This is the story of my Slavery Quilt which I have linked through to the Quilters Hollow website. 

Just after the Tsunami in December 2003 we flew to Acapulco for a cruise through the Panama Canal.  One of the major stops for me was at the tomb of St. Peter Claver in Cartagena in Columbia.  He was the saint of the slaves and is the patron saint of all the Americas, both north and south.  Seeing his tomb, and the room in which he died, which is left exactly as it was 400 years ago, was wonderful.  I was alone in the room for at least eight minutes, even though the church and rooms were busy with people, and I videoed his room.  You could feel the thrumming of sanctity in the room and the veil was so thin; I felt he would appear any minute to me.  St. Peter Claver was a Spanish priest who came to

 He begged in the streets for money so that he could buy them food, lemons, tobacco and brandy to comfort them when they arrived in the terrible holds of the slave ships. After they had gone through the slave market he used to visit them, riding on his donkey into the Columbian interior.  A truly astonishing man, he was laughed at by the people of Cartagena, but on the day he died they ran through the streets shouting ‘The Saint has died, the Saint has died.’

 We also went to Barbados to  a sugar plantation.  The house was beautiful, all Georgian simplicity taken from England to the islands, with lovely dark wood furniture and deeply patterned carpets.  I was enjoying myself hugely when the beautiful Barbadian guide, with her very long platted dreadlocks and coffee coloured skin, asked if we would like to see the ‘Accounts’.  How dull, I thought, who wants to see accounts?  I wandered over to the wall where pages of A4 sheets were pinned up, and saw lists—Daniel, aged 5, no value;  Tom, aged 22, value 22 guineas and so on.  Sheet after sheet of lists of people.  Suddenly it hit me—they were selling people.

Of course I knew that was what slavery was, in my head, but not in my heart.  The reality of it was so terrible I sat down and burst into tears, literally sobbing in a very non-English sort of way indeed!  The lovely guide came over with a huge box of tissues and sat down beside me.  She smiled and said nothing, except murmuring ‘Its ok now’. She told me later that people have two reactions—mine, and the other of walking past.  You either see it or not, and its not down to you really.  It‘s whether it is your time to face the horror of slavery.

So I decided to make a quilt about this.  This quilt is in American Civil War fabrics, in traditional patterns, and is based on the Underground Railroad quilt idea from Eleanor Burns.  I have also put the story of the codes (apparently apocryphal so historians say) on the back of this quilt as well.  As you can see the front fabric is quite greyed down and dull, suitable for war time and slavery, especially with the brown and burgundy borders.  The backing however I picked deliberately to contrast completely with the front, to symbolise freedom over slavery in this year 2007, the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in England.

It represents freedom, and Africa.

We are all in chains in this life, through addiction, habit, ways of thinking, cycles of guilt and blame, prejudice and bigotry. 

May we be led to freedom  Sue Oxley—24th April 2007. 

The Reunion

When I was a child we lived in West London.  London is a funny place for tribalism - for example my mother would never go to South London, ‘Aghghgh’ she cried on the day in 1967 I had to go to Croydon, my only foray into the depths of the bandlands, ‘South London!  Are you mad?  Its terrible down there, they have spears and bows and arrows.’

My father came from East London, in Bethnal Green, and we really only went there at Christmas.  We would get the underground to Liverpool Street, play on the strange machine that took pennies up and over and into a charity box, get a number 6 bus and get off at Peabody Buildings where my grandparents and many of my uncles, aunts and cousins lived.

My mother would be very nervous, a new tribal area is clearly very worrying, and we always had to be scrubbed within an inch of our lives, wear new clothes, keep clean and ‘Susan, just shut up and don’t keep asking questions when we get there.’ 

Our Bethnal Green relatives were lovely, they were so funny, and besides making us laugh gave us presents and sweets and tried to get us to relax through the whole new clothes and cleanliness thing.  They had beautiful flats, all fitted carpets and soft furniture and bigger televisions than the 9″ one my grandfather got for the Coronation.  But it was always difficult, not so much with my dad - even though he was quite a lot older or younger than his groups of siblings - but with my mother.  Dad clearly loved his mother, she was the only person I ever remember him hugging, and talked a lot to his father, and laughed with his brothers.  Mum loved the brothers, but was quite a lot older than the sisters-in-law and was never comfortable around children.  She was a man’s woman.  She sat, stiff and awkward, and ‘made conversation’.  Poor old mum.

So we never really had a lot to do with the Parkers at all and after dad’s funeral never really saw them again.

Twenty years or so later I thought I might do a bit of genealogy and decided that as there were more Parkers in the East End than you can shake a stick at, I would do mum’s family, but came to a grinding halt very soon, the family stories and legends being mainly, shall we kindly say, embroidered, and not helpful for finding information.

However, on sending for a marriage certificate for one of my ancestors on my father’s side, I noticed there was a strange name - Belbeck - and more research led me to find that it was a very rare name and I was off and running with the Parkers’ genealogy.

I phoned Uncle Buster, one of my father’s brothers, and had a good long chat.  He told me lots of things about the family and I wrote them down (tip to genealogists - talk to the living ones before going to the dead records - it would have saved me lots of time.)

Uncle Buster and Auntie Mary, with a couple of their friends, came to stay with us in Somerset. It was great to spend lots of time together, and the laughing and chatting and easiness in their company was lovely.  (My sister Wendy and I went to Buster’s 80th birthday and even though I got lost in Essex the party made up for it big time!)

Then Uncle Mick died and  Wendy and I went to the funeral.  The Parkers were very welcoming, all much the same as the last time we had seen them twenty odd years before,  and happy to see us, if a little surprised I think, but we had a smashing time getting in touch again, even though it would have been even better if Uncle Mick had been there.  He was the closest to my dad of all the brothers and we did see more of his family than any of the others - they used to come out to Watford sometimes and our cousins Hazel and Kim would stay sometimes in the summer.  I missed seeing Mick a lot.  Richard and I agreed that our dads were probably still sitting fishing on the banks of the Thames, seeing as both their ashes were scattered on the river.

I  missed the train on the way home, but it was worth it.  You can see, with reference to the last reunion post, that it is the travelling for me that is always the problem.-

I ignored Mum’s old warnings about keeping quiet in East London, and talked all the time at Mick’s wake, mainly about genealogy, the Parkers, Wrens and Belbecks.  My cousin Jackie picked up the baton and managed, over the next couple of years, to take our family way, way back, to 1505 and East Meon, in Sussex, to the Bulbecks who were yeoman farmers.  Funnily enough my father had always said ‘my family were yeomen’ - I had no idea what he was talking about - it was a family legend that was true!!

So we had the Reunion.  It was so good, I can’t tell you.  We turned up in my cousin Jackie’s house in Harlow and there were loads of people there, lots of whom resembled my dad and my children Luke and Claire - which was amazing and lovely.  I kept wanting to pat people, especially my cousin Dawn’s daughter who is so like Claire when she turns her head. 

At the funeral for my Uncle Mick, I had made good friends with my cousin Richard and his wife Barbara (he is Mick’s son) and they were among the first people I saw, so I immediately felt OK and at home.  I introduced Cath and Claire, my daughters, to everyone - they had never met the Parker clan before - and off they went, I didn’t see them again most of the afternoon!  My sister was somewhere chatting to people and I spent much of my time talking to the uncles, who had reconciled their differences at another funeral - for my father’s sister Vi - and it was lovely that most everyone was there, without too much sadness at past family troubles.

In the corner was a trampoline for the kids - wish we had had one in Peabody Buildings - and a small marquee with toys laid out for the kids.  Jackie and Dawn had thought of everything.  There was loads of fabulous food, especially cakes which put my diet back by weeks.  The sun shone, the drink and tea flowed, everyone chatted, Uncle Ted got tipsy and sang, the aunts danced, the children played, the teenagers made friends.

The family tree was up on a door in the house and everyone got a folder with the family alive now and the family tree in it.  The amount of work that Jackie and Dawn had carried out was amazing, I couldn’t believe it, and was glad that Jackie was about to go off for a good rest on her holidays.  We all wrote down our email addresses and Christine and her family came to see me the next week in Somerset before they went on their holiday to Centre Parcs.

It was a perfect day.  After we left Richard and Barbara took us back to London and we passed through the places they had lived as children and the places where they had got together as teenagers.  He asked her out three times before she agreed ‘because I had nothing to do that night, so I thought I might as well’ she said and laughed up at him,  and they have been together ever since - some people are lovely enough to never get sick of each other - and have lived in Hounslow for most of that time (which I wish I had known when I lived alone in Burnham in Buckinghamshire in the late 90s - I would have gone around for a chat and played with the grandchildren!)

The best bit of the reunion was at the end, funnily enough.  We were about to go when Uncle Charlie got up and started talking to me a bit more about the old days.  He then put his arms around me and gave me a big hug.  Now do you remember that my father never hugged anyone, especially me?  Well Uncle Charlie looks like and feels like my dad in many ways, and I hugged him back, wishing all the time I had just once hugged my dad like this.  We Parkers are very sensitive people in many ways,  and I think Uncle Charlie picked this up because he became quite emotional as he let me go.

‘Typical’, my daughter said as we drove off in the car, ‘You had to make your uncle cry, didn’t you’, and smiled at me in a lovely way.  We all had such a good time, even though I was blamed by my lot for ‘keeping the Parkers from us for so long.’   Claire said ‘It was so strange to be in a group of people who looked like me and Luke.’  Family, what can you do?  I am so glad I started off as Susan Parker, and one day will go back to it.

Fred, of course, ate all the cake.  His friends said  the only thing wrong with it was ‘that there wasn’t any more’, which was lovely.  So now I have one left for the golfing nonogenerian (do you think that’s right?) and one left for Christmas.  I have hidden both of them.

Another poem.  I wrote this a while ago, but feel that since the British Army is moving out of Northern Ireland at midnight tonight, and there’s a sentence none of us ever thought we’d hear, I would put this on the blog.  Its actually a song, but I will spare you the singing bit!  Peace in the Middle East - in our time - what’d you think?  I am hopeful - if the Catholic and Protestant bigots of Northern Ireland can do it, I can’t see why the Jews and Arabs can’t walk the same road.   And on those lines -

Avalon to Wells

By
Sue Oxley

The road from Avalon to Wells is built on Abbey stone
They hacked it out and cut it down and covered it with tar
And pictures of Our Lady
And the saints in all their glory
Are just hidden underneath the wheels of cars.

The road from here to Babylon is built on lies and dust
And young men die in foolishness for martyrdom and fame
The hatred pulses and survives
 As bombs and guns destroy more lives
While dreams of Paradise are held to blame.

From Berlin to Jerusalem it’s built on blood and pain
We turned our eyes from Ravensbruck, then gave them others’ land.
For 60 years the dispossessed
have been angry with the foolishness
Nothing blooms with guns not ploughshares in your hands.

From anywhere to the Holy Land, the road is not this way,
For It takes some kind of God inspired love to make a peace
And Jew and Arab need to hold their hands open, to overflow
Not blood but brotherhood, to make war cease. 

Yesterday I went to the funeral of my friend Joe’s father Jack, whom I didn’t know personally but who was a stalwart of St. Mary’s in his prime.  Joe said the eulogy and held it together really well and it was a lovely speech indeed - full of respect for his father mixed with much love.

I then went to Morrisons and bought the stuff to make the three fruit cakes.  I got home by five and set to the cake making.  By the way, what is it with egg sandwiches (I ate one at the funeral being the connection - however the other sandwiches were lovely!) in the West of England always having to have cheese mixed in?  It used to be the same in Plymouth at Tamarside School where they made lovely carrot cake, but terrible egg sandwiches.  I was given the carrot cake recipe when I left the school and will put it on the blog next time.  It is truly excellent. 

If you follow the recipe for the rich fruit cake, do make sure that you let the boiled fruit cool down.  I mixed it in a bit too hot, hmm, but the cakes turned out all right, despite the slight but worrying bubbling effect during the mixing!  (The recipe x 4 will make three cakes for a three tier wedding cake.)

Anyway, out come the cakes from the oven at 10 pm, and Fred put on his ‘I am really seven and desperate for a piece of cake’ face, which he knows I can’t resist.  So this morning I cut up one of the cakes and he took a slice each for his friends on the fishing trip.  (I do hope he didn’t want it for bait.)

Thank you dear sad geaky for suggesting that it is the alcohol that helps with the earache - Fred, of course, knew this all along.  ‘Of course it is, of course it is,’ he marched around shouting out, ‘I knew that.’  He did not take kindly to being asked why he didn’t just pour vodka in his ear then.  ‘Who is this sad geaky?’ he said quickly changing the subject, ‘And why is he writing to you?’

I wouldn’t tell him, even though I do know!

Now Fred tells me that this is the most marvellous remedy for earache and he found it on some obscure site on the web.  He had earache, (he is often an earache himself of course), and tried it out and it worked.

Ok, this what you do, but I will not be held responsible for anything going wrong!  On your own head be it!  You put a tiny bit of Listerine mouthwash on a cotton bud and put it in your ear.  I know, sounds unlikely, but however he did stop moaning about his earache almost instantaneously, so maybe it works.  It worked for him and it worked for me because he then started moaning about something different entirely! 

I know its only July, but as I am about to make 3 rich fruit cakes to my Christmas Cake recipe, I thought I might let you have it now.  You can ‘feed’ it with whiskey until Christmas, which will ensure that it becomes mature and well worth the eating.  This is how I first wrote the recipe up on the 7th October 2004.

‘Ever since Agnes Goodwin refused to give me her great Christmas cake recipe, I have been looking for one, experimenting and trying out various types.  In the GH magazine they had one and I tried it out.  It was v. moist and fruity but lacked depth.

I then looked in their cookery book and adapted the one in there and the one in the magazine.  It is the best very. rich fruit cake recipe in the world, extremely dark and moist.  [If you like a spongy, crumbly Christmas cake, this is not for you!]

Base

8 oz butter

8 oz dark brown sugar

8 oz plain flour

4 beaten eggs

This is for a 7 inch square, 8 inch round cake, to go in a deep tin lined with greased greaseproof paper and brown paper on the outside, tied with string.  I also grease the tin before putting in the greaseproof paper, better safe than sorry.

Fruit

Make up 2 pounds mainly in sultanas, currants and raisins, but also add cherries, dates, figs, candied peel, etc., leaving out what you hate and adding more of what you like.  It is however important that the sultanas, currants and raisins form the majority of the fruit.

Spices

1 teaspoon each of nutmeg, cinnamon and ground cloves

Nuts

I chop 3 ounces of pecans (nicer than walnuts with no bitterness but the same crunch) and added 3 ounces of ground almonds and 1 ounce of pine nuts.

Liquid

4 fluid ounces of brandy

2 fluid ounces of Guiness (for colour)

2 oranges, where the peeled zest is put in with the fruit and the juice added to the liquid.  You could use one grapefruit and one orange instead.

Method

1.  Boil up all the fruit with all the liquid and leave to cool for an hour.  If the oranges do not make a lot of juice, or if the juice is not well up in the pan, about half way up the fruit,  then add more either orange juice or brandy.  Make sure you leave adding the fruit until it is lukewarm.

2.  Beat up the sugar and butter and add eggs a bit at a time.  It will curdle, but you can stop the worst of it by beating hard and adding some flour - just a big pinch with eggs each time.  I always use the food processor now, instead of a mixer, and find that if you leave it beating the curdling disappears.  The truly best way is to cream the butter and sugar with a mixer, put this mix into the processor and then add the eggs, but it is a bit of a faff, and probably only worth it with a sponge.

3.  Make sure the flour is sifted 3 times with the spices.

4.  Add flour and spices, fruit and nuts to the mixture and mix really, really well.

5.  Pour into tin, put in the pre-heated oven and test after 3 hours.’

You need to cook this on a middle shelf at 130 degrees C., if a fan oven, probably slightly hotter for a non-fan.  To test, put a skewer into the middle of the cake and if it comes out clean, without moist cake mix, the cake is done.  It is difficult to get such a rich cake to give a clean skewer but you can see the difference between an undercooked mix and some crumbs and a bit of fruit.  Also the cake will draw away a bit from the tin when it is cooked and it will feel firm to the touch.  It really needs 3 and a half hours, but do test as ovens vary, mine is nearly always done in 3 hours.  Leave in the tin to cool overnight, then turn out.  Very carefully take off the outside greaseproof paper, but leave the bottom on until you start to feed it, about a month later, it keeps it moist.

Wrap the cake completely in greaseproof paper, as if you are making a parcel, and then in foil, ditto, and put into a cool, dark cupboard, or better yet a large cake container and forget it.

To feed the cake, turn it over and make holes in the base with a skewer, then drip in some whisky through the holes, about a tablespoon, wrap again and leave it.

I would usually make this cake in October, feed twice before Christmas, marzipan in the first week in December, and ice a week later.

Am off now to get the ingredients and to get them cooked.  I have promised to make a cake for someone’s friends’ 90th birthday, with a golfing theme.  One other will go to Thelma for Christmas as she is (hopefully!) going to finish the Gospel cover for me when I have finally done the embroidery (only about another 3 hours to go).  The other will be for us for Christmas hooray!!

After yesterday’s mammoth blog writing episode I thought I might put some of my poems on the blog page because, as with all poets, I love them and want them to run around in the world.  This is the one that runs the most and the one my friends also love.

 I want to be a Rock Star

I want to be a rock star,
All leather and screaming vocals and wild curly hair,
Even though I now look like my mother
Just before she went in the home. 

I want to climb and see the sunrise turn Everest lotus pink,
Even though my knees can’t make it up stairs
And I have to lie down after a trip to the library.

 I want to find the One

That lives in that place across a crowded room,
Even though I don’t believe in soul mates
And haven’t had an enchanted evening since 1972.

  As I am

So you will be

All you have to do is wait

Before I begin the saga of the weekend in London you will see that it is now possible to make comments on this blog - please do and I won’t feel as if I am shouting into outer space. 

Sometimes life gives you a bit of time that is totally right.  It doesn’t happen often I must admit, but when it does the whole space/time continuum seems to be surrounded with sparkly light and things just go perfectly well.

Such was the London Weekend.

The hotel was fabulous - the Chesterfield in Mayfair - and TripAdvisor are not joking about this being such a wonderful place.  The staff were brilliant and it was as if we were in a country house in the middle of London.  I kept expecting someone to come along and welcome us down to dinner in a very Jeeves and Wooster sort of way.

The room was not large but had everything you could possibly need and the whole place was wonderfully aged, even down to the wallpaper in the lift, yes you heard right in the lifet, a very beautiful pattern indeed that I would like to put into a quilt.

The journey to Paddington - fantastic, apart from the obligatory yelling baby.  Babies in trains are a bit like Italians at Lourdes, I think they are there to let you know you’re not in Heaven yet.  (I’m sorry Italian pilgrims, but you do push and shove and talk and never queue and ignore everyone else.  Look,  just because the Pope is in Rome does not mean that you own the Church, especially as the Pope is unlikely to every be Italian again, hmmm, sorry about reminding you about that as well.) 

Let’s move on rather hurriedly.  My youngest daughter turned up right on time  and was impressed by

a.   The hotel and room

b.   My new clothes (and not very big weight loss)

also very lovely. 

We had Afternoon Tea, ohhh so fabulous.  A four tier cake stand covered in sandwiches, scones, jam and cream, and cakes.  I am ashamed to say that we ate most of it in a very greedy way, and three weeks of intense dieting went very quickly down the drain.  We sat in the conservatory for this wonderful feast at a huge table with proper tablecloths and napkins and the very kind and sweet waiter kept pouring cups of tea.  Total bliss.  I wish they would let me have their scone recipe, I forgot to ask being so overwhelmed with cake and cream.  If you are reading this dear Chesterfield people my email is on the site!

Then we caught a taxi to the Adelphi to see Joseph and the Amazing etc. etc.  You really must see it, dear reader, it is like being a child again and seeing everything on the stage in such glittering colour for the first time.  We were overwhelmed with it all, the singing was wonderful, the audience ready to go at the first note, and even the ice cream in the interval delicious.  Now, I did tell you that this was a magical and sparkly weekend, please do not complain at the lack of drama.

My eldest daughter turned up a perfect five minutes before the start of the performance, so there was no need to worry about her arriving in the dark and falling out of the Upper Circle - yes we were high in all possible ways.

The girls loved Lee Meade, of course, but I loved the Pharaoh, being a sucker for rock and roll and all that ridiculous posturing even at my advanced age. 

The next day we had a slow and leasurely breakfast of the most exquisite food - fruit salad followed by Scottish Eggs Benedict, say those words in capital letters.  If you ever stay at this hotel, please do try this for breakfast, you will not regret it.  The rest of the morning was spent in primping for the party and we sallied forth looking totally fashionable and polished and curled.  Everything went beautifully, the train was fine, the taxi was there, the party was interesting, entertaining and great fun with such care and lots and lots of food.

Yes I know there is much food in this blog, I am sorry but I like it.

That evening we were driven back to the hotel by my lovely cousin Richard, who is such a dear man and very funny, and Barbara his wife, who is also smashing.  You see this was a family reunion party and there were people there I hadn’t seen for ages.  I shall give the party its own blog entry, which it truly deserves, later in the week.

We had a drink before going to bed and sleeping marvellously.

(I can tell that some of you are starting to realise that although this is all going wonderfully well, these is going to be a sting in the tail and you are right.)

The Sunday involved more fabulous breakfast food, shopping for a dress for my eldest daughter who found the perfect dress in the first shop and the first rail of dresses she looked at, and then going to look for the dodos in the Natural History Museum and Japanese fabric in the V&A, all of which we found, as well as a great exhibit and interactive thingamejig in the NHM about the Antarctic, which made me want to go there right away.

I saw my youngest daughter off at Kings Cross with much waving, my eldest having left earlier before the museum trip.  No dramas, no arguments, no shouting, no nothing except love and happiness between us all.  Beautiful.

And then it all fell apart.  Big time.

I caught a taxi from Kings Cross to Paddington on a Sunday, a distance of 1.5 miles max which took 40 minutes stuck in a traffic jam and cost me £23.50.  The driver was surly and thought it was funny - it should have been a warning for the terrible time to come.

Paddington Station was heaving and overflowing - signal problems at Slough - no trains - Welsh people hearing that the train to Swansea was cancelled began not to sing but to wail very loudly for a long time, really, - two hours of cancelled trains - no seats to be had in the station at all and those occupied by children guarded by belligerent mad women who insisted that the needs of their five year old to sit down on a seat were more important than that of old disabled women with sticks.

I gave up and caught another ridiculously long and expensive taxi ride to Waterloo Station for a train to Yeovil - what is it with Waterloo Station and yelling teenagers, running men, drunks, whores in practically no clothes? - and waited a good hour for a dirty, slow train with one trolley that stopped at Salisbury.

Finally got home at midnight, having set out for Paddington at four that afternoon.  I found out the next day that First Great Western give out travel vouchers for cancelled trains and not actual money, there’s a surprise!

However, the wonderful good outweighed the terrible bad by at least ten to one.

Breakfast Comments

Yesterday was interesting, in rather a Chinese use of the word.  We started chatting at breakfast as usual and one of the guests mentioned that he had a jade skull, which does not mean that his own was made of jade obviously, but one he had brought.  It was found in China, I think, and is said to be 8,000 years old.  I had to see it, of course.

He had left it in the car overnight, even though it had taken all his money to buy, because he wasn’t sure if I would like it in the house - that I think is very special spiritual consideration indeed, and something I was glad for once I had seen it.

 I asked him again at the end of breakfast if we could see it.

He had it wrapped very well in its own rucksack, then a green zipped bag, then cloth. 

Once he unwrapped it and put it on the table, three of us were instantly shocked, maybe horrified too.  I didn’t like it at all, it was a dark greeny/brown with unhuman features, even though it was the size and shape of a human skull, with jade teeth also.  Its forehead sloped immediately backwards from its enormous eye sockets and it had strange jutting cheekbones and small rounds of jade under the nose sockets.  He began to turn it over and really the underneath was even more terrible than the skull, for some reason.  I was pushed out of the conservatory and into the study with the shock of it, came back again, but once he turned it over again, couldn’t stay in the room.

I wouldn’t touch it for love nor money.  He said he had drunk water from the skull and I realised that I had seen in my minds eye warm blood being poured from it and immediately felt a pain in my stomach.  I was so glad to see him take it back to his car that I opened all the windows and doors in the conservatory to let out the whateveritwas that accompanied it.

I told the owner that I didn’t think it was either good or bad but just very powerful, and I still think that is true.  However, I do think that bad things were done with it, within a culture very different from any today.  Now I have written this down I feel better, even though I can smell the faint emanations from it in the air, no it is gone again now.  Apparently he has eleven others which he keeps in his home, blowed if I would, though he does say that this one is the most ‘energetically powerful’.  Hmmm, not surprised.

Holiday

I am off to London in a minute, hooray, for a few days with my daughters in a lovely hotel.  Shall tell you all about it when I get back.

Comments

No one ever writes comments on my blog and I don’t know why - is there a pathway missing?  If you are reading this, please write a comment in some way or another so that I can work out if it works.  Does it mean that no-one reads this blog?  Does anyone read other people’s blogs at all or is it only mine that isn’t read.  Ahhhh paranoia arrives.

The Novel

Once again it has been a while since I wrote here, mainly because I have been writing The Novel, or one of them anyway.  I promised myself to write 1000 words a day, and so far have been taken away to write 5 hours, or even 6 hours a day.

Writing it made me think of sculpture - you go back to it the next day, change and carve off stuff from the day before and then begin to add, or take away rather, more.  Hmm this metaphor is not working at all!  OK shape more, that’s better.  It starts to become its own creation after a while and when you go back into it, its much easier to see what it is becoming.

I do think I have packed in too much for the first chapter, but the synopsis and summary are finished and when I am happy with the revised first chapter I shall send it off and start on the next one.  Once all my planned books are out slushing around I shall feel so much happier with it all and can go back to cutting up little bits of fabric and sewing them together again!

Slavery Quilt

It came back from the long-armer and is lovely.  I am more please with it than any other quilt I have made, mainly I think because it has a history and a purpose for being created in that particular way.  When I get back from London I shall put a picture on the website.

Its been a while since I wrote in the blog - I don’t think you have to write every day, though I have yet to find the book ‘Rules of Blog Writing’ which must exist somewhere to help me with What To Do. 

Jackie came round this afternoon, an old friend I haven’t seen for a while, and it was lovely to sit in the conservatory and chat - she bought me a lovely little box of red chocolate hearts which we munched.  We talked about ideas people, who are very good for starting things off, but not so good for carrying on once things are established.

I am afraid I am one of these people, rushing round with ideas and thoughts but hopeless at the nitty gritty.  I get very easily bored and want to move on to the next thing.  Poor Fred, he is always hearing ‘I had a thought … why don’t we blah de blah’ and so on.  Fred would just like some peace and stability and a not a whirlwind of ambitions, new ideas, things to do Today Today, etc. etc.  However, he has come to realise that if there is a project to concentrate on, I am less likely to want to move on.  This is to be encouraged.  |

We have some German people staying for a few days, four from the West and two from the East.  The East Germans were very interesting, they went to school in the sixties and grew up in the Communist State and were in their twenties when the wall went down.  I asked them if it was better now and they were undecided on this (the language barrier was a bit of a problemas the only German I know is the word for squirrel, and I learned that this morning!)  but they managed to let me know that the one thing it allowed them to do was to travel.  Finally I realised that in saying that ’we have no home anymore’, they meant that the  place they had grown up in was gone and would never come back. 

I suppose this is true for all of us, but not in such a complete and terrible way.  We can go back to our home town and although  once you have left it is not the same in that you can never ‘live’ there again in the same way, that web of ideas you grew up in, your Home in the deepest sense, is still there   But for them the whole structure, philosophy, ethos, belief system, solidarity of ideas and struggle against a common enemy went literally overnight.  The House of Cards in falling left them in empty space. 

They shrugged ‘But yes, we can travel now’ and this seemed to be a sad and small recompense.  You do not need to agree in any way with that political structure to see that the loss of it all could be so keenly felt.

Tomorrow I will write about the miracle of the lace, but now I have to go and watch Joseph - the Musical as we are going to see it later in the summer.