visit to epping forest

While in London this week I met a friend for a walk in Epping Forest. We walked from Chingford Plains to High Beach and it was thrilling to experience an unfamiliar aspect of the forest and notice many instances of sympathetic management and habitat creation. Since I left the area in 2018 greater numbers of English Long Horn cattle have been released and we saw small herds grazing and relaxing in the grass. This sight is part of a thousand year history of people having commoner rights to graze cattle in Epping Forest, a working landscape. 

The forest where I grew up has a different feel: huge pollarded beech tress, deep leaf litter and wide tracks. This part felt more intimate and varied with winding, slow streams, boggy areas and clearings. It's been years since I walked in Epping Forest and my eyes felt fresh with the wonder of it, realising anew that this is a very particular place and surprisingly, that I'd forgotten something of its power and beauty. I would love to visit again with more time for exploration. 

the 'c' word

A year ago today my mum and I went to the doctors on Pyrles Lane for her most recent blood test results. As we sat and waited for the taxi mum applied her lipstick and my heart leapt as I noticed her jaundiced skin against the pink shade. We had to swap shoes, as her swollen feet wouldn't fit into hers, so I unlaced my trainers and she just about got these on. It was a hell of a job getting her to the doctors, her legs so swollen it was difficult to bend them, so getting into and out of the taxi took monumental effort. It was at this appointment that it was obvious she was gravely ill. There were inflammation markers in her blood. The 'c' word was mentioned and I wanted to cover her ears, protect her, for the doctor to tell me and not her. 

My mum died of suspected liver cancer 19 days later. She endured with no complaint and didn't ask for anything. In the final weeks of her life my sister and I took turns staying with her, so she wasn't alone in the house. Her health declining fast we did all we could. She didn't want medical help so it was only when things became desperate that we asked for assistance. I'm still processing the shock of her death, and that she died from cancer. She was tough. She did it her way. She lived for 81 and a half years, just like her own mother. 

In the run up to the first anniversary of her death I'm counting down and remembering the anxiety and fear of knowing she was dying. I've always had a sense of protecting mum, as children, she used my sister and I as a shied against our violent and unpredictable dad, sleeping in our shared room. It was an unusual, topsy-turvy relationship. 

I couldn't protect her from dying, but, alongside my sister, I could be present and ensure what happened around her was the best it could be, especially in her final days on morphine and semi-unconscious. I've felt untethered this year, not part of the world. My life has a different purpose. I can no longer protect my mum and I've lost the job I was born into. 

capturing a robin

The forest opposite my childhood home

I'm reading my favourite book for the third time. It is a buoy in an unsettled and uncertain moment in my life. The story so captures me I forget about this day, and am transported to an age before cars, before World War 1, when a passing bicycle would create such a stir that folk would run to their gates to gawp and wonder. The book is Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. 

A memory was sparked as I read of a village woman catching birds for the sport of it. Hidden, patient, holding the end of a length of string in her hand, the string tied to a stick, which had a sieve propped upon it and a sprinkling of crumbs beneath as bait. When I was small my father taught me how to catch a bird using such a method, just once, crouched behind our honeysuckle hedge, capturing a robin red breast and letting it go. Now I understand, from the vantage point of passing years what he was teaching me. My father didn't give me much in the conventional sense of what fathers are meant to be for daughters but he taught me something beyond words that day, a childhood in rural Scotland, a childhood where he hunted to eat, a childhood of ingenuity, responsibility and patience, of soil, and rain, and cold. 

My dad drew a circle on our dust path once, explaining that the Earth was hot at its core, together we uprooted a dead tree for our fire, we caught a robin and then let it go and all these things cause this 47 year old woman's heart to ache. I was born a month before his 55th birthday. Sieve, stick, string, crumbs. My Dad was odd in Essex, always mistaken for my Granddad, rake thin, venturing into the forest to drag home trees to burn.

At school, I excitedly shared capturing a bird with my father, writing about it or telling the teacher. I remember my confusion and shame as the teacher told me it was a horrible story and cruel, with classmates pulling faces. As is the way of small children I wasn't able to ask why she said that and became withdrawn and quiet, realising something of otherness, oddness and unbelonging. 

sign

pins and needles

In January 2013 I extended an invitation on Facebook: the first five people to respond to my post would get a handmade gift at some point during the year. They in turn had to offer this to their own friends and spread the handmade kindness. Two people responded and I knitted a hat for one friend and have just finished these lavender cushions for a family of four. Was pleased to get them created as I kept pushing back making as other commitments took priority. 

It was soothing to spend time in the studio, breathing in the lavender and making on autopilot. While working I used my trusty pin cushion and my thoughts turned to the past and my girl self. There was an open day at the school I was to attend and my mum gave me 10p to spend. This was a special moment as it was my first self defined purchase, the hall was busy with items displayed on tables and I chose a burgundy corduroy pin cushion with pins pushed into it in a neat square. This pin cushion is now almost 40 years old, I've used it throughout my life and studies, it's a little threadbare in the middle, I've re-stuffed it once and it is still going strong...

I marvel that 5 year old me selected a pin cushion, I'm sure sweeties were for sale! And I marvel that some children do have an inkling about what they want to do before stepping into the education system. Stepping out of the school system was the best thing I ever did, but that is another story.