have health insurance?" she asked.
    He replied in a raspy voice, "No health insurance."
    "Do you have money in the bank?"
    "No money in the bank."
    "Do you have a relative who could help you with the payments?"

    He said, "I only have a spinster sister, and she's a nun!"
    The nun became agitated and announced loudly, "Nuns are not spinsters. Nuns are married to God."

    The patient smiled and replied, "Perfect. Send the bill to my brother-in-law..."



    Monday 2 July 2012

    "Hobo"



    "Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls,
    Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget"
    (Don Maclean "Vincent / Starry Starry Night")


    "Hobo"
    I have no land,
    I am of this earth.
    I have no property,
    I own my thoughts.
    I have no gold,
    I cannot be bought.
    I have no jewels,
    I look to the stars.
    I have no ambition,
    I look to my dreams.
    I have no lover,
    I am good to myself.
    I have no home:
    I will live in your hearts.

                                                      Gigi

     
     

    “She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that"
     (Sharon Maas)