within and without

After over two decades of renting rooms in shared housing, with a few blissful years in between when able to rent a flat or house to myself I have my first home - a flat in East London. I am so blessed in this and alongside the physical sorting and space making has come an emotional outpouring which has required as much unpacking, careful ordering and analysis as the creation of my physical space.

I've scrubbed, cleaned, prepped and repainted the walls of the flat, filling cracks, sanding down, making good. The walls are now a beautiful shimmering white, some took four coats of paint to reach this state and it was an effort at times. Now these blank surfaces await my new projections, a holding space for whatever comes next, a base from which to grown further. I already feel more 'adult' in this space, not living under others rules.

During this process I discovered boxes that had been packed 13 years ago by the 30 year old me. Her hopes and dreams were contained in these cardboard boxes and tears flowed as I said hello to her and witnessed the dearly held plans and desires that hadn't worked out, and I looked at this life I have now and wondered how I got here. 

And so, it goes on. Sort, recycle, sift, pass on what I no longer need, bin useless things - alongside I've binned emotional stuff too, working through regret, mistakes and also conjuring hope and a vision for my future. The experience has taken me as low as I can go, but you know what? I'm ok, more than ok. To allow myself to sink was necessary, to grieve properly, consciously, painfully, has cleared my chest and heart, and from this clearer space a new vision has emerged and that is wonderful.

So thank you flat, thank you cardboard boxes for the lessons, thank you younger self and the wise older self who is floating around for me, I'll meet her one day. There are many blessings in a broken heart, and the only way is through.

I'm finally beginning to understand this saying that has stayed in my head from somewhere, someplace. I've begun to 'do'.

'To know and not to do is not yet to know'
Wang Yangming

and now he's dead

In early January I traveled to Aylesbury by train, visiting my sister for her birthday. As the train stopped in Amersham a conversation began behind me.

Grandmother: 'My dad used to live in Amersham'

Little boy: 'Your dad was really old'

Grandmother: 'He wasn't really, he was 65. He was a heavy smoker, he had lung cancer'

Little boy: 'And now he's dead'

The lady went on to tell of her sister and friend who also died at 65. The boy had been told off for picking his nose and I felt him prod the back of my left arm through the gap between my seat and the window. Inside I winced hoping he wasn't wiping a bogy on my jacket.

things my dad left

A scored ceiling tile that can never be disguised with paint. When I lay in the bath at my mum's house my eyes are always drawn to a particular spot on the ceiling. The tiles show my dad's thinking process and learning as he stuck them to the ceilings curve. The tile by the wall is scored deeply with a knife to bend along the curve, the next one is scored lightly and the next pressed into place with no scoring. The third looks best. If it was me I would have taken off the first two tiles and reapplied them, not my dad, he just kept going. In fact, he didn't keep going and the ceiling remained unfinished years before his death and I completed the job much later. My own learning still shows too as a couple of the tiles are cut too big and bow downwards. On reflection this may have been the only 'project' my dad and I worked on (unknowingly) together, a conversation in polystyrene tiles, he began and I finished.

A pear tree. 

An apple tree, an Epicure - very tasty.

A slab path and patio and brick planters for flowers. 

bt tower

When I moved into my flat I was a delighted to discover that the BT Tower is visible from my bedroom window. It twinkles and winks at me at dusk and I say goodnight to it sometimes. The tower has personal significance as my Uncle Fred lived a stones throw from it and it could be seen, looming large through the kitchen window of my Aunty Lil’s flat in Camden. Whenever I see the London skyline I look for the tower and am reminded of my mothers family.

So, in my way of commemorating and marking things I planned a walk from the tower to my flat! Its 8 miles west from my bedroom window. My sister came with me and after a browse in Oxford Street’s John Lewis we began to walk. What fascinated me was that the route took us through places of family significance: past the hospital I was born in, the registry office where our parents married, me in mum’s belly. Past St Pancras station, my gateway to and from London when I lived in the East Midlands, through Angel, across Kingsland Road, near our Aunty Jessie’s much loved Dalston Market. Then into Hackney where we lived as tiny children, close to where my sister was born in Clapton. Then onwards to my present life and new start in Leytonstone - skirting the fenced off Olympic Park and through Leyton to ‘my’ Leytonstone High Road. 

The last mile or so was boring and coincided with us getting drenched to our underwear! Still, I think this walk will become one I repeat over the years. I am blessed by the good fortune that has led me to a flat with a journey that links the past and the present.

The thing I’ve most wanted for a number of years - to settle and become a London resident has happened. My dream has become real.

As near as I could get

The tower is visible through the dip in the trees in the middle of the photo (you will have to imagine it!)

out breath

I now live in a second floor flat above a busy high road. My vantage point is still a novelty and people catch up eye as they come and go. Some faces have become familiar and it's somehow comforting to see them, I wonder where they are going, what they go home to.

From my kitchen window I watched a woman take a drag of her cigarette, it was a blustery day and the wind whisked her smokey out breath upwards and it vanished. I was amazed at how fast breath leaves the body. The unseen made visible by smoke.

the past in the present

From the age of 4 I was brought up in an estate in Loughton, Essex. It's a green and leafy place built after WWII with solid council houses. My bedroom window framed the edge of Epping Forest, a mostly oak boundary that runs along the end of Pyrles Lane. At night the piercing cries of foxes and hotting of owls can be heard, in daytime cooing wood pigeons and traffic replace the night creatures. I remember looking out of this window during the Great Storm of 1987 and seeing trees bowed and felled by the wind, and to this day remember the trees that are missing from this view.

Yesterday I went out for a walk, tracing most of my old route to primary school, then beyond to Debden Broadway. A series of memories floated into my head as I walked:

Betty and Bill.

Street parties on Cleland Path.

A friends mum who would bite their dog if it bit her.

The same friend singing Police and Thieves and claiming she made it up on the spot, only years later did I discover her lie.

The now demolished wall that we used to balance on outside St Gabriel's Church.

My little sister being hit by a car outside St Gabriel's Church.

The once open land with a marvellous old oak that I loved, still there but behind fences, deadly nightshade grew near it.

My primary school where I was most happy in education, its once huge open field now covered in houses. The bird that flew into our classroom window, sat dazed for a moment and then flew away.

The eccentrically decorated house with a hand painted sign outside declaring, 'Beware of the tadpole'. I liked it but the neighbours weren't so keen.

Angela and Barry who treated me like a daughter and gave me so much during my teenage years (and beyond).

Debden's pie and mash shop, unchanged through the decades.

Where Woolworths used to be.

Sprays the bakers, sold out of my favourite Bath bun.

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.