westernind | Reading

alierak posting in

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smokingboot

Yesterday a dark butterfly fluttered into our front room, bimbled around a bit above us, went out again. I made a story in my head: 30th June, date of Mark's death! It has taken him 10 years to return as a butterfly! Alas, my dates were wrong, today is the 30th. So much for my dreaming :-D

Also yesterday, Russ found a bird in our kitchen, confused or something. It flew out unscathed.

Why is everything coming in? I don't mind at all provided the beasties aren't harmed, but I've no idea why our interiors are suddenly so alluring.

Ugh, I am stupid tired. I should go back to bed.

I carried on trying to paint when I got back (God, how long is it going to take us to get over that trip? I feel for R and all that driving. Next time, plane and rental car.) One attempt was so terrible I actually had to snap the canvas in half. Of the four paintings I did on holiday, two are too embarrassing to show anyone and two please me despite their obvious issues. Painting is good for me provided I don't get frustrated at my lack. I feel so at home with writing, there is a kind of guilt at focusing on any other form of self expression, and I do love it, define myself by it almost. But those are very good reasons for working with something free from expectations/demands. So I'll put the two bearables here, in case the canvases get destroyed or I accidentally on purpose dump them in the bin.

This first was nothing more than a moment's feeling, as the wind blew through Saint Emilion, over the houses and through the streets, caught up in my head with the swifts/swallows/house martins flying.

The second was meant to be a snake among fruit and flowers. It became a sea monster because I can't Art. These have a specific meaning in my dream lexicon, based on Irish/Scottish/sea-faring folklore. To see them at all presaged storms and wild weather or by contraries becalming, but to have one see or approach your ship was considered extremely unlucky. This last may be one of the most self-evident pieces of nautical lore ever recorded.

My brother likes it, maybe because at least one of us has a touch of the sea monster about them anyway.

There now, am I awake yet? No, no, not yet.

smokingboot

When I was a child I would look at the skies and see other countries, realms unknown. It was usually at sunset when the contours of those otherworlds would reveal themselves. Sometimes they would become dragon lands, mapped by rivers of celestial lava, other times I could see the roads and landscapes, seas and mountains. I would catch sight of what seemed like lighthouses on the edges of wild coasts. I have always loved sunsets. But FB reminded me of this, one of the most memorable, which began as some kind of Arrival of the Travellers and ended as a prog-rock album cover.

I can never explain better than this. It's fantastical but real, it's far away but just down the end of the street.

smokingboot

No, I don't have it.
No, I have never had it.
No, turns out I have never had chicken pox or any form of zoster.
No, the only connection to potential shingles I have had is the horrid rash I got during/after radiotherapy. It didn't take Sherlock to fathom the connection.
So why did the NHS make me an appointment to have a shingles vaccination? I never agreed to it, don't recall discussing it. Turns out that Shingles is on the rise in the UK and assuming I reach my 70s I will become susceptible, so they just pencilled in a date for Bootpuncture, and texted me on the subject 2 days before, telling me to turn up. Heading the issue off at the pass long before I get there, they say. Very sensible. I cancelled.

I know, I know.

But right now I just can't think of these things. Once my next big C check up is done, maybe I'll be wise.

Or maybe I'll wait til/if it ever turns up, and then flap around in annoyance at myself.

smokingboot

My niece was up looking after the cats, and being a Disney fan, introduced me to the latest Snow White.

Hmm.

This bombed hard, mostly blamed on Rachel Zegler being a charmless sneery little goon in interviews. For sure Disney needed to have a chat about her working as ambassador for the film; when a trailer gets a million downvotes something's obviously gone wrong. But the fact is she's the best thing about Snow White. Despite some piranha-like chin waggling a la Keira Knightley, she's talented, pretty, can sing, dance, and play a saccharine part without being the spirit of cloy. The real trouble is that it's an excruciatingly bad screenplay with an overstretched plot, dull score, and uncanny valley issues through the roof. These latter don't just cover the nightmare dwarves (I don't care what Peter Dinklage says, Tyrion Lannister roles don't turn up every day and real actors with dwarfism could have used this opportunity/cash) but the whole CGI overload. It works in some places, like the interior of the cottage and the pipe organ, but often it's just an acid trip without the fun. Gal Gadot's not terrible, she's just got this terrible script. She does what's required of her, and it's not enough because nothing could be; nothing was ever going to save this badly conceived, badly executed project.

Speaking of badly conceived, badly executed projects, the cruise of the Carnival Triumph in 2013 has become infamous, but we knew no details. Now we do. In horrified awe we watched Poop Cruise on Netflix directly after Snow White, which made perfect poetic sense at the time and still does. This documentary is horrible but very funny. I never was a fan of cruises. Now it'll take bribery to get me on one.

But as entertainment goes, Poop Cruise kicks Snow White to the kerb.

smokingboot

Seriously tempted to drink the entire pot of coffee. One cup down, two more to go.

Big barney with Mother last night. She wants to invest in something she can't even name or describe, gave me a bogus address for it, and when I flat out said 'don't do it,' got angry with me.

I am not patient enough.

But I am wary of her being fleeced as so many pensioners have been. Got Bro to talk to her, and he reassured me that her understanding of banking security, firewalls etc is so honed as to be professional - paranoia has some benefits clearly - but he will check out the address and see what he can find. If he has flattered her enough, she may wait before opening a new bank account dedicated to this 'investment'. My personal feeling is to remember what she said many years ago re schizophrenia; that the voices never tell sufferers to do nice things like buy some flowers or go for a walk in the sunshine. The instructions/suggestions are always stick-a-fork-in-the-wall-socket type stuff, inimical, destructive, sometimes even dangerous.

I will leave her be for a few days. She got very unpleasant last night. She told me I had been short with her recently - I haven't, I've done nothing but send her pleasant prattle. She is probably referring to earlier in the year when she went through a phase of phoning me up and not being able to hear me, or me phoning her and her not being able to hear me. Bro thinks she faked that whole thing. She certainly couldn't explain it beyond the phantom 'hooligan' in the city who mucks around with her phone, and after anywhere between 5 and 13 calls in a row where it seemed she couldn't or wouldn't operate a basic phone properly, yes I got a bit frustrated.

Decision; Just peace and quiet today, me, the husband, the cats, the coffee. Bro said he could deal with it, so I will trust him. The whole situation might be less intense if he did his share of regular communication with her as he has promised to do so often. Never mind.

smokingboot

And this, from years ago. I was not satisfied with it then, so locked it. This is the right time for it to come out.

I put it here.
I made a mark in the sand, I put it here and that mark meant me. I could poke it into clay with my fingers, scrape it onto a rock, chalk it on the earth and that was my sign. I edged it with charcoal from the fire. Everyone else would put their hands on the wall and I would stencil round each, but I did not want my hand to look like all those other hands, so I put a red dot in the middle. For a while it was enough, though the others asked me to put dots on the middle of their hands too, and they all wanted their hands to look the same but different. Some wanted me to paint the tips of their fingers, some wanted me to colour their hands completely, all hands, all in the home, walls of us above, walls of us below. At first I offered to teach them the way of the flower colours, the ash and the clay, but they were unsure thinking mine was a kind of magic none other should touch, and I realised my mistake. Better to be given more and do it for them, better to keep it my own. So I did.

They liked the hands very much, and when the hands faded I mixed fresh ochre and remade them. Sometimes I painted the people, sometimes, at the behest of the one whose head shrieked and foamed with Dream, I would paint them dancing surrounded by the beasts who would pass too, the horses and aurochs and deer. The better I drew them the more would come towards us.

It was a wonder, I myself the wonder.

And that is why.

I painted in colours none had named, even those who had taught me had not named them, I was the one to say 'you are night' or 'you are fur' or 'you are blood' over the mixtures. As I painted more beasts, they grew greater, I detailed them, gave them spots, tipped their horns, fringed their hides, hooves, everything we needed. I never painted the ones we did not want. These were toothed and clawed. Sometimes we saw them and we would gather in together, keeping watch with ready weapons. To paint these would be to pull them close, we all felt it, but I wanted to do it anyway. They warned me that this was against the family, and when I saw their faces darken I knew a different kind of danger. So I shrugged and told them mine was a foolish idea, that we were home and I was their magic, and they nodded. They watched me a long time after that except when I made the marks. I made them a great hunt which brought us a feast, and they were so pleased, they all danced and ate and slept. But I did not sleep. I gathered my powders and slipped away long before dawn.

I left them my sign. I put it here.

smokingboot

Greeted by rain.

To keep my memories clear, I'll make this my list.

Edinburgh to Folkestone, Folkestone via Calais to Rouen: Leaving the wet and grey for more wet and grey.

Tours: Cheerful, lots of elegant architecture plus good shopping and that sense of a student city at its best. Pride was on that day, excellent benign vibe on the streets. We were seriously tempted to cancel the rest of our travels and just stay there.

St Emilion: Of which I have written elsewhere.

Bordeaux: Hmm, too hot for us to give this place a proper chance. But the beer/food was great!

Boulazac: In the 70s when I was a kidling, many aspired to owning a gite in the Perigord, which sounded like some kind of bladder problem. I never knew or cared what a gite was, and if anyone had mentioned Boulazac in our neighbourhood the jokes about ballsacks would have been endless. But this was a great base. The Perigord is heart-sweetening country.

Perigueux: A lovely old town with its industrial estates wisely kept on the outskirts. There's a charming museum and cute cafes, the central squares smell delectable because of what I think may be linden trees. Wandering the old streets to the church, we found little metal cockleshells pressed into the pavements, and followed them to the Cathedral of St Front, where pilgrims often stopped on their way along the Camino. They still do. It's part of the Voie de Vézelay, through France down into Spain to Santiago de Compostela.

Beynac-et-Cazenac: Home of the Bat and Castle described elsewhere.

Lascaux: Described elsewhere, definitely my personal highlight.

Bergerac: Down at heel. I get why Brits may flock here, cheap, amenities, plus the historical centre, real Cyrano country etc but not for me. I had no idea Cyrano de Bergerac was an actual person! All that stuff about his unrequited love for the fair Roxanne may be fiction, but he certainly liked to drink and duel, and he takes his place among the fore-runners of sci-fi, being supposedly the first writer to suggest travels to the moon via the use of rockets. And yes he had a huge hooter.

Eymet: The whole area of the Dordogne often gets called Dordogneshire because of the numbers of Brits escaping to it. Couldn't be more evident than here, where some 30% of the residents are from the UK. Looked like they had all turned out that day, sat in the picturesque village square, red shouldered slightly tiddled rosbifs smiling alongside their genial hosts, everybody together drinking white wine in the sun. What could be better?

Brantôme: Maybe this could be better. It's as gorgeous as rumour says, and cooler than Eymet. It too has a cheerful and lovely market. I think it is more to R's taste and I certainly wouldn't say no to a return. Easy to fall in love here.

Poitiers: Perhaps a bit ordinary by comparison, still the city has its gems, including Le Palais, where I could dreamsee the presence of Eleanor of Aquitaine walking through the great hall, however bare it seems now. Then there was the Cathedral of St Pierre which had, not only an alarming collection of saintly stone golems, but an archangel Michael finishing off the devil who bore a disturbing resemblance to a Great Dane of TV fame. We left whispering in awed tones: 'They killed Scooby!'

Back to Rouen: Only now the city smiled in sunshine and welcome, so delightful I don't know which bit was my favourite. The Palais du Justice is covered in gargoyles and no ordinary gargoyles, oh no. These are all snaky, dragons and wyrmlings and wyverns. I never saw a place warning you so clearly that the law is basically Smaug. Then there was the cathedral. Among those present when this place was consecrated was William of Normandy, one day to be William the Conqueror of England, from whom all monarchs of that land should be able to prove descent or have no claim at all. His ancestor, Rollo the Viking, is buried here. But there was one whose presence mattered more to my romantic heart than any of these. What it was to see these words on the side of a tomb: HIC IACET COR RICARDI REGIS ANGLORUM. Here lies the heart of Richard, King of the English. Lionheart! Oh I know, he was doubtless a thug like the rest of them, and he left his country in the hands of his rubbish brother, John Lackland, while gallivanting off to holy wars. But my childish self still thrilled. He will always represent to me the chivalry his mother inspired, with her love of books and bards and the rules of courtly love. Dust and stories perhaps, but if there's going to be stories, might as well be fun ones.

Then from Rouen to Calais, across the channel and up to Birmingham to enjoy the hospitality of old friends. Then Brum to home.

And here I am. For now.