befogged

We were lucky enough, earlier in the year, to be given the very generous gift of a couple of days’ break in Avebury - a well chosen gift, since it’s our favourite place. So, last week we saw in the solstice itself in Nottingham and then headed over to wonderful Wiltshire on the longest day.

We were phenomenally lucky with the weather, which allowed us to spend a bit of time walking across the fields (and aren’t they pretty fields?) to Windmill Hill and just wandering round and hanging out around the circle. We’ve been several times before, so rather than packing in all the sights we took advantage of the opportunity to just be somewhere wonderful for a couple of days.

One of the things I love about Avebury is that it’s everything from spiritual centre to landscape feature, depending on the visitor. A wander around the various bits of the vast circle will include tourists filming their offspring, folk dowsing, dog walkers, the remains of solstice magic and offerings, and people just relaxing in the shade provided by vast stones on a sunny day (which is what I was doing when I took the photo below). Oh, and possibly sheep. And maybe a few folk in robes and/or antlers. It’s a very low key, friendly, live and let live sort of atmosphere, and it always relaxes me almost instantly.

So, today’s the day. I left the house early and was at the polling station at 10 past 7 this morning, just in time to interrupt a hopeful tea run by one of the overseers.

I’ve really enjoyed the build-up to this election. Perhaps because it’s a more close run thing than the most recent few, everyone I encounter seems to be more politically engaged than normal. I’ve discussed politics with colleagues, family and friends in much greater depth than is normal, and frankly I’ve loved it.

Some of my fondest memories are of weekend mornings when I was a teenager. Mum often had a lie-in at the weekend, but I inherited my Dad’s larkish tendencies so would often be up before she was and would make Dad (ok, I wasn’t quite as larkish as he was when he was commuting to London every day!) a cuppa when I got downstairs. If we were in the mood, we’d sit at the kitchen table with a cuppa and put the world to rights. As with religion, my parents never actually specified a preference outright - the emphasis was all on questioning, researching, discussing, and coming to my own conclusions.

When I hear of parents being outraged at their offspring’s political preferences, I feel so incredibly grateful to my own parents for encouraging in their children the open minded, intellectually curious approach to life that they’ve always taken themselves. I know that they would never think worse of me for the choices I make, though I suspect they’d be disappointed if those choices weren’t fully thought through or were expressed dogmatically.

They’re voting in a Tory stronghold, as ever (hello, bit-of-Lincolnshire-near-Thatcher’s-birthplace!), but things are a bit less certain in my own constituency. The red and blue teams have both held it in recent memory - there’s just a few thousand votes between them, and turnouts have been low at the last few elections. The Liberal Democrats have been gaining share of the vote steadily over time, but while it’s not as forlorn a hope as in some areas it’s still only around 14%, and there were conservative gains at the more recent MEP elections.

So the question that always arises in these circumstances is whether to vote tactically (and that goes so far against the grain for me that I’ve had sleepless nights at the mere thought that it might be held to be necessary). If you care, and I do, it hurts to be torn between ‘preferred candidate’ and ‘dear god, don’t let that bugger in’. I hope that whatever happens we’ll be a step closer to electoral reform and proportional representation, which would hopefully end the dilemma so, so many people face of whether to vote tactically or from the heart. One way or another, though, I’ve done my bit for the democratic process - all I can do now is see how it all plays out.

I have pizza, dips, cake and pear cider.

Bring it on!

Erm, yes. Been a while, then. The truth is, I blog for work as well and so can find myself a bit Wordpressed out. But I have been on holiday lately, so I thought I’d shuffle over here and blog about it.

We had a fantastic week of getting out and about in the lovely part of the country that is sunny (well, mostly) Somerset and thereabouts. The self-catering cottage in which we stayed was both comfortable and luxurious, and provided us with this wonderful view from our bedroom window:

We saw a bird flight demonstration:

Sidled along to the next county and sunned ourselves on the beach at Woolacombe (the water was bloody freezing, but the day was gloriously sunny and warm and the beach was almost deserted) :

Went to Longleat safari park (Making the most of a rainy day with an in-car activity - we were disappointed that the Monkey Jungle was closed, but I suppose at least that meant we got to come home with windscreen wipers still attached to the car!):

And visited the stone circle at Stanton Drew:

Larger versions of all these images, along with others from the set (I still have several more to get off the camera, but you get the general idea) if you’re really interested, are available on my Flickr if you click through

My father’s recent operation was, I suppose, the catalyst. It wasn’t a serious op - just a knee replacement - but it proved to be the flagship for a relationship shift that’s been creeping for a little while.

It was, you see, the first time I drove my mother somewhere because she needed something and had no other access to it than through her youngest child. The first time Dad couldn’t help Mum around the house, placing the burden entirely on her - even when he worked and she didn’t, he cooked the Saturday meal and shared the Sunday lunch marathon. The first time I’ve really seen my dad in pain, frustrated, and even a little helpless.

Though my parents are both pensioners, that knee op was the first really noticeable sign of increasing physical frailty - oh, they’ve had the usual tics and niggles, but aside from their hearing aids (a thought to conjure with for someone who’s always had over-sensitive hearing - inherited, as it turns out, from a mother who’s been wearing digital aids for years!) nothing that the younger population doesn’t also have from time to time. Nothing that really slowed them down, made them change how they lived, how they communicated, nothing that meant I found myself making extra sure I was available to help, feeling responsible for alleviating their current burden, even if all I could do was run Mum about a couple of times and pitch in more when I visited.

It brought about a change in our conversations, too. My mother, who has always refrained from anything resembling pressure for grandchildren, has suddenly started to become more obvious in her desire for them. Where ten years ago Mum was, as mothers seem to be, anxious about my life - and dietary - choices, now as well as our normal weekly chat-about-whatever there’s a weekly update on the status of various illnesses and frailties. Lump scares, future operations, the eye condition I’d no idea ran in my father’s family until he was recently diagnosed, blood pressure monitoring, the revelation that my barely-remembered grandma was severely anaemic, the fact that my mother has spent the last fifteen years nursing a recurring hip niggle that she’s never really felt to be severe enough to consult about with a doctor. The admission, most of all, of tiredness.

I’m reminded, suddenly, that my father is just a few years younger than my other half’s grandmother. It’s unsettling, this sudden pressing down of frailty, the creeping feeling that here begin the years where the balance of worry shifts from parents to children.

And yet, it’s not all negative. Strange as it may sound, my parents and I are closer now. I suppose the essence of it is that our relationship is more adult. They ask advice as well as providing it. I provide support as well as requiring it. We chat on more equal, more human terms. Their frailties admitted, my understanding improved.

Daughtering is, it seems, changing.

@angpang at http://angelarambleson.blogspot.com tagged me to do this meme, and for much the same reasons as her (it’s so much easier to blog when someone’s done all the hard work of formulating those nebulous ‘I could blog this’ thoughts into A Plan for you) I am jumping on the bandwagon with a meme. A Me Me meme, to be exact. Warning - it’s got me feeling a little introspective.

1. What are your current obsessions?

I think a hastily scrambled together still life is in order:

Reading has been an obsession since I was a child. There was at least one book in almost every room of the house that I spent time in - I’d go and find the book for which I felt in the mood at the time. I tend to have fewer than six on the go at any one time these days, but two is not uncommon.

Knitting has been an obsession for some years now - I found it a little awkward to pick up again as an adult, but once it clicked I realised that the way I find it comfortable to hold needles and yarn is exactly the way my mother has always held her needles and yarn. It’s the perfect hobby for a fidget with a creative side - it can be as easy or as complex as suits you at the time, and it always results in something wonderfully unique. I worked out the other day that I have made 10 pairs of socks for me and a further four pairs for Alan, so this is a toasty-footed household.

Spinning is a more recent obsession - since only October last year, and with a vengeance since Alan very generously gave me a wheel for Christmas, rendering me so overcome that I strongly suspect I was incoherent in my thanks. There is something very pleasing about making your own yarn from scratch, and the process itself is almost cathartic. It’s like learning to drive - a physical set of actions that your body has to get used to - you feel clumsy and fumbly at first, you find out why it’s called a drop spindle, and you make lumpy, bumpy underplied yarn in quantities far too small to make anything much. And then it clicks, and you’re sailing away in the almost zen process of taking a pile of floofy stuff and turning into yard after yard of beautifully smooth yarn that’s just the way you want it to be. 400m 3 ply sockweight? Not a problem - unless you want it in a hurry, of course! As with knitting, it’s an excellent craft for a naturally impatient person - it’s about enjoying the process and accepting that perfect control over your skills will not happen immediately.

Which is a lesson I am trying to hang onto with sewing. You see, I have always dabbled with sewing. I’d borrow the parental sewing machine and alter things, albeit without much of an idea of how to achieve the effect I was after - I just dove in. I used a book or two on handsewing that my mother owned to learn enough basic stitches to hem, seam and trim things. But sewing lessons at school were to me like the school guitar lessons I also took: missing the point of learning. I didn’t want to learn to do This Particular Thing by rote, I wanted to understand how to achieve this particular effect. I wanted to learn chords and learn how to put them together in different ways, not memorise Messing About on the bloody River. I wanted to learn the techniques of garment construction and pattern-following, not be taught how to embellish something I couldn’t yet make. For sewing, I was just unlucky with timings of when various teachers left and so ended up with a huge gap in my training: where my friend, in a different class, also suffered the ‘right, this is how to applique’ (why learn that first? why not start with the basics and then learn to embellish and adapt?) we had in the first year, she had those crucial lessons in how to follow and use a traditional sewing pattern. She was taught how to finish seams, and what sort of stitch types and fabrics have which effects. I seemed to miss that entirely. I went straight from embroidery to ‘right, use this pattern to make a nightie’, and had so little clue about how to use a pattern that I got my dad to do it instead, last minute.

Now, with teen angst out of the way (why didn’t I just *ask* to be taught? I guess you don’t at 14 if you think you’re supposed to already know somehow…) I am trying to rectify that omission. I still find it somehow easier to make something up as I go along - when I needed a dress for a friend’s wedding in a hurry the other week it seemed easier to use what I know to conjure up what I could imagine rather than try to follow a pattern - here’s the result (the red one on the right):

But I know that my nervousness of patterns (they are a language unto themselves, all symbols and terminology and as few words as can be got away with - you can probably tell from the ramble this is becoming that that’s rather alien to me!) is largely a mental block that’s been sitting about for the last 17 years for no real reason. It’s about time I got rid of it - the demons of a 14 year old girl do not belong in a 31 year old woman, especially when they are about something so relatively trivial and yet also so fundamental to who she is - so slowly but surely, that’s the plan. I have fabric, books, patterns, a machine, the whole of the internet at my back, and, most importantly, the attitude that It Doesn’t Matter If Something Doesn’t Go Perfectly. If there is one thing knitting and spinning have emphasised for me, someone who was always effortlessly Good At Things (except PE & textiles…) at school and so can be hard on herself when not picking other things up quite so effortlessly, it’s that every step along the way teaches you something. The process, of anything, is important because it’s how we learn. I will aspire to perfection, but I will not demand it of myself. I will accept that, well, I am human, and pretty average really, and that is perfectly fine.

I’ll still swear at machine, pattern and fabric from time to time, though

2. What item from your wardrobe do you most wear?

I would love for the answer to this question to be ‘floaty vintage dresses and a bohemian vibe’, ‘quirky jewellery’ or ‘heels, pencil skirts and a slick of red lipstick’. But for someone who lives in her head I’m actually quite practical, and I also live in the real world, where vintage that fits is hard to find and isn’t always suitable for The Weather, where pet birds home in on any jewellery and nibble it to death (Magpies have an unfair reputation on the shiny front - the little buggers are all like it! Jewellery may be worn out of the house, but is removed and put out of avian reach upon returning.), and where Frankly, I Can’t Be Bothered most of the time.

So it’s jeans. Tight, loose, bootleg or cropped, jeans it is. I try my best to vary it with Interesting Scarves And Shawls (hey, I knitted most of them - they’re unique!) and slightly-less-boring-than-plain tops, but… jeans are a) comfy, b) easy, c) versatile (they range from ‘tatty, ripped and only used for decorating and gardening’ through ‘reasonably smart, suitable for work’ and up to ‘these’ll do for the evening unless it’s a really fancy do’) and d) in possession of pockets.

I have to fight to shut the jeans drawer, and have been known to extend the life of ripped or tatty-ankled ones by turning them into skirts.

3. Last dream you had?

It involved, for some reason, being on a cruise ship, running about on a dark ocean being terribly scared about something.

I knew I shouldn’t have re-watched Under Seige when it was on the other week.

(Yes, I am aware of the possible Freudian interpretations involving water = emotions thank you. Possibly true, but the Seagalian route might be just as true, who knows?)

4. Last thing you bought?

Um. Milk, hummous and a variety of cheeses.

Sorry. It probably would have been more interesting to have answered this after an unbridled orgy of spending, but then my poor blog would have been post-less for even more months than it normally is.

5. What are you listening to?

Right this minute? Star Trek.

When not listening to that, Royksopp radio on Last FM has provided a good summer sewing soundtrack - all floaty, trippy, bouncy melody that doesn’t intrude a sudden need to skip a jarring track just when you’re in the middle of something.

6. Fave holiday spots

We almost always holiday in the UK - there are other corners of the world I’d like to see, but there’s such a lot of beautiful island to explore, and it seems a shame to run away from your own country every time you take a break. Avebury is a particular favourite of mine, hippy-at-heart that I am, along with the Cornish coast.

7. What are you reading?

Crime and Punishment. It’s looong, powerful, and complex. Which means I am also opting out periodically to pick up something a little lighter in tone - I’m a huge fan of Georgette Heyer’s historical romances (think Jane Austen but with livelier plots and fashion) and anything by Terry Pratchett, so those are the default ‘want quick, familiar stuff’ reading material.

8. 4 words to describe you

Too Tired For Wit

9. Guilty pleasure

Until recent admissions on the interwebs, it probably would have been Georgette Heyer. Partly subject matter and partly former English Lit. student ‘heavens, it’s not Worthy’ guilt. Now? Meh, I like action films, sci-fi tv, and funny, historical romantic fiction. So what?

10. If you were god/goddess who would you be?

Is there a goddess who has her nose in a book half the time and her hands on wool the other half?

11. Who/what makes you laugh until you are weak?

Eddie Izzard.

His Pavlov’s Cat sketch gets me every time.

And there’s always that couple of friends with whom you produce magic whenever you get together for a chat.

12. Fave spring thing to do.

Open the blinds and just gaze out and watch the birds, clouds, butterflies, people and planes go by.

13.When you die what would you like people to say about you at your funeral?

“You mean everyone brought potato salad?”

“Right, where’s the corkscrew and has everyone got a glass?”

14. Best thing you ate or drank lately?

A simple-but-beautifully-executed-with-excellent-ingredients goat cheese and bruschetta salad. And I’ve become fond of sweetcorn and mushroom frittata, particularly if using mushrooms from the chap at the market who has the stall full of interestingly exotic varieties. Simple recipe + great ingredients = happy Cat.

15 When did you last go for night out?

That would be the wedding reception which necessitated sewing to a deadline. Dreadful DJ, excellent buffet, great company, bride and groom both radiant and happy.

16. Fave film ever.

I can never pick a single favourite of anything.

Labyrinth, Godfather, Matrix, Lord of the Rings - they’re all on the list, along with a soft spot for Mary Poppins and probably several more besides.

17. Share some wisdom.

The trouble with having an open mind is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Thank you, Terry Pratchett.

18. Song you can’t get out of your head.

Ack.

I’d been doing so well.

It was Lady Gaga for a week, thanks to office use of Heart FM.

Had totally eradicated it, and this question brought it flooding back.

Ack. Ack. Ack.

Can’t read my, can’t read my, no you can’t read my…

Ack.

19. If there is one thing you wish you’d learnt from your parents earlier, what is it?

More about my family. My fourth surviving grandparent died when I was 14. I didn’t know my mum’s dad at all - he died when I was a few months old - and my grandmothers died when I was between seven and nine. So, I never really had an adult relationship with any of them - I don’t think you get to know your grandparents as people when you’re a child, or not fully. You don’t take it in, and while I can piece together some things now as an adult, they’re extrapolated from what I took in through a child’s filter, and more focused around my dad’s dad because I spent more time with him (I get my nervous twitch in the presence of a crooked picture from him). I’m always fascinated to hear about mum’s grandmother, for example (to be fair, she sounds a rather fascinating character), and since I’m a person who likes to put things in context in order to make sense of them it would be interesting to put my immediate family in more of a context. It’s where, exactly, did my eye colour come from and why does my brother have this trait and my sister that?

20. If you could change one detail from your past, what would that be?

I’m not sure how far it can be changed, really, since the changing of it has happened only gradually, over years. But if I could, I would give myself the confidence to pursue the things that really interest me in public, not in secret, and the confidence to not pursue the things that didn’t interest me.

…

I am terrible at picking people (it probably comes from never having been in the exhalted position of selecting a team at school), so if you’re up for a bit of a meme: tag you’re it…

Meme Rules: remove one question & replace with one of your own.

Yesterday we spent a wonderful day in glorious sunshine taking advantage of a parrot handling experience which Alan’s parents kindly gave us for Christmas.  It took place at The Parrot Zoo in Lincolnshire, the largest Parrot sanctuary in the country and an amazing place to visit, with a few friendly parrots wandering around out of aviaries (and, largely because we were with a keeper they recognised, pinching bits of our lunch - I guess that habit is as strong with larger birds as it is with our pet beasties!), collections of hundreds of aviary birds, and some free flying parrots. 

There were…

it has to be said…

A lot of parrots:

Around 1700 in all, of various shapes, sizes and species. It’s an extremely well-organised place even on a standard admission, but because we were there on an Experience Day rather than as ordinary visitors we got to go inside the aviaries which aren’t normally open to the public (though the walkthrough experience, with lots of friendly cockatiels and other smaller birds, is open to everyone and very much recommended). I had an absolutely wonderful time. Being in an aviary containing well over 200 African Greys, never mind the various other smaller parrots that were also in there, was an extraordinary experience, and as for the Macaw aviary - wow! The small sample in the picture above is just the ones who happened to be on one of the feeding tables in that aviary - there were literally hundreds of macaws in that aviary, several of them on our shoulders!

I did, though, have my foot pierced in an interesting fashion by an overly curious cockatoo. It was just Randomly Nibbling Stuff, as parrots do (even little ones - we gave up and moved the bookcases upstairs at home after numerous books ended up serrated by little beaks!), not being at all agressive - they just have incredibly sharp and powerful beaks so can produce a painful nip without really intending to. My own fault for wearing ballet flats instead of Sturdy Leather Trainers - let that be a lesson to anyone who fancies going on that experience! Persons interested would also be well advised to not wear jewellery (we were wise to that one, birds tend to have a fascination with Shiny! and macaw and cockatoo beaks are powerful things which are perfectly capable of chomping through gold chains) or anything involving buttons they might want to keep - Rich wisely wore a jacket he didn’t mind about, which was fortunate since after spending the day festooned in birds he didn’t have a single button left.

All in all, a highly recommended day for anyone who likes birds, and staffed entirely by friendly, knowledgeable staff who clearly care a hell of a lot about what they do for a living. I can’t speak highly enough of it.

I have lately been trying to improve my photography. Ideally, of course, better hardware and a course would probably be helpful. But, with a lot of help from Mother Nature, I don’t think I’m doing too horrifically for a beginner, so far.

Following on from thoughts over at Blue Witch’s pad…

The timing of large scale economic decisions for my generation has been a bit of a bitch, really, all things considered.

I hit the early years of the ‘oh shit, we never planned for this’ group of sixth formers whose parents never expected that free and accessible higher education, having been won only in their lifetime, would be taken away so soon. My sister, just 8 years older, must be one of the last people who actually received a free higher education. By the time I got to university in 1996, my grant was half the size of hers despite us both qualifying for the full allowance. I think it was a princely £1600, and it didn’t even cover rent. I just missed having to pay tuition fees, thankfully (would I even have been able to attend had I had to suddenly find an extra few grand? I doubt it). I wonder if British parents are now setting aside ‘college funds’ as soon as they have babies, like their US cousins? I know that degrees have lost much of the merit they used to have, and I really don’t think that 50% of the country needs one but how does giving university attendees a financial hammering help ensure we educate the brightest and the best rather than just the wealthiest?

Having collected my degree, I emerged bright eyed and bushy tailed into the working world… with the best part of £6000 debt (student loan of about £1800 x 3 years) to pay off and a starting salary of £10,000/year. I could have deferred payment, but felt I’d rather clear it sooner than later and had paid it off five years later. How much more difficult must it be if you add tuition fees and qualifications that take more years to gain?

And now? 

Well, it seems to me that I have been viewing my remaining working life as being probably due to last ‘about 40 more years’ since the day I first started work after University, 10 years ago. Regrettably I am still right.

Where my father was able to retire in his mid 50s and had hoped for a free education for his children, I will be lucky if I can stop working before my 70s (assuming I can continue to find employment all that time) and I have no idea if my friends’ children will even be able to attend university, regardless of whether they want to.

I have never had access to a contributary pension scheme, only work-led stakeholder schemes which barely seem worth the trouble over a private pension, especially if you change jobs a few times (and who has a job for life these days?).

I’m starting to wonder about the validity of private pensions, too. A growing number of people of a similar age to me have been told by various financial advisors that it’s not really worth maintaining one unless you can afford to contribute literally half your income. Instead, goes the advice, you are better off putting your money into a succession of ISAs, high interest accounts and property - when the economic climate allows.

I am lucky enough to have a reasonably-paying job (touch wood) and reasonable health (touch wood) and I can see a struggle ahead to try to avoid working until I drop. If things don’t change, how many more people will  just keep working until they can’t do much of anything any longer?

And the scariest thing about all this? I bet I’ve got it easier than my friends’ children will have it trying to unpick this mess.

I’m feeling fairly contented at the moment. I’ve been making good use of my free Fridays to really take in the city centre - it’s a beautiful place with some wonderfully varied and quirky architecture that makes me wish I had a decent camera and rather more skill as a photographer. Fridays show the place in a different light, much calmer and less rushed and busy than Saturdays, and the last few sunny Fridays have seemed to be full of people with contented smiles and cheery looks for strangers.

I’ve also taken the time to do a little non-work writing, which I’d lost the habit of (witness this poor, neglected blog!) and didn’t really know how much I missed until I put pen to paper again. I think maybe it’s always like that.

And, of course, I’ve been spinning. Here’s my first attempt at spinning something with a high proportion of slippery fibre - 125m of ~dk weight 50:50 alpaca bamboo, spun from a batt from Butterflygirl Designs. Bamboo is immensely slippery to work with, but the finished yarn has wonderful drape and sheen.

What a beautiful sunny day we’re having so far! Nottingham city centre was bright, cheerful, and a pleasure to be in this morning:

In the garden, the snowdrops have reappeared, and the daffs, crocuses, and tulips are clearly on their way. Amazing the difference it makes when you can feel that spring is trying to creep round the corner.