Friday 9 December 2011

2011 retrospect

Mostly this year has been life just going on - slow on-going progress on buildings, local and family history, food and drink, convenience and feast, me still pecking away trying to get my ear and fingers round jazz piano. The building work has been mostly at the other end of the terrace, and that principally stonework, both demolition and rebuilding. So I have become, to misquote Flora Thompson, a ‘ca-arpenter calls himself a sto-an-mason’. I have actually come to love using stone and lime. It’s a very forgiving technology, and lime, treated with respect, is much less corrosive than its reputation. Our local stone doesn’t come in regular cuboids – it’s a matter of a presentable outside face, and some approximation to constant height, and the 3D tessellation of assembling such wildly non-standard pieces into a sound and more-or-less presentable wall is very satisfying.

One of the things that will mark this year out, however, is that we acquired a small and elderly campervan ( a Romahome Hylo - you'll find pictures in Google Images, if you're curious ), and hit the road late in September for an extended holiday. In the end, the time away was set by the 31 days of Royal Mail holding service. We had talked of going to Scotland, but Jenny's move (see below) prompted us to go southwest instead. We began and ended near Jenny and spent most of our time in Cornwall - the Roseland Pensinsula, the Lizard and West Penwith. In all we had eight stays at seven different sites, and slept 30 nights in the van 'off the reel' - with one camp exception, £16 a night for ourselves, Brindle, the van and a tent. We saw many interesting places and things, but I think the principal experience was the free-floating and living simply day-to-day like that. Until we got to the last week or so, it was sort of timeless. No radio or TV, occasionally a paper.

We spent a few days on the Roseland Peninsular, where one of Nina’s 2G grandmothers came from. Her family name remains in use to this day as a boy’s name in Nina's family and cousin-lines. We found a couple of the farms associated with the family, and the church where Mary Lawry was married. Very moving. (We had a few weeks before also been in the church at Lydiard Tregoze where the groom’s father - the great Thomas Usher - was baptised. It may sound trivial or nerdish, but believe me, there is a powerful emotional charge in visiting such locations.)

We saw all three great headlands, the Lizard, Land's End and Cape Cornwall. We had 4 nights at St Ives. We went to Barbara Hepworth's place, which we found very moving and evocative. I think the fact that she had picked this place, and colonised it, and the fact her workspaces were still much as she left them all spoke to our own experience here, and of course, the works themselves.......I found the garden perhaps a bit green and crowded - most of her best works you could put alone in a space of any sort, and they would command it, so having so many in sight of each other is perhaps a mixed benefit.

The Tate St Ives ? Well, the building itself is quite something, and its setting, and the way the two interact. The exhibition then on ("The Indiscipline of Painting - International abstraction from the 1960s to now") we found underwhelming - a couple of pieces we really admired, but the rest were that 'one idea on a large canvas' sort of abstraction that seems principally to be proclaiming the artist's own lack of confidence in what art can 'now' do. (And the gallery and its setting seemed to conspire to mock such timidity.)

While we were in St Ives, I read a novel set in St Ives and Zennor (Zennor in Darkness/Helen Dunmore) and much enjoyed the juxtaposition. Zennor itself, I loved. I walked along the old church path towards St Ives in search of the cottage where DH Lawrence lived. (You can't actually get to it, it turned out, although you can see it from a distance. The lane has been declared private.) Mostly the church path is not evident on the ground any more, but it is signed and at each field boundary it crosses, there is a way through consisting of an opening in the field-bank and long stones laid over a shallow pit, like a cattle grid. Very old, very atmospheric.

In a similar vein, we visited three ancient settlements - Grimspound on the moor above Widdecombe, and Chysauster and Carn Euny down in Penwith. The former Bronze Age, the latter two Iron Age, at least as now seen - they seem to have been occupied for around 700 years, which I suppose at that time means 30 generations or more. Quite substantial remains, and a very powerful sense of something.

We also spent some days walking and looking at the mining remains in West Penwith. In some ways so reminiscent of our valley landscapes and history, and yet in crucial ways so different.

We ate quite a lot of good food, and drank some excellent beers, but actually both of us lost weight, I think.

We've had Leo and Angharad here a couple of times this year, some of the time just them and us, and we had a weekend en famille at October half term. Jenny and Alex have moved to Bere Ferrers, upriver from Plymouth, a short train ride (but a much longer drive) from the University, and they have a beautiful (rented) house. It's a 1920's house, probably built as a 'Mapp and Lucia' retirement home, I would think. On the ground floor, it's a classic villa layout - four reception rooms plus a large back kitchen and spacious central hall with cloakroom, now a bathroom; upstairs there are just two large bedrooms and a bathroom. And large gardens. So we all met up there - Ben and Emily and the children 'stayed', and we were at a campsite not far away. Emily went back to work in September, part time as cover for maternity leave, teaching in a VIth College that was once the grammar school Ben's real father went to . (He went into the RAF and was killed when Ben was very little.) For the moment, she's mainly teaching C20th India, which has led her to look at some of the archives we've got from Nina's maternal grandfather - he was in Bangalore c. 1910 - 1926, and Nina's mother was born there; and that has quite awakened E's interest in the family history, which is nice. A slightly weird story here. Timothy, Nina's youngest brother, has a carriage clock which was his grandfather's. It was in fact a wedding gift from his wife, and engraved to that effect. For years, Timothy and Heather had it on their mantelpiece, and then it stopped, and was put in a cupboard. Timothy had been on at H to get it mended, and eventually on Nov. 10th, (sic) lost patience and went to get it himself. And looked at the engraving. Which recorded his grandparents were married on Nov. 10th, 1911.

Well, 2011 has seen Nina reach 65 and me well on the way to it. The Welsh have a saying, "Henaint ni ddaw ei hunan" which might be translated as "You'd don't just get the pension........" and we're beginning to see what they mean. I've actually had only two or three days' sickness in the year, but one way and another, I've seen more of doctors and hospital clinics than I have in any year since childhood, or almost all the years since childhood.

The most benign element has been that I reached the top of the list for NHS hearing help. I've now had one of 'their' aids for about six months, and was fitted with its brother (for the other ear) in mid-November. It/(they) are far superior to anything else I've used - they really do make up the deficit in most situations. I have tended not to wear the first all all the time, but there is a curve here; the more you do use it, the more the brain actually adjusts to it being there, and it seems to me that in effect the ears then 'work' less hard when you haven't got them in - you feel deafer than you remembered ! They assure me it is just an effect, and not actual deterioration. Now, having got the second, it feels as if the adjustment has been made only for the ear that's had one - I'm going to have to go through same process again with the other ear. Every time I go to audiology, I have to go first to the GP's nurse to have my ears checked for wax, and the last time that happened, she suddenly decided to take my blood pressure, and that started a new fuss. I did home monitoring for several weeks, but 'they' now seem satisfied.

And I had an episode of AUR in April - casualty, catheters etc - but fairly quickly got back on to an even keel, with daily medication, and am now very comfortable with how things are - better than before, in fact. I was finally summoned to a follow-up with a consultant in mid-November - very low key. But he then arranged another test – which sets up precisely the circumstances that brought on the AUR episode……... So it goes on.

Nina's back is much better - she's back to some kind of normality, but has to be careful. While we were away she found museums and galleries quite difficult - the standing and leaning over affected her much more than walking, of which she managed quite a lot, and from which she seemed to get some benefit. Early in the summer, she lost her footing on the lawn and sprained an ankle - not a bad sprain in itself, I would have said, as sprains go, but it has shaken her confidence - she tends to peer suspiciously at her footing, step by step, which I think can sometimes be counter-productive.

As for the rest of my family; Mum is, remarkably, in as good a place psychologically as she's been for many years. Her care has been cut right back - she goes two days to a day centre, where she can get a haircut and a bath, she has an agency woman in 4 hours on one other day - cleaning and taking her shopping - and a girl takes her to church. Other than that, she's back to to independence, and seemingly content. Lesley and David's year has been dominated by David's health. He had a heart operation early in the year, and a hip replacement in mid-November. They have chosen to take the treatment in Staffordshire, so they have spent most of the year back in their 'old' house in Linton, which has not therefore yet been sold. They do still seem to be planning to renovate and extend the cottage near here and at some stage to make it their only home.

Mr(s ) Cameron's handbag

So Cameron has ‘vetoed’ the proposed new Euro-treaty.

It is the act of a man without any public principles, without any strategic grasp whatever. (So no surprise there, then). It is pantomime politics, but the ultimate price may be anything but fantasy.

He has done it for short-term party gain (as he has always played European politics). Ironically, it may in the short-term achieve some broader support – the British people, particularly the English, are in a strange state of mind now, and for the few years past.

But I sense a grand mis-step, which may not hurt Nina and me too much, but which could adversely affect Jenny and Emily, and Leo and Angharad, perhaps for the rest of their lives.