Hang Your Shining Star Upon The Highest Bough

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“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.” 

(Roy L. Smith) 

 

 

“Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”

(G.  K. Chesterton)

I hope this Christmastime, or "the holidays" if you prefer, has found (and left) you warm, safe and encouraged. I also hope you're still full of wonder! Christmas is traditionally a wondrous time, filled with tinsel and baubles and stars and lights and cake. I've never quite worked out where the fairy on top of the tree figures in the equation, even though I live in Brighton...

From childhood, Christmas is a time of stories: to cynicise over, to ponder, laugh at and maybe even to learn from. As usual, I'm full of my own stories, but then this is my blog. There is a tale behind my absence from this site, which happily culminates in a new laptop for Christmas. While I've been lost in cyberspace, someone has indeed carried on reading "The Water Is Wide"; who knows what he or she may have made of the stories suspended here?

I love a parable; I do believe that all stories are didactic, even if there's no such intention or design. The modern-day parables reproduced here aren't specifically Christmas tales, but if you look closely, I think you will find the baubles, lights and stars x   

 

Who Is The Rich Man?
One day, a wealthy father took his son on a trip to the country so he could see how the poor people lived. They spent a day and a night at the farm of a very poor family. When they got back from their trip, the father asked his son:"How was the trip?"
"Very good, Dad!"
"Did you see how poor people can be?"
"Yes indeed."
"And what did you learn?"
The son answered, "I saw that we have a pedigree dog at home, and they have four stray dogs who choose to live with them. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden; they have a creek that has no end. We have expensive lamps in the house; they have the stars. Our patio reaches to the front yard; they look to the whole horizon."

When the little boy was finished, the father was speechless. His son added, "Thanks Dad, for showing me how rich poor people can be!"

Time

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with 86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course! Each of us has such a bank. It's name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest in good purpose. Time carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. You cannot draw against your "tomorrow." You must live in the present on today's  account. You must invest it well so as to get from it the most of health and happiness. The clock is running. Make the most of today. To realise the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade. To realise the value of one hour, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet. To realise the value of one minute, ask a person who missed that train. Treasure every second that you have. Remember that time waits for no one. Today is the gift. That's why it's called the present.

Donkey in the Well
One day a farmer's donkey fell down a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally he decided the animal was old, that the well needed to be covered anyway and that it just wasn't worth retrieving the donkey. So he invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realised what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement, he quietened down. When the farmer could finally bear to look down the well, he was astonished at what he saw. With every shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing.  As the farmer's neighbours continued to shovel dirt down the well, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and trotted off! Life is always going to shovel dirt at you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and use it to take a step up.

(Adapted from: www.modernparables.com)

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”

(Dr Seuss: "The Grinch")

"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"  Sam Smith (version)

Blogging: a pencil full of lead

 

 

"In the soul of every new-born baby,
words are waiting to be written."

(Toba Beta)

"Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal."

(Oscar Wilde) 
 

 

"Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall."
(Jodi Picoult)

 

"A blog is only as interesting as the interest shown in others."
(Lee Odden)

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."  
(Stephen King)

 

   "Only on the Internet can a person be lonely and popular at the same time."
(Allison Burnett)

 

 " In a sense, who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others."
(Geoff Ryman)

 

 

 

 

"Pencil Full of Lead"  Paolo Nutini with The Vipers (acoustic)

 

 

Back.

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

(Nelson Mandela)

 

(Photos: Gigi, album)

 

"Hi Honey, I'm home!"

 Just when you thought it was safe to meander along Blogger again, something stirs down by the pier at Gigi-on-Sea. I haven't blogged for the longest time: not since late February; more like a writer's barricade than just a block.

I certainly hadn't intended to stop writing on "The Water is Wide". Having been quite ill at the beginning of the year, I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Australia for most of March, my birthday month. I knew I wouldn't be writing while I was away from home, but came back bristling with stories, songs and smiles. Sadly, my telecommunications back in Brighton were not bristling with anything much throughout April and May; a personal supply of BT engineers crawling around your living room looking for your WIFI hotspot really isn't as exciting as it might sound.

By June, I decided that maybe my little blog had retired into a natural decline and should be left to pass gently in it's sleep. While the blog slept deeper, this year has rushed ahead of many of us as we try to keep track of work, bills and other people. My sister has started her Christmas shopping for goodness' sake, although my brother-in-law would probably say that it takes her mind off real estate.

Since February, I've still not learnt to play my ukulele but have also acquired a bodhran. I've been adopted by a second seagull, introduced by Jonathan but clearly not schooled by him. Where Jonathan is large and a bit brash and bombastic, Junior is smaller, louder and possibly psychotic. Jonathan is a Frequent Flyer to Gigi-on-Sea; Junior more of a stalker, hanging on the garden fence from dawn till dusk and knocking on the window of any room he spies me in. Ginger the cat was already stressed by Jonathan but now looks as though he might just call The Cats' Protection League.

Ginger has been very poorly this month after lacerating his tongue probably eating out of a rusty tin-can somewhere. In true Drama Cat style, he reacted badly to being confined to convalesce indoors by jumping out of a first floor window. Having shocked the pair of us, he's made a rapid and even remarkable recovery, largely to stop me pureeing his food and Becoming Emotional with him.

In the past couple of months, I've realised that I've made a few false friends in Brighton and elsewhere. Yet I've also rediscovered friends from old long since, for all the good reasons that originally bound me to them. Since February, friends have married, separated, reproduced, found religion, discovered themselves (although one went to Birmingham to do this which sounds unlikely). One friend has landed a great position without looking or applying for it; a couple have lost steady jobs, their sense of humour or even the plot.
My effervescent friend Leigh sadly lost his long battle with the bottle but inspired half a town to turn out to walk behind his coffin.

In recent weeks, I've known people lose their partners and parents while yet another has given birth ten years after being told she would never conceive; similar to my mother's experience when I cam along. Apart from being a boy, obviously.
Then in March, I met Hollie, much loved baby born to Kelli, my much missed friend who returned to her Australian homeland a few years ago. I immediately felt like Hollie's long-lost Auntie G, and after some whooping and grinning at Brisbane airport it felt like I had just met up with Kel again after work for a jar.

The late poet and mystic John O'Donohue realised that the truest and most natural friendships are always an act of recognition, an ancient knowledge. I believe this most tangible form of deja vu, which soothes the heart and moves the spirit, applies to places and animals as well as people. Sometimes encountering strangers or travelling to new places feels less like a departure or discovery than an almost foetal homing. It's a feeling I experienced when I first set foot in Sydney many years ago, when I first came to view my little house in Brighton with it's dampness and dismal wallpaper; when I first created my template for "The Water is Wide".

There are stories everywhere. There is history and hope in every stone, twig and droplet. I believe that baby Hollie has been born with all the words she will ever need, waiting within. Her stories were already written when her mum met her dad. More than any photo albums, letters and mementos, my sister and I am what endures of my own mother and father; we carry their stories within our own. What is left up to us is the unfolding. It really is the way we tell 'em. I've often wondered if my parents would be reading this blog if they were alive. The truest answer is that they've helped to write it.
For someone seen as "the quiet one" in the family, I've always had much to say for myself, occasionally for others too. When I was about eight, my headmistress Sister Sebastian chastised me for attempting to read a more "adult" book in preference to Enid Blyton. The book was actually Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and I was a tiny convent schoolgirl, so I can fully appreciate her concerns.
"Why are you reading a different book to the one we've given you?"
"I know all the words in that book already Sister."
"Is that so? And why do you feel you need to know so many other words right now?"
"Then I can write my own book Sister."
"Is that so? Do you know the word precocious, Gisele?"
"Pre-what Sister?"
"It means The Little Girl Who Wants All The Words."
"Yes, that's me Sister!"
I soon realised this was the wrong answer.
My convent schooldays seem to play an increasing part in my stories, all these years later. I know my sister worries that my blog is a bit too Catholic, too wordy and quite eccentric. My brother-in-law worries that the blog is too personal and that identity fraud is rife. Would anyone want to steal a Catholic, socialist, vegetarian, sentimental, quizzical persona with a penchant for bright colours and dangly earrings? Good luck with that....
My friend Leigh was hugely supportive of me writing although he found my posts too long for his butterfly attention span; this from the man who's funeral cortege in May stretched the length of a high street.
Every story is a journey, no matter how short or long. A couple of weeks ago, I received an anonymous message on Blogger: "I came to look for Gigi-on-Sea and there was nobody home. Where did you go?" The wonders of Down Under aside, I never went away from my own story. I will probably never write that book and I may never feel I have all the words. But the little convent schoolgirl in me is delighted that if you Google "Gigi-on-Sea", this humble blog is currently the first hit that pops up. You probably weren't expecting that, Sister Sebastian...
It's good to be back x

 

"Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when I first considered going."

(Amelia Earhart)

"One"  Ed Sheeran

 
"All my friends have gone to find
another place to let their hearts collide;
just promise me you'll always be
a friend;
because you are the only one"
 

 

Storm damage

 "One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken."
(Leo Tolstoy)

The storm that crashed against the south coast of these islands before ripping it's way upland on the 27th and 28th of October has inevitably left it's mark on Brighton. A local estate agent told me he'd been retrieving TV aerials, roof tiles and garden furniture from his rental properties from literally high and low across the city. Having previously walked the seawall at the marina, apparently the largest in Europe; I was staggered to see footage of the waves dwarfing the wall and the yachts, almost reclaiming the manmade enclosure to the open sea.
"Storm St Jude" was named after the patron saint of lost causes, arriving with a crash on the eve of his feast day. It certainly carved a desperate path; I'm respectful that tens of thousands of people across this county and others were left without power for days and that four people lost their lives in the UK. A further thirteen people have died as Storm Jude evolved into Cyclone Christian, wreaking destruction across northern and eastern Europe.
My little house is a hundred and fifty years old and full of leaks, creaks and gremlins on a daily basis. Faced with torrential rain and predicted gusts of more than eighty miles an hour, I brought in garden mirrors, lanterns, tree baubles and next door's cat and tied down everything else; including Noel the seven foot Christmas tree after even he was blown over in his ridiculously heavy pot. The house, Ginger Tom and I braced ourselves. I watched my tall pear tree appear to double over against the wind at around two in the morning, while the guardian angel sun-catcher in it's highest branches (I couldn't reach her without a ladder) was whipped about mercilessly.
As Monday opened up and the winds dropped to a manageable 60, I realised that my house and garden were largely intact. A section of guttering has loosened, but then Jonathan Seagull has been using it as some kind of high-rise latrine for a couple of years. All the paint above my bathroom window has ripped away, taking a layer of mortar with it, but I've never liked that stale buttermilk colour and intend to paint the house a zesty yellow as soon as possible. My windows seem spattered with every kind of seaside muck that could be airborne, but they're due a cleaning anyway.
In the garden, only one of a few marooned tree baubles didn't make it; even the tiniest, most delicately budded patio roses and fuchsias have only conceded some petals. The pear tree has uncurled to it's full height; the angel still miraculously spinning round at the top. I went round oohing and aahing, patting potplants and shrubs reassuringly, while Ginger watched from the safety of the kitchen step, clearly bemused that he'd spent a day and night sheltering with an idiot.
The BBC's southeast reportage seemed to focus on Brighton, with one hapless reporter stationed on the pebble beach in front of the skeletal West Pier. Blue-faced in his puffa jacket and woolly beanie hat, he flapped about a bit and spluttered that this type of weather was not uncommon on this windy little edge of East Sussex. Worryingly close to the waves himself, he stressed that the Sussex police had warned folk to stay away from the piers and indeed the sea for the next few hours, just as a hardy local family splashed past him while he struggled to stop his microphone from hitting him in the face.

I was thankful to see the West Pier still standing, albeit at a more precarious angle than ever before. The pier was built within a year of my little workmen's terrace and it's remains are Grade II listed, one of only two piers in the UK to be granted what should be a level of protection. Not that the West Pier has been shielded from outrageous fortune in any way in her long history. Yet, after three fires, the great storm of 1987 and several others, countless horrendous winters (including each one since I moved here) and even being crashed into by an RAF fighter plane in 1944, the West Pier has never been completely destroyed.
On several occasions, the structure has had to be partially demolished for safety reasons. Now completely severed from the shore, the pier is nonetheless increasingly part of this city. The remaining fretwork seems to float in the rising and falling tides; her fragility belies the Victorian engineering that keeps her cast iron legs firm in the seabed. Now frequently compared to am upturned fruit basket or burned out wedding cake, she was known as "The Pleasure Pier" in her heydays, I know some people find the pier a sorry sight. Technically, she's been terminally deteriorating since the 1970s; to those of us who love her and find her beautiful, the West Pier is constant to the point of persistence and embodies the spirit of the city of Brighton.
Walking down to the West Pier after St Jude, I wasn't surprised to see several others standing in the cracked sunshine and sea breeze, all there for the same reason. One very dapper middle-aged man with what I think was a French accent described her as "wretchedly lovely". I think the West Pier is a bit like a Bronte heroine; ageless and virginal but fatally bedraggled in sodden hooped petticoats. For every person who sees the old pier as an eyesore that should be completely dismantled, there will be many more who cherish her as an essential part of Brighton beach's skyline. Her iconicity has swelled as her original purpose built structure has diminished.

It's been weeks since I've posted on this blog. I almost wish I could say it's been due to sheer volume of work, being away with friends or even just doing possibly unmentionable, hedonistic things. Alas, I can't rely on any of these excuses.

It's true that I've been working rather difficult hours, but the most complete story of my extended writer's block is that my heart just hasn't been in it. My heart has been scuttled away like a deflated little bird. Like the West Pier, it feels like it's had the stuffing kicked out of it. Aside from any continuing neighbourhood unpleasantness, beyond the bereavement, unemployment and upheaval of fortune of the past few years, it felt as though something had finally broken me. One gust just too harsh, one wave too fierce. Mark Twain once said that a broken promise was better than none at all; much as I admire Mr Twain, I've often thought him uncharacteristically, utterly wrong on that one. Promises hold both the recognition of long held wishes and our hopes for the future; a broken promise or dream damages who we've been and scars who we've yet to become.

A few people who actually read this blog but have never met me realised something was wrong and I'm grateful for their concern and wishes. My friend Lin put it quite bluntly: "Not blogging, not talking: not you! Sick??" My confidence in myself and my instinctive faith in others is obviously dented, but I find I'm still here, just as the West Pier is right where I left it. Sometimes, the strength isn't in holding firm against the break but in what you do with the broken pieces. In circumstances that I guess were quite different from Mr Twain's, Oscar Wilde noted that broken hearts allow God and love to seep in. And so you can either focus on what's tearing you apart, or on what's holding you together.

Storms like St Jude unleash the omnipotence of nature but also magnify the resilience of even the smallest plants and creatures. For some reason, "The Lightning Strike" has always been my Snow Patrol song: I have the expressed permission of Mr Lightbody to add it to this post that breaks my writer's block! I'm sure my little house, for all it's cracks and groans, will stand beyond the end of my years; I hope the West Pier might do the same. Even with feet of iron, that kind of fortitude feels as organic as that of my pear tree or the tiny buds on my patio roses. I guess it's all in the foundations.

 

*Especially at this time for Gill A, Luci, Marian and Stuart*

 

 

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."

(Ernest Hemingway)

"Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is the glue."
(Eugene O'Neill)

The West Pier Trust:
www.westpier.co.uk
 
 

"The Lightning Strike (What If The Storm Ends)"  Snow Patrol

 

 "What if this storm ends
And I don't see you,
As you are now
Ever again?
Painted in flames,
All peeling thunder;
Be the lightning in me
That strikes relentless"

(Gary Lightbody)

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks."

(Tennessee Williams)

 

Big baby

 

"You must understand, that for a daughter to protect her father's image is natural; Freud built a whole career around it."

(Amon Goldfinger)

   

 Dad

(All photos: Gigi album) 



My mother had difficulty conceiving her first-born, my sister, and was then told she probably wouldn't have any other children. There's a little over eight years between me and my sister; by the time I came along, Mum and Dad were seen as older parents. I wasn't "tried for", nor planned for; I wasn't even expected.
Initially, I was diagnosed as gastric enteritis. When Mum's symptoms persisted and she returned to her GP, he confirmed that she was actually about three months into another pregnancy. When Mum told Dad, he had to have a sit down for a while. He apparently told Mum she'd have another girl and said "This one's certainly taken her time."
In fact, I was born two weeks before my due date; probably the first and last time I've ever been that early for anything. In contrast, my sister had been two weeks late, emerging after a day and a half of labour. I arrived in just two hours. My eagerness hadn't compromised my size: the nurses told Mum I was one of the biggest babies ever delivered on their maternity ward. I'm sure she was thrilled. The hospital in south-west London has since closed down, but I'm pretty sure there's no connection.
After Mum died, I sorted through the rest of Dad's personal bits and pieces that she'd kept for years. I have his pocket diary from the year I was born; his entry for the day I arrived reads: "9.15 am, BIG baby girl! Nine pounds fifteen ounces!" I don't know whether it was because his plump, gurgling white-haired baby resembled the vegetable, but my Dad immediately wanted to call me "Chou Chou"; French for "Little Cabbage". Fortunately, my mother wouldn't entertain the idea. She suggested "Barbara" after her closest sister and their own lovely mum, who Dad was devoted to. Dad suggested "Babette", then "Gisele".
I love my name: I thank my Dad eternally for it. I grew up loving the ballet I was named after, as well as the musical of Colette's book "Gigi", the diminutive pet form of Gisele or Giselle. I bristle a bit when people tend to call me "Gee Gee", with a hard rather than soft "g"; but it's a tiny irritation after nearly becoming Chou Chou. "Cabbageonsea" sounds particularly unsavoury.
When I was fifteen, I stomped off to rally against a local fascist group. They insisted on parading their neo-Nazism through the friendly, multi-cultural area I had grown up in and my Dad's sense of justice and idealism bubbled in my veins. Swept along with older, more seasoned protesters, I joined some lying down in the main road, so that the fascist group and the mounted police protecting their right to march would either come to a standstill or trample over us. Clearly, I hadn't really thought this through.
Hauled up by my collar by a weary riot officer, I garbled something about a "******* Police State", much to my great shame now. I was told to behave or I would be taken to the nearest police station to cool down. Obviously I didn't behave enough; two hours later, I was in a holding cell in south London with a handful of others. Now terrified, I announced I wanted a solicitor. Then I did what any self-respecting freedom fighter would do. I asked for my mother and burst into tears.
Mum was so ashamed that her youngest was in the local nick that she wouldn't come with Dad to claim me. He looked both worried and relieved to see me; now I realise he was also quite bemused. The sergeant told him I needed a "good talking to". My Dad nodded, signed for me and said absolutely nothing while we got in the car and drove home.
I was used to Mum's Irish, ginger temper. My Dad hardly ever lost his temper with me so when he did, I knew it was Bad. About five minutes from our house he stopped the car near the local shops. I started to cry again. He gave me a proper handkerchief. Finally, in his most Poirot accent, he said: "What did you think you were doing? What have you got to say?"
"Well, the thing is -"
"Shut up. Your mother thinks you should see a child psychologist. Luckily I can't afford one. Your mother thinks you're going to kill her by giving her a heart attack. Do you want to kill your mother?"
"No Dad."
"Why suddenly the politics? Why aren't you like other girls?"
"Mum says I get this from you?"
"Shut up. And do you think you'll be doing this again?"
"Well, there's a rally up in London in a couple of months and I thought..." At this point, I realised I might be pushing my luck.
"OK, this is what's going to happen. I will collect you from the rally in London and bring you home. You will never insult a policeman again, unless he's a bad policeman. When we get home, I will shout and swear at you and clip you over the head. Then I'll send you upstairs without any telly or any food. Your mother will be satisfied and I can get on with my work. Are you hungry; do you want some chips before we get home?"
And that's how it went when we got back. Apart from one thing: Dad never did get to collect from the rally in town. A couple of months later, just as I straggled past my sixteenth birthday, my Dad died. He hadn't quite made it to fifty nine.
This Sunday is my father's birthday; I write the same thing in my own pocket diary now each year, marking the age he would be now. It makes me more aware of my own I suppose, yet even at this age I'm aware that I'm still very much that big baby. I still want to be like my Dad when I finally grow up. I'm fairly hopeful he would like this blog.
I recently heard one of Dad's (and Mum's) favourite tunes set to the hymn "Vaster Far Than Any Ocean". I was aware that the melody "The Carnival Is Over" is traditionally used as a hymn in the Netherlands, but I'd never heard it in church here before. It was like a warm. reassuring hand at my back. The piano version included here is achingly lovely. The tune made so popular by The Seekers was originally adapted by Tom Springfield from an old folk song about Stenka Razin, a notorious rebel leader in 17th century Tsarist Russia. Folklore tells that Stenka came to a particularly sticky end. I doubt that his Dad ever went down to collect him from the fray to buy him chips.

"Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - all of those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us..."

( Adriana Trigiani)

"Another baby you say? A big baby? How big??"

The Little Cabbage.

 "The Carnival Is Over"  (Piano solo version - pianist, sadly, uncredited)

"I'd like you to be a teacher, if you want to be a teacher. It's been a good life for me. But more than I would like you to teach, I want you to learn something about this world."
(Tony  Liegeois - Dad)

A darkness on the edge of town

"You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word .... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue." 
(C. Joybell)

 

It's certainly true that you never know how much you rely upon something, accept and expect, even cherish something, until it's not there. At the end of June, three Vodafone masts somewhere out on the South Downs spluttered and fell silent. I'm aware that some parts of Brighton and it's suburbs were without Vodafone mobile coverage for three weeks. There was a palpable darkness at the edge of the town. My own little mobile was silent for a week, but these eerily quiet days over-lapped with my beleaguered BT landline finally admitting defeat, which also rendered my broadband speechless and my laptop comatose.
I live in a small street that's usually disproportionately noisy and which forms a horse-shoe in and out of a busy, in-yer-face main road. There's an exuberant little primary school across the street, with the playground leaning onto the road. There's usually some manner of building works banging away somewhere nearby. My next-door neighbours, with three new babies as part of the extended clan, are from Liverpool: I love them dearly, but they would be the first to admit that the Liverbird larynx comes with integral speakers! And speaking of birds, my beloved seagulls are the running commentary to this city; at worst, like a particularly overwrought Jeremy Kyle audience. In short, you actually have to retreat to find silence or to experience real loneliness in this area.
Although I live on my own and still don't really "know" many folk in this area, I'm far from reclusive. I think I'm a friendly soul. I'm interested in people and expect most to respond warmly or at least civilly. Yet for several days, the enforced lack of communication behind my closed door felt isolating and frankly worrying. With no access to even emergency calls, it may have been natural to fret about fire or footsteps on the stairs at night. Facebook was sullenly closed to me for a few days and I even found myself totting up how many of my daily free online bingo tokens were lost. I couldn't update this little blog and am still trying to catch up on posts I wanted to add; I worry that I've lost phrases and even thoughts I'd been unable to commit to screen. Can you ever actually lose a thought? Surely my own conscience is the most precious hard-drive ever created.
What left me feeling bereft was loss of contact from those who've become part of my daily routine. Most of my closest friends live in London or beyond, but even my neighbour here will text me to say "Cuppa?", expecting me to respond with "Five mins". Technology has expedited and streamlined our communications with "free talk minutes", "txt spk" and character regulated "tweets". Even personal emails promote abridged friendliness and abbreviated emotions, with "LOLs" and "smiley faces" rendering exclamations of joy unnecessary and rather embarrassing.
The Yorkshire novelist, playwright and broadcaster J. B. Priestley was a man who knew how to work and play with words, becoming a Doctor of Letters in his later years. He once noted that the more elaborate our means of communication become, the less we actually communicate. My own shelves of words often make me wistful for the worlds of Austen and the Brontes, with rounds of perfumed letters preserved in initialled trunks under the bed and earnest, totally unseasonally attired lovers riding across sodden moors, collapsing in a consumptive heap on the threshold. Usually choosing to walk around Brighton, I often arrive back at my own front door seriously bedraggled after a trip to Aldis. I actually have a couple of vintage trunks under my bed but the only secrets they store are stockings, hot water bottles and spare bedding. There's a man who walks his rather snooty dog "Heathcliff", often stopping to let him poop by my roses (the dog, not the owner). But I digress: even the largely emotionally sterile, character-economic, technical truncations of the internet won't stop a digressor.
 

 

I'm the first to admit that I usually have something to say and can talk. A lot. I like the art and science of words: these seemed fine reasons to start a blog, over a year ago now, when I was unemployed. But I also appreciate silence and always find myself looking for what's left unsaid when the conversation has ended. There's a precious silence in the closest relationships; an emotional recognition and communion negating words. Yet sometimes things must be said, the surety of feelings needs to be voiced to uncertain hearts. Sometimes words won't flow, stemmed by too much self-doubt or fear of offending, too much anger or pain, even too much love.
Doubt is the natural enemy of love. The unspoken may provide poignant memories but regrets are too dried and crumbly to rest prettily in a purple ribbon. For every pair of star-crossed lovers confounded by fortune, there will be dozens of chances choked upon and broken bridges languishing by a bank of missing planks. God gave us the security of silence but also a wealth of words and the luxury of language. Talk to each other, listen; you really can't successfully do either one without the other.
The word "communication" comes from the Latin for "sharing". Open communication lends itself to community; harmonised interests, values and intimacy. And yet it seems that enhanced routes and almost time-travelling speeds in modern communication have led to inappropriate over-familiarity, contempt and apathy. And when those routes fail, we feel almost socially excluded. We assume the landline, mobile, email or social network will be there tomorrow: the idea, opportunity, emotion or even the person may not be. If our connections were reduced to one letter a month and a steed galloping up-country instead of current upload speeds, we would surely say more in that letter. My Mum and Dad never let the sun set on a problem in case one of them might not be there to see the sunrise. Not a sentiment shared by BT and Vodafone it seems.
Two prisoners in adjoining cells will talk to each other by knocking on the wall. The barrier between them becomes their route of communication; their separation becomes a link between them. Knock knock?

  

"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."
(Charles Dickens)

"Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
 (George Bernard Shaw)

"If the darkening sky could lift
more than one hour from this day
there are words I would never have said
nor have heard you say."
(Carol Ann Duffy)

 

"Darkness On The Edge Of Town"  Bruce Springsteen)

 

  "Everybody's got a secret, sonny,
Something that they just can't face,
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it,
They carry it with them every step they take.
Till some day they just cut loose;
Cut it loose or let it drag them down;
Where no one asks any questions
Or looks too long in your face,
In the darkness on the edge of town."
(B. Springsteen)

 

 

Flowering

"Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can't always understand them, but we have to trust in them."

(Lauren Kate)

(All photos: Gigi, album)

"Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith." 

(Franz Kafka)

I've already said that my posts are a little lagging on here at the moment. Last week, my first rose of the summer burst open in my little back garden. It's since been followed by other equally full,  brazenly yellow roses; then fuchsias  the strawberry plant (in it's third year) and other perky little bits and bods. The first rose was so gorgeous that I had to take a photo of it. Just a couple of weeks before, the rose bush was still skeletal and thorned. My roses are late this year, having survived another winter of prolonged wet and wind and then a reluctant spring, even wetter and windier.

A very lovely lady called Martina recently read some of my blog and asked me where I got my faith from. I was immediately silenced by this, which doesn't happen often, because my knowledge of my faith or anything "holy" is rather holed.  I just didn't have a ready answer. The following day, my rose unfurled. 
My favourite colour is red, but my favourite flowers are actually yellow, from daffodils to hypericum to sunflowers.  I love bright yellow roses and most of the roses in my garden are intentionally sunshine coloured. Dorothy Frances Gurney's assertion that one is closer to God in a garden than anywhere else has really resounded with me since I moved down to Brighton. My little house has many inherent faults and much work to be done, but it has a garden. The concrete and weed postage stamp out back probably sold the property to me. 
I think it's fair to say that the previous owner didn't extend much time or tenderness to the garden. It harbored untended jasmine, laurel and pear trees, and one very hooky and hard-headed rose tree (pink). These have been befriended and the whole area planted and populated. It's wild and quite willful and a work in progress. It's responded to my coaxing and determination with colour and a tenacity not bottled by B and Q or Homebase. It crackles with birds and bees, spiders and snails and now a toad; it has a life of it's own. I sit out there at night with a cuppa as the solar lights and lanterns flicker out. In a town that's struggling to come to terms with disillusionment and dilapidation, I'm lucky to have a roof over my head and totally blessed to have my back yard.
It's occurred to me that my fascination with the natural world and the wonders of science that baffle my little brain have strengthened my faith over the years. The prerogative of atheists to cite the big bang and the initial squib of evolution doesn't dilute my belief in God; the enormity and minutiae of the universe and beyond don't seem at odds with my idea of a greater design and a higher power. My roses come through snow and ice to meet each new summer; my pear tree was dark and woody and apparently barren but only needed a little clearing and encouragement to grow into the abundant fruit-bearer it was always intended to be.
Along the seafront towards the Peace Memorial, there's a streak of graffiti that confirms that "shit happened". And so it does; and often to good people. I'm trying to be a better person but I'm now comfortable and relieved with being ordinary. Along with so many other ordinary people, I've shed a lot of tears in the past three or four years; too many, not of joy. But smiling is a reflex that doesn't rust easily. I've also learned that it rains a great deal in East Sussex; folk greet the sun like a prodigal child. 
In fact, Martina and her husband Frank and their bright, tight family of siblings, babies and elders are hugely inspiring to me, and to others I'm sure. There's a tangible faith in their family and love for each other, their endless enterprise for business and their concern for community. So, people like me get some of our faith from people like you and yours, Martina.
I often say, whether anyone is still listening or not, that religions are cultivated by man but faith is naturally occurring. Our history bears the hopefulness of our future, seen and unseen. There's a world of infinite and resilient beauty beneath our daily dust. Ask any rose.

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."

(Mother Teresa) 

"The Rose" Andre Rieu & Orchestra, with sopranos Suzan Erens, Carmen Monarcha and Carla Maffioletti.