After a very long Lockdown, Paul has started singing again – and not only with the choirs he sings in. He’s also singing again with David Poole, our very good friend who accompanies him on the piano in practice sessions and, occasionally, in performances with our WiPs (Works in Progress) group.

But Paul singing again will also mean me getting back to playing the piano again to accompany him when he practises. I shall confess at once. I am not a very good pianist. I thoroughly enjoyed the longish period when our friend, the well-known New Zealand pianist Richard Mapp, was living in London, indeed in South London. I’d go for weekly lessons with him. With his kindness and guidance and understanding of the music, I flourished. But now and for a number of past years, I have lapsed.

And yet I enjoy it. Earlier today, I spent a while thinking about how that enjoyment got built into me.  The answer, undoubtedly, was Miss Harries. Miss Harries was our elderly neighbour when I was growing up in Fishguard. She herself had grown up on the Pencaer peninsula, walking miles to school every day. She’d become a very reliable piano teacher, getting her pupils successfully through their grades, and she was a great friend of my redoubtable Aunty Mali who lived up the road. (more…)

‘When will you learn to do nothing?’ my father said to me on one occasion as I was looking round for the newspaper so I could do the crossword. ‘Well, that’s what I’m doing right now,’ I replied. ‘I’m doing nothing.’ ‘No,’ he retorted. ‘I mean nothing.’

By now, I’m beginning to know what he meant. He was a great specialist in doing nothing, or rather what looked like doing nothing.  I have only just begun to learn it. Yet I already know how valuable it is to have those times when you’re not searching for a pencil to do the crossword, not picking up the phone to phone a friend, not wondering where you’ve put the book you’re currently reading. Instead, you’re just sitting, perhaps vaguely watching the day outside, the clouds scuttling through the sky, the birds settling on the wire. That can be more than enough. (more…)

Perhaps the inner grace of her nature was spotted so early on that she simply had to be named Grace. Certainly that inner grace prevailed throughout her life. Together with a lively sense of fun and a wicked laugh, it made her a lovely companion, always full of a compassionate interest in others and an untiring desire to know what was going on.

Grace Hallworth became known among us professional storytellers as The Duchess. As a performer, which is how I first became aware of her, her assets included a lovely deep voice, and in more informal story-sharing sessions, a wicked laugh. She’d grown up in Trinidad. She trained as a librarian and became one, and at one time she was wooed by Tom Mboya, then the rising star of Kenyan politics. A course at the Institute of Education with Harold Rosen brought her a change of direction and as storytelling became a recognised art in this country, she became one of those who spent more and more of her time professing it, combining an ability to retain an informality in her approach with an engaging confidence in getting into the telling of an important story. (more…)

Ever feel like this? Unaccountably exhausted after a long journey and maybe sensing there’s absolutely nothing else to do except give your soul time to catch up with your body?

Last night we got back to London from our Pembrokeshire place. All was well here in the London house. There were no problems in letters that had come in the post, not even new spider-webs in strange places. But today, I’m quite a bit of a wreck. Too much to process emotionally (I never like leaving) and also, it seems on this occasion, too much for my body to cope with in the long journey even though, apart from ensuring our Pembrokeshire place was clean and tidy before we left (cousins were coming to stay), there’d been nothing extra or untoward with which we’d had to cope.  (more…)

Yesterday morning, the weather here in North Pembrokeshire was utterly different from before. All week the sky had been blue, though often with those fulsome clouds that look like strange flying creatures. Now it was rain-filled and grey.  I’m not sure why, perhaps as a comfort, but as I came downstairs in the morning, I began thinking about old friends. One of the dearest who came into my mind was Leah.

Let me tell you how we met. I was 18 years old and in Kenya as a VSO (Volunteer for Service Overseas) at a time when VSOs could still be unqualified school-leavers. My job was teaching at a home called Edelvale which was run by mainly Irish Catholic nuns on the outskirts of Nairobi. (more…)

Clearing the table, clearing your mind, clearing the air, clearing your diary, clearing the windscreen, clearing the weeds from the garden:  from the abundance of associated phrases and sayings, clearing is clearly a major human activity. Certainly it is in my life right now. For right now I am completely occupied with the conviction that I just want to clear the decks and be shot of stuff.

Part of the reason is no doubt to make room for the flow of new stuff that arrives in the house. Just inside my study door, for instance, is an ever-growing pile of recently acquired books which has now almost reached to the level on the wall of two lovely watercolours painted by my mother, one of our first beloved cat Hannah-Jane, the other of a typical Welsh cottage washed in pink. There’s certainly no room for more books in my bookshelves. (more…)

Jigsaws can be fun. I like them. Paul likes them. Every now and again we have a spate of jigsaw-doing. These last few days we’ve been occupied with a new 1,000-piece one. At various points, one or other or both of us will sit there for an hour or two. Sometimes, we just wander by and try filling in a piece or two. I wonder who first created the idea of the jigsaw. I must try finding out.

Of course, I’ve also now started thinking about the jigsaw as a metaphor, an image for the way we humans go about things and the peculiar miscellany of tasks we sometimes find ourselves tackling. At various points, perhaps, we’re planning to go on a little trip. So we try jigsawing together into one weekend or one week or a fortnight all the various thoughts we had prior to setting out about the places we’d like to visit, the kinds of things we’d like to do. Lying on a beach, going out for a nice meal, visiting that relative or old friend who lives in the area, reading that good book we’ve already begun, taking some excellent photos, having a long walk or several – oh, the candidates are almost endless. How on earth can we put together the mental jigsaw picture that will incorporate them all?

And of course, the weekend trip away is just one challenge. What about every day? I know that during the last few days, I’ve had numerous plans in mind. Pick up the plastic bags full of previously-loved clothes (horrid phrase) that are currently lurking in the sitting room and take them down to the charity shop as previously determined. Get out the small step ladder and feather duster and whisk away the cobwebs that have formed high up in the conservatory ceiling. Be in touch with the numerous kind people who’ve recently asked me to let them know the plans for my forthcoming chemotherapy treatment. Oh the list is virtually endless. And in its way the list is also a bit of a puzzle because, to be manageable on any one occasion, it has to alternate strenuous tasks with easier ones, simple tidying with heavy lifting etc. etc.

Oh the jigsaws of many kinds that we’re all engaged in a lot of the time! They are puzzles in the sense that, for me at any rate, they have to balance the hard work with the cups of coffee, the yukky stuff with the lighter tasks. And meantime, if possible, I always have to try and avoid becoming distracted. For instance, I know that, lurking in one or two of the parts of the house that need attending to, there are cardboard boxes that will undoubtedly turn out to contain fascinating – and hence distracting – old letters and old photos.

Ah well! When I get overwhelmed by the difficult tasks, I must remember. Laid out on the kitchen table (and currently preventing the eating of meals there) is that delightful Cloudberries jigsaw. Skyline is its name and the picture is a harbour with a multiplicity of towers and spires and sails.  It’s attractive. This morning, however, it won’t get much, or indeed any, attention. There are far too many other things to do. A planned phone conversation with the friend I call my Book Pair to talk about Shadows on the Rock, the Willa Cather book we’ve both been reading. An overdue phone chat with my sister. Changing the sheets on the bed. Checking my emails. Making a shopping list. And, oh yes, actually getting dressed since, right at the moment, I’m still in my dressing gown. Happy days! It’s the jigsaw of life.

PS: My top picture is of Skyline – work in progress. Below is a piece of life-jigsaw, taken about ten years ago and sent to us this week by the good American friend who made it, a video of us singing one of the most loved Welsh folk songs, Ar Lan y Môr (Beside the Sea). Please excuse the warm up bit we haven’t managed to edit out!

Two particular thoughts came into, and lingered, in my mind during my day yesterday. One is the huge importance of enabling children from big urban areas to visit the countryside and the sea. The other is to see the importance of doing that very same thing yourself.

Yesterday, Paul and I drove north up the coast road from Fishguard to Aberaeron. It is an extraordinary little town on the edge of the sea just south of Aberystwyth. The most striking thing about it is that all the houses are kept beautifully painted in  notable colours.  There are strict civic rules for effecting and maintaining the policy. The result is very pleasing.

But if  you’d thought that in such a seaside place you might walk along the sea shore on sand, the Aberaeron sea front is not so pleasing. That’s due to all the rocks in the sand. Also wooden groynes, the barriers installed to protect the shore, separate the beach into a series of small sections. However, there’s an excellent footpath which starts at Aberaeron’s attractive little harbour and then proceeds along the front. This provides an excellent way of looking out at the sea while also enjoying the experience of passing so many other people enjoying the sea air, including all the delighted children bouncing along.

After being in Aberaeron – and we were there to meet up with my lovely brother who lives just north of Aberaeron in Aberystwyth – I started getting memories from the past experiences which have provided me with evidence of the huge value and importance of the seaside, especially for town children. Some of these memories come from an experience of joining my friend, the wonderful artist and art teacher Catrin Webster, when she’d arranged for children from Birmingham to come to the West Wales coast to spend some days by the sea. Notably, I remember seeing one of the girls in the group throwing open her arms in absolute delight when she caught her first sight of the sea. Another actually ran into the sea in her clothes in her eager pleasure at encountering it. By the end of just one day, you knew that a whole new world had opened up for those Birmingham children.

Just bringing back to mind that particular group of Birmingham children hauls back a posse of other memorable details, some from that same trip, more from other similar ventures that I’ve been part of over the years. From the Birmingham trip, I remember one of the girls in the group pointing excitedly out of the train window as we passed a field of sheep and exclaiming, ‘Look! Animals!’ On another venture, a week in North Wales for city children, I remember one of the boys, he was nine or ten years old, being afraid to walk across a grassy field. Of course he’d seen grass before. No, it was the expanse of the field that intimidated him.

What’s new can terrify. What’s new can thrill. But what’s vitally important in these particular times is that all children should be given experience of the natural world with its particular beauties and, maybe, terrors. How can children grow up to see the importance of the environment and why we have to protect and maintain it if they don’t get personal experience of it? It’s vital.

P.S. My top picture shows Aberaeron harbour at low tide; the second is one of the strikingly painted houses we saw yesterday.

Birds were tweeting to me today. After being somewhat sidelined in my last few blogs, it seemed they were finally wanting to take precedence. However, cats got in first, I suppose, because of a visit I had to make to our dentist a few days ago. The dentist’s surgery happens to be just round the corner from the flat where we used to live in Pimlico although when we first started going there, it was down in Victoria. Its current location proves richly stirring of memory each time I have to visit (and I’m currently in the middle of a string of sessions). This is because the street where the surgery is now located was where the lady lived that gave us our first cat. We called her – the cat not the lady – Hannah-Jane. She was very much beloved and she became the first in the much-honoured line of cats that have been ours. (more…)

A day or two ago, I was wondering what theme to choose for the blog  this week when my mind turned to the unlikely possibility of boxes. Perhaps this was prompted in my mind by a story in the Guardian the other day about a young man who, unable to afford the airfare to get back to the UK from somewhere far afield, as I recall it was Australia, decided to get himself sent as cargo. So he commissioned his friends to make him a life-size crate, then equipped it with a pillow, a bottle of water, a book and some food. His verdict on his experience of the journey was that he didn’t recommend it.

The young man’s box reminded me of that wonderful colonial-era story of the young Englishman killed by a tiger when on duty in India. His family in England asked that his body be sent home for burial. So when a very large parcel eventually arrived, the family assumed it was the young man’s body. When they opened the parcel, however, they instead found the body of a tiger. Dismayed, they sent a sorrowful message pointing out that what they wanted was the body of their son. Back from India came the reply: ‘Tiger in box. Sahib in tiger.’ (more…)