Community tapestry - Mount Felix Military hospital

When I was a girl and I lived in Walton, by the river, there was a derelict site at the end of the road called Mount Felix, where there had been a Big House - which had been used as a military hospital during "the War". In fact, the hospital had housed so many injured New Zealanders that it had had to be extended into "huts" along a row which became called New Zealand Avenue and which is now a main road in Walton-on-Thames. (The adults meant the war which they couldn't remember - although Grannie and Grandad could - the Great War.) The building was Italianate in style with a square tower which was quite a landmark, but eventually it was razed to the ground and we used the stony ground, with its patches of concrete (probably originally the driveway) to play football, and we also used to slide down amongst the trees on the muddy bank to the pond. There was plenty of room for a few groups of children to play there.

This is the "land" side of Mount Felix, with its tower.

This is the river side with its pond (now a marina).

One of the other groups of children came from Ridgeway (a road on the bridge side of Mount Felix), and I met one of them at a meeting of the stitchers who are making the community tapestry to mark the centenary of World War 1. We are now women firmly into middle age and yet she shared my childhood!

 I have to say that it's not really a tapestry - it's an embroidery. I came together with three other women who have done some embroidery but not much - to form a group, and now we call ourselves "Stitched Up" because we never knew each other before this project. But now we meet every two weeks.

The history is probably not that interesting unless you are a local or otherwise interested in World War 1, but if you are please find a link to the website

We have just finished our first panel! Here it is!






Our panel is number 11 (or 14) and it shows trench warfare in Gallipoli.
I did a lot of flies and stray bullets. We had a lot of dull sand and
sandbags to do, but we tried to make it as bright as we could.

 

The art of the garden in the 19th and 20th Century: Royal Academy

A great show - made you think about what you want a garden to look like and why - for artists, it's somewhere that provokes them into art; somewhere where they can be happy. Some of the pictures of artists at work in their gardens shows artists completely absorbed and happy, knowing that they are inspired by beauty and making the most of it.

I liked, particularly, a group of paintings by Emil Nolde. His use of colour was so bold and skilful. I have just looked him up on Wikipedia because I had never heard of him. He was a German expressionist, a famous one. He painted portraits and landscapes and always used bright colours, sometimes conveying a sense of unease.

Science programmes on the radio

One really good ding-dong on the radio was on Start the Week, Nature and Nurture. You feel sorry for the geneticist because he is attacked quite vociferously by the guy whose thesis is that genes are not very important, but he keeps his cool and tries to explain his case. I think the fact is that most of us just don't understand genetics.

Find this programme here. Plus a lovely picture of new babies. Aaaaaaaahhhhhh, babies!!

The other programme was about scientific papers and the practice of rating scientists by the number of papers they have published, with more points scored for the big -name journals, and the number of times their work has been cited. The big-name journals, meanwhile, want to attract a large readership so tend towards publishing papers whose findings are surprising or on a hot topic, so they skew the numbers game towards the kinds of research papers they favour. It's oddly circular and something that you would have thought scientists would try as a body to avoid as their method of rating scientists is so unscientific. Saving Science from the Scientists

We do hear from one hiring academic a bit of common sense about how he tries to assess the scientists who apply to his department.

My old boss

Well, who should I see in the pages of Waitrose's freebie but my old boss Andy! and his partner Zoe. Andy was a fab boss, informative, generous and informal, but he did change his mind a lot (it drove Janine up the wall, she ended up writing down and asking him to sign everything he had told her to do), and he became unpredictable as the business became more difficult. I got out soon after that - before it all ended. I have all good memories of him which is pretty amazing when someone employs you in a private business for five years. So now Andy has a new company managing data (Zoe loves databases) and also does this pork business in the Kingston market at the weekends - good for the spirit of enterprise that moves them both!

 

I remember saying to Andy that I had never got any holiday pay, and he said I should get holiday pay - "Look at your contract!" he said. I said I hadn't got a contract. True. I never had a contract and as far as I knew I didn't have any rights. From time to time he did give me holiday pay - but not every year. I also remember him covering my holiday leave and him phoning up and asking me how to do something or other (run an exam online I think) and trying to give detailed instructions while I was washing up in a field in Devon. Haha, those were the days.
He gave us some excellent Christmas dinners,  also took us all to the races - we went to Epsom and it was absolutely fabulous - we had champagne - and I lost all my bets. I can't pick a horse.

Working on canal boats in World War II

We watched a TV programme about canal boats, which featured Sonia Rolt. She said she came to the canal boats during the war, when women were recruited to work on the boats because of the shortage of crews. Many of the men had been called up. I thought this was interesting, and might have material for a good story, so I did some light research and bought a couple of autobiographical accounts of the working experiences of these women.

One of these is a good read. "Idle Women" by Susan Wolfitt is cheerful, breezy and descriptive. She has a talent for story-telling, and was clearly a good diary keeper when she was at work, so she could raid her diaries for descriptions and even the times her crew got up and the time they "let go" (canal boatmen don't us the same expressions as sailors), what they ate and how many locks they went through, the times they tied up and the times they went to bed in the tiny cabins, and that sort of detail makes for a full account of a lifestyle. She was an unusual woman because she had children at boarding school, which makes me think that she didn't need to work, and the work she took on was very hard and the conditions primitive, for example, how did they manage for a toilet? "Bucket and chuck it". All the boaters used this method and the funny thing is, in the summer the canal was full of swimmers, and when it's very hot and she's bored, Susan goes swimming in the cut herself, trying not to remember what the canal contains! She also saw it through in the winter when the canal was iced up but they had to keep breaking the ice around the boats, and even tried to make headway by smashing up the ice with poles (shafts) as they went, but the cold was too intense and the lock gates were frozen shut. Her hands got chapped and the skin split. This happened to all of the trainees and they all needed to stick at the work to acquire the necessary muscle and stamina to keep working for a full day - a very long day in the summer. Most of them didn't. The ones who did, therefore, are interesting.

The other book, "Troubled Waters" is by Margaret Cornish, and it tells the same story from a slightly different angle, because Margaret had a different trainer and came to the boats after being a teacher. Perhaps because she has had less security in her life, Margaret always seems slightly angry, and is sometimes downright bitter. She starts by being angry that the canal ("the cut) is full of tourists and the days of the working boats is gone; that people don't have the manners to keep out of her private home (she lives on a narrowboat); she is angry that the job she did in the war didn't provide her with a pension, which she would have got if she joined up, but she was a pacifist. But it seems that the war work did provide her with friends, and particularly her trainer Daphne, who is the heroine, if you like, of her story.


Daphne French. Most of the pics taken of the trainees were
for publicity and were posed. This one shows Daphne steering
the motor, with a windlass in front of her for the locks, and
she is towing a loaded barge, or butty, and at the stern of it
there is another woman steering. Three people was an ideal
crew as the work was much harder with two.

You realise, from both accounts, that Kit and Daphne, the trainers, had a hell of a job. They had to live with their trainees in cramped circumstances, and they had to have the skill to get out of all the difficulties that an inexperienced crew could get them into, and all the time give instruction so that the crew did not make so many awful errors. They also did not choose the recruits; some of them were very weak and unsuitable (oddly enough, the younger ones didn't like the work in spite of the freedom), and one of them was quite unhinged and downright dangerous.

We have been on four canal holidays, short trips, and it is a lovely holiday. We have been on the Kennet and Avon and the Oxford Canal, and we have been to Birmingham on the canal. We have never been on the Grand Union, and I felt envious that we have never used the canal for the purpose it was intended. To tie up in Limehouse, wait for your number to be called, be loaded (by crane) with aluminium bars, cover them over with tarps, and set off for Birmingham or Coventry to come back with coal  - that was a trip with a purpose.

Many of the men who had had boats before WWII saw that their days were over pretty much as soon as the war ended, and became lorry drivers; same kind of work in a way.

Article in the Daily Mail

Surrey walk 2

Not much to say about last weekend's walk, which started at some posh houses in Oxshott, and via a muddy path eventually went to Esher Common, where there was a lovely sandy bank with a view over a stretch of heath.   We had to cross the A3 (a main road to London) via a footbridge, which I had never done before. The Black pond at Esher was worth seeing.. The walk was five miles and we were never out of earshot of the A3!

 

Celandines: a nice surprise

As I have reported before, I am reading "Weeds" by Richard Mabey, a book which changes one's view of weeds, and turns one into an enthusiast. So now, as I take my constitutional around Virginia Water, I am saddened by the lack of weeds and thrilled to spot a few celandines in a glade - but on closer inspection they turn out to be a bijou type of daffodil.

Richard Mabey is particularly fond of celandines.

But the best lawn weed, the flower that says, decisively, here is the spring and the new sun, is the lesser celandine. It's rather fussy in our garden, and only really flourishes in a damp corner under the cherry-plums which we mow no more than three or four times a year. But for six or so weeks from the middle of February it makes that dappled glade shine. It's the only word. Celandine's petals, like buttercups, seem able to reflect the light, as if they were made of yellow metal, or oil, or most persuasively, molten butter...

Wordsworth noticed its precocious flowering, and wondered why such an exquisite bloom had not been more feted. For those of us who share Wordsworth's view, it is mysterious why celandine is hounded from most lawns, and why a turf of pure velvet green is preferred to a multi-coloured quilt. 

So, on my last trip to Virginia Water, I was accompanied by my friend Jane, and went raving on about my boring garden and its lack of celandines.


 So imagine my delight when Jane dropped off half a dozen celandine plants outside my door! What a great surprise. She has just told me that she dug them up from her sister's Hampshire garden.

I planted them in 2 locations in my garden and I hope they "take".

Jane takes her camera to VW because she has one with all sorts of clever settings, and is trying to find out what it can do, and even goes to classes to learn about Getting the Most from your Digital Camera. We both tried to take pictures of the buds on the birch trees. - not an easy subject.



I hope hers came out better than mine (camera phone again).
 

Jane found a lot of honey bees being very active in the heather - and told me that our native honey bee is actually quite small and black, but it suffered a terrible disease in Victorian times, so other bees which were more wasp-like in appearance were brought in from abroad, but she prefers, I think, to see quite dark ones. Jane keeps three hives of bees and even made her own - thing to keep bees in - made out of straw?

Concert for mental health

Husband is good at singing and belongs to a rather good chamber choir. I go along to the concerts to be educated, as the choir master turns around to the audience and tells us all about the composers and the songs. He has many years knowledge and experience and used to be a professional singer, Cambridge Chorister etc.

Yesterday the concert was in Dorking and was in aid of a voluntary mental health initiative. (There are two psychotherapists in the choir). We also had some readings by the group who are starting the initiative - really great people. These three poems are new to me and are rather lovely, especially the Walcott.

The Healing by D.H. Lawrence

I am not a mechanism; an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds deep to the soul, to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
Long difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake
Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
In the family of things. 

Love After Love

By Derek Walcott 

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/love-after-love-by-derek-walcott#ixzz42ofgjRl5

Allotment part 5, the AGM and Jim Buttress

The allotments are owned by the Land Charity, and the idea is that the poor of the parish will be able to grow produce - or at least benefit from the produce of the allotments. We have nine acres in the middle of Weybridge, and if the Charity decided to sell the land they would have a huge lump of capital to invest and give the proceeds to the charitable causes. So we are in danger because:

the allotmenteers love growing fruit and veg, but we are, on average, quite old, and on average, quite well off. You know the price of carrots? Well, it costs more to grow them, on the whole. We are not the people for whom the Land Charity exists.

The trustees of the Land Charity visited last June and gave a list of recommendations to the Committee, along the lines of:

1, We must grow mainly vegetables and not just fruit trees.
2. If you have a shed it must be small and in good repair.
3 You are not supposed to have a greenhouse, but if you have one it must be small and in good repair.
4. If your blackberries are growing in an unsightly clump they will be cut down.
5. You must get rid of your rubbish.
6-8 I can't remember.

In short: housekeeping. But the allotmenteers were quite cross about the shed warnings: some of them have been served notice that their dilapidated sheds will be forcibly taken away unless they do something about them.

Eventually, after some discussion, we all understood that we would be crazy to pick a quarrel with the trustees of the Land Charity.

After the meeting we had a guest speaker, who gave prizes to the keepers of the best allotments, and then gave a long talk. This was a great garden personality called Jim Buttress. He is a traditional gardener and erstwhile keeper of the Royal Parks. Now he is a judge for the RHS flower shows, and invented the method of judging, which used to be done by titled gardeners who really knew nothing about growing, and who all followed each other's lead, and which is now entirely transparent and "scientific".

Jim in bowler hat, judging apples.

So he told us about filming the Great Allotment Challenge (a BBC reality show not unlike the Great British Bake-off), and going for the audition at the BBC. He told us he refused to be the Nasty Judge because he likes to encourage everyone to have a go at gardening. He told us what he thought of the production and the people.

He told us about his other big project, in which he helps his friend Tom Hart Dyke.

Tom first became famous when he was held prisoner in Columbia by kidnappers while he was looking for (I seem to remember) orchids. He was a very keen plant-hunter, anyway, and he was held prisoner, with another enthusiast, for years in the jungle with some very dangerous men. He hit upon the idea of a world garden, and he has made been making this, in his garden at Lullingstone Castle, Kent. Jim Buttress told us about his first meeting with Tom and how he thought he was mad, and indeed, Tom first opened his garden when he had nothing to show but weeds.
Guardian news on tom's world garden

This project sounds fascinating and we shall have to go.

He told us about being one of the first promoters for London in Bloom and Britain in Bloom. This is, apparently, our largest voluntary undertaking as a country. Jim has retired from his former position in this organisation but still judges the south-east region.

Jim actually talked for hours and had some great stories to tell.

 Jim interviewing the winner of the Allotment challenge

Coming Up Trumps by Baroness Jean Trumpington

This autobiography has been dictated to someone - it reads exactly like someone having a long, hard chat. So this book is very good company. In one part it gets rather boring as the author talks about old friends she knew in the old days with whom she played tennis, or went to Ascot, or had "such fun". But there are a few anecdotes that did make me smile.

Here is one from Jean's early days as a wife of a fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge:

"One small fly in the ointment was that my early attempts at cooking were a bit hit and miss, and sometimes dropped as well. My first tossed salad was tossed  straight in the dustbin because I made it with a cabbage and not a lettuce."

"My early attempts at entertaining were similarly disastrous. The first thing I did was to invite the porter to tea, confusing the college porter with the college master.... There were a lot of undergraduates around when I issued this invitation and they killed themselves laughing. I had no idea I was doing anything peculiar. To his great credit, the porter came to tea and a jolly nice time we had."

Jean's husband was frustrated at not being made a Professor of History, so he went back to teaching at Eton, and then to be headmaster of the Leys School, where Jean enjoyed being the headmaster's wife.

"Only once did my behaviour really infuriate Barker. It was three weeks before the end of our last term. For seventeen years we had been at The Leys, and for seventeen years, on every Speech Day, it had been by job - my only job - to walk around the edge of the indoor swimming pool, terrified I would fall in, holding the various cups to be presented to the winners of the swimming gala. In this seventeenth year, when I had paraded around the pool for the final time, with the final cup, I jumped in, at the deep end, fully clothed, in my best Speech Day dress. The masters were astonished, the boys beside themselves with delight.  Of course, almost the entire school followed me in, to 'save' me. Barker wouldn't speak to me for three weeks afterwards. I'm not surprised. It was so naughty, But so funny. I had suffered all those years and I just wanted a little bit of fun."

Later Jean is made Mayor of Cambridge and has yet more fun: she wears a large gold chain to every function and is followed everywhere by a mace-bearer, in his own ceremonial robes, with a huge gold mace, so she insists he follow her onto, for example, the dodgems at the fair, and on the fairground horses!


This shows the Mace-bearer wearing his robes and showing his mace to the Queen. He is supposed to use it to defend the Mayor.
 

Here you can see her have fun on HIGNFY

I think I shall give up my job

In a way, I am a better teacher than I have ever been. I am very comfortable in front of a class (unless they are being riotous) and I know my stuff very well. I am pretty good at planning a lesson. I feel that the students trust me.

But there are aspects of the job that I hate. One of them is to do with retention. The teachers are leaned on very hard to make sure that all the students take their exams before they leave. This is sometimes impossible, for example, in the case of bereavements - usually one or two a year have to suddenly return to Germany (etc.) in tears and never return. But sometimes it is simply a matter of making a students prioritise the exam over their job, and this is where bullying comes in. I am not a bully. I do not spend 15 minutes in the corridor with a student pushing her into telling her boss that she cannot do her job on a certain day because she has an exam. Especially when she is clearly scared of letting someone down and promises to come on another occasion for the exam. I would rather try to find another session for the "mop-ups".

Even though my boss does it with a kind look on his face, he is actually a bully, and what's more, I think he knows that I think so, just as I know he thinks I am far too soft.

I also hate the meaningless target-setting and the ILP's. I don't like the fact that to get the funding, all the students have to do an exam that means nothing outside the UK. OK, it's an exam, but it has no kudos. I look at the reading test and I think that some questions are unfair - impossible to teach to. I have a degree in English Language and Literature and I can't answer correctly some of the Level 1 reading test questions. The answers are mysterious to me. That shouldn't happen, but I am afraid the tests are not set as carefully as they should be, or indeed, as they used to be.

I like teaching but it's the other stuff - the endless box ticking - and covering our backs for the inspections - that bother me. Most weeks I am thinking: I can't really be bothered with this any more, and I find it weird that my colleagues love it, and will spend hours trying to decide whether to award one mark for pronunciation or not.

Tim Lott - A Guardian writer - still feels shame that he suffers from depression

This is from a Guardian article which I saved for a while. Tim Lott writes:

I felt shame when I wrote a few weeks ago in these pages about recently being tumbled into a year-long depression and now I feel the shame again, but I will go ahead and write anyway because I feel I have to, until the stigma has been defeated. That day is still a long way off.

I had dinner once with a famous agony aunt who laughed gleefully about all the meds she took for depression. She was utterly uninhibited about it, and I admired her greatly. She urged me not to be ashamed of my disability – for that is what it is – and she was right. But it isn’t easy.

The source of my feelings is mainly, I think, societal. To have troubles in the mind is considered to be in a different category to troubles in the body. It is to be on the spectrum of “crazy” or “weak”. Weakness seems more allowable for women since men have in the past constructed a (ridiculous) stereotype of women being fragile creatures. Nevertheless, such negative stereotyping can, ironically, have fringe benefits, just as childbirth and the oppression women have historically suffered have bonded them in a way that most men have denied themselves. “The sisterhood” is not an empty expression.

 Part of this stigma is thus attached to my being a man – because, in fact, Anna Mansfield’s death runs counter to the overall trend for suicide. Men’s suicide levels have been rising for years. Running above 6,000 a year, they stand an astonishing 4,000 higher than women’s levels, which are dropping.

Paradoxically, one in four women will seek treatment for depression in a year, compared with one in 10 men. But this does not necessarily mean that women are more, or more often, depressed then men – rather that women are dealing with the problem far more successfully.

There are many reasons for this. It is historically hard for a man to admit such “weakness” to himself – in my 20s I spent four years in the grip of a serious depression without visiting a doctor, believing that psychiatric treatment was for weirdos and losers. As a result I was pushed on to a very dangerous path that, thankfully, I never followed through and have never revisited.                       

Quite apart from my typical male reluctance to “seek help”, there were other factors in play. Men not only shun being thought of as weak, they tend to be socially isolated compared to women.

 Intimate conversations between men may be had at the pub occasionally, but the real support, the love, the crying on one another’s shoulder, the support of a large informal network that many women enjoy, is largely absent. We are frightened of showing our weakness not only to each other, but to our children and our wives – many of whom still count “strength” as a prime virtue among their husbands and who may not want the burden of “another child to look after”.

Not all women have these social networks, but they do generally feel able to be more open with other women. My husband doesn't really share his feelings with anyone, but does endless sporting activity which enables him to be distracted from his deeper self - in fact, it seems to be impossible for him to say what he feels  as he tries very hard not to be in touch with his feelings. And some of us take pills that have the same effect. Oh well.

Allotment part 4 - testing the soil

Although we planted some young brassica in the autumn, these have produced only a few small and stunted plants, so I decided to send off a sample of the soil to the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) for testing. This involves collecting earth from 10 places and not from the very top of the soil, and when you have dug your ten holes here and there and put your sample from each in the bag, you have got far too much for a sample. so you shake it all up and divide it by half, and send it off to the RHS with a request for a report on its suitability for growing  veg and a cheque for £25.

In return, they send you a report and some recommendations. It turns out my soil is alkaline! Too alkaline for growing veg (which is what I had suspected). What to do? Apparently I have to add sulphur! So I went to the trading hut at the allotments and I discover they sell sulphate of ammonia and two other kinds of sulphur, so I go to the garden centre to see what is most suitable for my needs. I read the packets. At the allotment the goods are sold in transparent plastic bags without any instructions, so this is why I have to go to the garden centre, not to buy the goods, but to read the packets. I find that I need sulphate of iron. I go back to allotment hut and buy 3 large bags. I go to the internet and find out from the RHS website how to put on the white powder. I take the scales, the yardstick and a small dish and I go to the allotment to start distributing the acidifying powder.

I think I shouldn't overdo it because my soil is sandy and not clay. however, I suspect I am underdoing it. I tell myself I can always apply more, but I can't apply less.

I have plenty of phosphorus in my soil but not much potassium. I have enough magnesium.

I have also instructions to apply Growmore. It turns out that Growmore is also sold in plastic bags in the hut. I am not sure when to apply the Growmore and the Sulphate of potash (I also have to do this) because I am supposed to do the sulphur thing first.. It turns out that growing vegetables turns you into a bit of a chemist. I have never done anything like this before. It's all very interesting.

This is not my first Book Group

I think my first Book Group was in Stamford, which is taking us back to circa 1996, when I was a member of 2 book groups, and eventually I dropped the one I found most peculiar. It was held in the houses of the members in turn and it was OK if your house was a large one - plenty of space to sit, etc, but difficult (and possibly embarrassing) if your house was small. After discussing the book - and possibly before discussing the book - we talked about the children, moving house, career moves (the menfolk were involved in education, medicine, dentistry etc. so there were regular moves) holidays and decorating - all those things. I could never understand who had chosen the book. There was something cloak and dagger about it. Eventually I found a book group where the discussion was mainly about books and we all got on well. Everything was open and easy. We could agree to disagree too. There were 5-8 of us, which is enough to be a group and be fairly friendly with everyone. We even went on a book group jolly - to Howarth.

But we moved up North and I missed the book group and I did feel very lucky when we moved again, to London, because the librarian at my husband's (posh) school formed a book group for the staff and I was allowed to join! Basically, the librarian ran it and I think she decided on the books and the guests. We had Dylan Thomas's daughter at one of the meetings, a Foreign Correspondent at another, when we discussed "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh, and Sophie Kinsella (author) came along to another. We also had the publisher of the Harry Potter series. Yes, we really had some interesting meetings and discussions, because many of the staff were very well-up in the arts, and the wonderful thing was how we rarely went completely off the topic. The staff there were an impressive bunch.

In Weybridge I was invited to join a book group fairly early on, and I left deliberately, when I started to work on my Open University course, saying I didn't have time to read off the course. It was because there was so much boring talk about things like neighbourhood crime and tax law (we had a tax accountant amongst our members). I also didn't like the sort of books we read - I often felt like saying - this is the sort of nonsense my daughter reads. It was quite a friendly book group but when my children stopped going to private schools I really felt I didn't belong.

One of my neighbours wanted to start a book group and my neighbour Amanda got me involved. This was such a good idea, apart from they would only meet on Sunday at 4 p.m. (what a weird time to do anything!!) and the neighbour whose idea it was is a complete loony. All she wants to do is talk about herself. She seems like someone with PTSD. And indeed, she had had a horrible shock. She and her husband used to be extremely rich and live in Mayfair, but somehow they lost all their money. So she talks about the old days all the time and hardly draws breath for anyone else to get a word in. Also, Amanda, who is a friend, never joined! She just got me to join! Anyway, the book group in our close fizzled out in a few months.

So after a long time of looking I went to the one at the Riverside Barn because it seemed to be for anyone who wanted to go, and there would not be the usual difficulty about not being from the right social/economic stratum,  and in a way it's the right kind of book group - picks a range of the right kind of books - but the problem is that the membership is so OLD and the level of discussion can be really SAD. when I am old, will I have such a closed mind?  I can't believe that, out of ten, "How to be Both " got 3. I gave it eight - some people gave it one, and our leader gave it zero.

Our next book is a Kate Atkinson which I am sure to enjoy.

Today I took my mother out. She has Alzheimer's. She has been in a lot of pain with her back, and she has been eating almost nothing, sitting in a chair doing nothing for about three weeks, so her muscles have shrunk. I have been feeding her soup and making her take her pills. She is a tiny old lady in enormous clothes. Anyway, I decided what she should wear, got her up and into the car, took her to an old favourite riverside pub and she ate a decent lunch. Also took her to a little supermarket where she wandered dottily about only wanting to buy cakes and milk. She asked a tall young man how tall he was, and he said he didn't know.

Book Group - How to be Both by Ali Smith

I wrote about this before because I enjoyed it....

Earlier Post on How to Be Both

When the book group Selected it for this month's read I was sure it would be a popular book - but the turnout was poor, which means that few people were interested in discussing it, and those who had turned out were the old people, plus myself and Karen. It was so disappointing that the level of discussion was so  low;  the group voicing a lack of comprehension, moaning about the layout of some of the writing ... "It's rubbish! No punctuation!" and also that I felt it was completely useless to explain to the old people why the book is so good.

 In fact, I did agree that some of the experimental writing didn't work very well, but once Ali Smith got into her stride as the painter Francescho, she voiced what  the paintings meant to her. They meant vitality, unexpectedness, subversion, as well as a personality well-grounded in the skills of his art and politics of his time. Ali Smith looked and saw a sensibility not entirely male, so she makes him a woman/man, a woman passing as a man. The Book Group chorused: what does she mean "How to be Both"? and I answered, "Both a man and a woman, both living and dead". Because both protagonists are gender-bending perfectly happily, and the painter, through the beauty of the images he has left on the walls of art galleries, of the palace in Ferrara, can come back to us, sensed by the antennae of another artist. So Ali Smith conjures him in all his colour, liveliness, sensitivity to living things like birds and horses, understanding of sexuality and sexuality itself! She makes him/her sexy (although dull people like me wonder: "and will she get pregnant after this random encounter?") with usually women but sometimes men. So she makes him live again because that's what happens anytime a sensitive eye looks at his pictures: the artist is understood and lives again.

In the National Gallery - this painting contains many surprising details.