Archive for October, 2009
A nice surprise this week - an email from a friend in Germany, who found the blog in passing, and tracked me down to my work email address. What I like about this is that we met back in 1993, and despite not meeting up much since, emails and letters, off and on, have helped us keep up with each other.
Sometimes the world goes rattling ahead and we expect that nothing will stay the same. But he’s still a teacher, I’m still working with teachers (and aspiring ones), and all of a sudden you realise that quite a few things can stay the same. And it’s rather a nice feeling.
I also heard from a friend working abroad - who is taking the trouble to put up lots of nice pics on his blog of life in Asia. Having another friend living in the same country, it’s great to get more of a sense of what life is like there, with both of them in mind. Sometimes speed of change is good - how much easier is it to keep up with people, even after a gap, when it’s so quick and easy to find out how they are getting on, via emails, blogs and so on?
Today, it was time for a game of ‘oh, you know…X too’? A friend at work was showing pictures of his wedding, and we recognised that their photographer was probably related to someone I know from a completely different context. Admittedly, the longer you stay in Edinburgh, the easier it is to play this game, but it’s still nice when it happens, particularly when you’re also saying goodbyes to other people heading away from Edinburgh.
What also interests me here is that all these connections this week came through men - when it’s still probably assumed that women have the monopoly on keeping address books, remembering birthdays, and generally keeping communication flowing. Maybe these chaps are all in the New (Communicative) Man category.
But still, three cheers for continuity. Britain may be a bit hard pressed at the moment, what with difficult financial circumstances at so many different levels. It’s not the ‘Blitz spirit’. But it’s still welcome.
October 23rd, 2009
Here’s a thing: last weekend we had a food-related party, swapping jams, chutneys and so on. Yesterday I caught up with some newspapers from a few weeks ago, and found an article relating to people living in the country, with ‘any social occasion’ (including meeting at the school gates) resulting in frenzied jam swapping.
The part of the paper this was in has two regular columns - one is a country perspective (written from someone who seems to have started living in the country more recently, and at times is rather bemused by it), another a very townie perspective (particularly that week’s one, where life anywhere other than in London is treated with a certain suspicion).
Nothing new, eh, but given that most of us swapping jams etc live in or near cities, I wondered if that makes us city bumpkins? Perhaps there’s a lot of us in that situation - we may have grown up in smaller places, have come to the city to study or work. Several years on, here we still are, enjoying a lot of the benefits of the larger place but hankering after some of the aspects of smaller places, such as being a bit closer to nature.
Maybe instead those of us who got together are foodies, or environmentalists, or both, responding to this particular economic phase: looking at the recession, natural resources reducing and so on, and having a spot of home production to go with it. Or it may be a stage in life, if trying to feed growing families. (Maybe we can get a group grant from Good Housekeeping, or the Guardian, if we feel particularly self-righteous about it…)
Maybe it’s part of (early?) middle age - enjoying the little things in life, simple pleasures like watching the colour of elderberries as they’re cooking away; doing a task that allows you to slow your brain down a bit. Maybe it’s the belated fun of the pick ‘n mix - swapping things means that I get to try other people’s food that maybe I wouldn’t have thought to make, or to sample something new amid the other familiar items.
For my part, it’s also part of a growing desire to be creative - to make things, have fun doing so, and share a bit of that with others, particularly if they enjoy that too. Yes, I’m doing it in part to avoid too much Christmas present shopping later, but also because I like the process of making things - particularly food-related things.
All of the above. But what matters this weekend is that the apple chutney I made in September is now tasing very good with cheese…
October 11th, 2009
Everyone likes a happy ending - or a happy beginning. It’s been a week of good news for various friends, and even if the enjoyment of that is as an onlooker, it’s still good. Darker mornings, political parties trying oneupmanship in how much they want to make public sector cuts, need for central heating that bit earlier in the evening, we can all do with a bit of cheer at times like this.
Sometimes, in the midst of waiting for various things to happen in other quarters, life takes a slight turn, and I find my own green shoots - small perhaps, not a ‘green shoots of recovery’ moment, but still worth celebrating. Spending time with family, doing new things with friends, trying new recipes…
For all of my struggling with decrease of daylight at this time of year, somewhere along the line I find that this year’s autumn has a bit more of the mellow, less of the mists of the same time last year. Blogging at that point was an escape, a place to rail a bit at life. This year, I restart the blog again…and then find I am doing things again, away from writing, and that there is perhaps a better balance.
A friend of mine is also exploring new directions, like me a little at a time. Neither of us necessarily sought out these things, whether hobbies or new approaches, but we’re finding life in them, and turning to find others encouraging us on. That helps me breathe a bit easier - enjoy what’s in front of me.
Sometimes hope is stronger than we realise. The green shoots may seem thin, but we see them there one day, return to them the next and find them still there. Sometimes they stand out because of the earlier days spent looking at ‘bare ground’, waiting for something to change - but not just because of this.
Much of this experience is tenative, a little fearful still. There is not the big rush of the large celebration, the milestone in life. But it’s still there, still real, a small harvest.
October 8th, 2009