Of human bondage
Originally written and posted 18 months ago, this is a story that simply haunted me at the time and still does. The place remains for sale, the Sword of Damocles still hanging by a thread …. count your blessings well
Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Jul 28
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Who’s that knocking at my door ….
I’m in Europe until mid-August and although I will write some new things I hope you won’t mind me trawling the archives for some posts that you might have missed from much earlier in the life of this blog. I’m starting with a particular favourite of my Two Brained husband and hope you will like it too …. silver linings abound if you let them
… with great love
The world feels particularly alarmed at the moment. The U.S are afeared at what their election will bring given that one candidate is a proven loose cannon and the other a proven liar. Last week a woman who I knew for a short while as a colleague was savagely and barbarically shot, kicked and stabbed to death whilst going about her work as a Member of the British Parliament, serving constituents who had elected her for her talent and energy and goodness and days before that a twisted maniac massacred 49 innocents just being themselves in a Gay nightclub in Orlando. Today my country of birth opted by a slender margin to exit the European Union and exercise it’s right to navigate the world in splendid isolation. All of these things are quite shocking to digest. I need not and will not comment – my opinions are of no interest to those taking the time to read my words but I do have something that I hope might strike a different and more harmonious chord.
I am currently in France having been whisked here by a circuitous route to delay my guessing the destination by HB² (my husband) so that we could spend our wedding anniversary in the place we were married three years ago. Today I am sitting at my table in the place I call home. My world is rosy. I am fortunate. This week along with the delightful, other things have happened in my personal life that could certainly anger me, engender hatred and lead me to feel that the best thing is to curl up in my cave and live my life as a strange old hermit (complete with splendid false beard). But being the cussed optimist that I work at being, I know that I am better placed and better off endeavouring to find value in the way things are trying to effect other lives as decently as I can. Last week, the extremely lovely @Turtleway whose beauteous blog you will find here graced me by beginning to read every post I have ever written. This is either brave or foolhardy but in any case remarkably flattering. She asked me in response to a post I wrote about Oradour sur Glâne in France, which was the object of a genocide in the dying days of WWII how we can avoid hating when we come across atrocities. Which we do almost daily with modern news transfer being as rapid as it is and Social Media rampantly passing on the attrocious and the marvellous in an entirely unfiltered manner. I thought for some days before I replied and then I said this:
‘The first thing I must say is that I understand hatred. But it was my youngest daughter, then aged about 10 years old who asked me to stop using the word ‘hate’ because, she said, we should never actually hate anyone or anything. By definition it is a cankerous emotion. She is now 21 and her views have inevitably become a little less pure but she remains true to the essence of what she said. For my part, I feel that hating and being angry are well and good but that they don’t resolve anything, they do not bring back the dead, they do not comfort the bereaved and they do not heal the wounded. In fact they probably feed the perpetrators. And I refuse to grace wicked, evil people with anything that might make them feel anything other than the odious bile that they have become. So I try instead to count my own good fortune and to understand what I can do to help. I am a highly emotional person by nature and tend to ricochet between highs and lows without warning. My own balance is maintained by seeking out the good in every situation and by attempting to not fuel the fire with a whirlwind of anger but rather to damp it with the dew of decency. Different people use different mechanisms. I must stress that I am not perfect. I feel anger and rage and bitterness and fury and sometimes I let those feelings begin to tarnish my insides. But I try to remain mindful and conscious and to take a beat and if necessary many many beats whilst I get to a mechanism that can quash the negatives and allow the positive energy to release so that I can be of some use. This is not forgiveness, this is not excusing this is simply trying not to become dissolved by fury and outrage but rather to evolve by maintaining a stance of dignity and warmth of spirit.
The world we live in is full of hatred. Today Social Media is positively crackling with rancor and bitterness or exultation and self-congratulation depending on which side you take at the result of the self-proclaimed ‘Brexit’ vote. It turns into yet another reason for people to sling mud. I choose not to. I urge others to join me. I hope one day you will. And to paraphrase John Lennon, the greatest of pacifists, the most gifted of men, diabolically slain so many years ago by a twisted soul, maybe, just maybe one day the world will live as one.’
Here are two little beetles simply working together, spreading their beetle love and working as partners to further beetlekind. This ties in nicely to the photo challenge this week of which here you can find lots and lots of far more admirable examples And yes, using a picture of beetles when referencing a Beatle is entirely deliberate.
PS: The quote comes from Mother Teresa of Calcutta – ‘None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.’
In dulci jubilo
I could have called this post ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’ which, if you are British you will know instantly is an old saying from the North of England that means ‘where there’s sh*t, there’s money’. But given that many of my readers are not British and on account of the much more important fact that I wanted to give you all a bonus at the end for being SO patient with me as I clawed my way back from the arrid desert of a dastardly writer’s block, I have opted for the title above.
The image was taken in April when we were back in our beloved Cantal for a few days and took the opportunity for a longish hike which promised a waterfall.
Alert as ever, my bat-like hearing was teased by a low humming which rose steadily to a gutteral grumble and finally a spluttering roar as rounding a corner on the craggy track we were ambling along, I was confronted by this. A tractor with a tank on the back spraying cow dung on the field. Muck spreading in fact. Actually, I should say that our olfactory glands were alert to the identity of the machine long before we spied him.
I will forgive you for wondering what on earth this has to do with the weekly photo challenge this week titled Jublilant. Even for me, this might seem a stretch. But bear with, do. In France the farmers always look positivily euphoric when they get the opportunity to splash some dung about. They sit in the cabs of their tractors with beatific smiles seemingly wafted to an odorous corner of paradise. I have no explanation for this. Perhaps you can help me out? But I do promise you I have studied the phenomena and it is a truism. The grumpy growers I have seen in England scowling from their cockpit, nose invisibly pegged, mouth set in an inpenetrable line, eyes stony and unyielding are a world away from these merry manure slingers and even though my nose may be wrinkling decorously at the fetid stench they are generating, they always upgrade my mood as they lift a paw casually from the steering wheel, like John Wayne riding one handed across the range, and bestow upon their mildly stunned audience a raptuous and infectious grin.
PS: I promised you a bonus and a bonus you shall have. And an explanation. When I saw the title I closed my eyes and imagined myself for a moment on Christmas Eve, the wireless turned on as I potter through the preparations for the big feast the following day listening to The Choir of Kings College, Cambridge sing carols and hoping this will be one of them.
If you are of my vintage, you will remember that Mike Oldfield produced a thoroughly exhuberent instrumental version. Here are Pans People, dream date of every boy of my age and every girls aspiration joyously dancing on BBC Top of The Pops in 1975.
You might have a favourite, I love both and I particularly love that In Dulci Jublilo means ‘in sweet rejoicing’ which is exactly what I am doing since I purged my clogged creative channel.
A Cup Of Kwofee And Sum Bisquits With A Fellow Blogger…
My pitifully neglected blog needs a kick in the pants so I thought I would start by reblogging this from my dear friend Cameron which demonstrates the actual power of blogging. He and I really did live very near one another for many years, he went to the same school as my two elder daughters but we never met. It took the mother of my eldest daughter’s husband to be (now husband) … stay with me …. to introduce us when Cam was still waiting for a date for surgery. I now count him as a friend. A real and dear friend. And I am so thrilled to be able to stay in touch with him via our respective blogs. I feel his pain and his joy and I cook his ridiculously healthful and delicous meals. I walk his walk and I talk his talk. He is part of my life. And without our teeny weeny corners of WordPress none of it would be possible. Actually my life would be consideraby poorer without my blog and I must thank so many of you for being my virtual friends and family.
Now, over to Cameron on Planet Magnet:
PS: There were no biscuits. Where are the biscuits, Cameron. You promised me biscuits … you speak of them in your title. I feel cheated, to be frank ….
I don’t mind making jokes – but I don’t want to look like one
I’m currently back in France for a few days before heading to the UK for two weeks and I thought it would be a good idea, since I seem unable to find any time at all to write anything new in this busy busy whirl, to re-post some of my old word. So for your entrèe here is the start of my love affair with le Cantal ….
Whether they had one or not, upon thars
These cows are blended cows. Not cows that have been put in a blender – that would be grisly and hopefully illegal. These are half and halfs and the palest are known as jaunes (yellows). The ancient cow of Cantal is the Salers. They were originally black and you still find blacks amongst them. They are celebrated and fêted and look as though they have migrated from Spain to avoid being Matador fodder. The more familiar Salers these days is a ruddy red – deep auburn and hardy. And pronged with splendid Harley Davidson handlebar horns. They are emblematic of their place. Their rich creamy milk goes to make the many cheeses for which the region is renowned – most commonly Salers itself, the ubiquitous Cantal, St Nectaire and Bleu d’Auvergne. Their meat is prized in the region and in Paris too – in fact if you visit the Cinquieme Arrondissment you will find that in addition to being the Latin quarter it is also a veritable hive of restaurants specialising in produce from Cantal including wonderful dishes based on Salers beef and veal. These cows are bovine A-listers in our locale. But some farmers, breed them with the great white Charolais, themselves beef royalty the world over. This breeding produces the yellows. They too are prized – their meat is sublime and the price is good. It is called progress by some, meanwhile the purists frown. I stand neutral. I’m not a farmer, not a native of Cantal and have no right whatsoever to judge. I just love cows. I find them to be rather harmonious creatures. So they seem appropriate sitting in their stunning landscape under a rudely blue sky on December 28th last year as my illustration of Harmony the word named as prompt this week for the Weekly Photo Challenge. I think you will agree that the panarama too is pretty easy on the eye – the grassy Plateau de Limon looking across to the Cèzallier mountains beyond and in between the snail like crater of one of the numerous volcanoes that gave the region it’s personality all those aeons ago.
But wait! There is one thing – if you look at the foreground you will see diggings. Not the minings of moles but mole rat shovellings … these pesky rodents have multiplied alarmingly in Cantal in the very recent past and they have become a tremendous nuisance. The question is can we live harmoniously with these critters or should steps be taken to eradicate them? I’ll leave you to ponder the damage they do to this wholly agricultural territory versus their right to peaceful occupation.
PS: The title is from The Sneetches by Dr Seuss, a story of creatures identical in every way to one another except for the stars on the bellies of the entitled ones … the moral is elementary – after all what hope have we of saving the planet if we can’t co-exist with our own without dwelling on what they have or have not upon thars!
The Magnet Interviews – A Half Baked Idea…
Source: The Magnet Interviews – A Half Baked Idea…
The admirable and lovely Cameron more widely known as The World’s Biggest Fridge Magnet has paid me a flattering compliment by interviewing me for his new series The Magnet Interviews. Here is the result … the questions are quite brilliant, the answers the best I can muster. Do please visit The World’s Biggest Fridge Magnet if you never have – it started as the story of a man facing bariatric sleeve surgery, follows his journey both to the point of morbid obesity and to where he is now. A strong advocate of educating the youngest to understand healthy choices, he appears regularly on radio and TV and is preparing to walk for the charity HENRY and to raise awareness of obesity issues and solutions.
Today we have a return to the questions so please allow me to bring you the Magnet Interview questions as answered by my dear darling friend Fiona of Osyth fame whilst being the creator of the wonderful Half Baked In Paradise. Fiona was one of the first people to follow me on my blog and has been a staunch supporter ever since. She is an inspiration and (if she will let me say this) my mentor. She always manages to take time to come up with ideas and is honest with her opinions so I though because of that, I thought would put her to the test with the Magnet Interviews and so here is what she had to say…..
The Magnet Interviews – Osyth
Are you usually late, early or right on time?
Early – even to my wedding. My naval officer father’s fault. But on that logic train how do you explain my mother’s latent lateness when she was the daughter of the admiral of the fleet ….
What are three positive things your friends would say about you?
I’m beautiful, talented and brilliant obviously 😉
If you were a shape, what shape would you be?
A CIRCLE – no hard edges, no complications. I wish.
If you were an animal, which one would best describe you?
A piglet. Preferably a truffle trained piglet.
Why did you want to become a blogger?
I thought it would force some discipline. I was epically wrong – I’m just as discursive as ever.
What are your top three personal interests?
Reading – reading anything. People – I love people watching (weird but true). Being in nature – walking, climbing, hiking, rowing, running – outside is better for me.
What do you do for a full time job?
I write drivel.
What type of car do you drive?
In France a funky yellow SEAT called Franck and in the US a chic cream and black Mini Cooper S that needs a name – suggestions?
Where did you go on your last holiday?
I’m permanently on holiday since quitting my corporate job but the last formal one was Russia.
When did you last go on holiday?
If it’s Russia it’s May 2014 if its really truthful the vacation started the day after my birthday in 2013.
What would you do if you were the one survivor in a plane crash
Panic. Loudly!
If you woke up and had 2,000 unread emails and could only answer 300 of them how would you choose which ones to answer?
Delete the lot – they’ll write back (That’s the theory and my brother actually does it). In my case it would be accompanied by vocal hysteria.
What’s your favorite film?
It’s a Wonderful Life.
What would your Desert Island Disc choices be?
1. Gorecki – Symphony No 3 ‘sorrowful songs’
2. Arvo Part – Für Alina
3. Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
4. She’s Electric – Oasis
5. Sit Down Next to Me – James
6. Suddenly I see _ K T Tunstall …
3-6 are the songs for my daughters to be played at my funeral
7. Suzanne – Leonard Cohen (or preferably everything on ‘Songs Of’) …
8. How can I tell you – Cat Stevens
9. It aint you babe – Bob Dylan
10. Elgar – ‘Nimrod’
But SO much more. This is a torture … And the inevitable addition is that my girls do demand ‘Don’t stop me now’ by Queen to be played at my funeral…
Batman or Spiderman
Robin!
What did you have for breakfast?
Bob’s Red Mill Muesli and proper English Tea – thank the Lord for Ocean State who sell Typhoo and Bob’s Red Mill at less than frightening prices!
Describe the color yellow to somebody who’s blind.
Warm. Not hot. That warmth you feel stealing up on you from behind, the sudden and intense warmth on your face when you lift it to the sun. Happy.
If you were asked to unload a 747 full of Jelly Beans, what would you do?
I never shirk a task so I’d do it and bathe in the beans.
What’s your favorite animated film?
Anything Disney EVER did, but overall. The favourite EVER? Right now – Pocohontas because I see animals and birds that appeared in the film. It’ll change. I never stop loving Disney but my favoured one is ever fluid.
What was the inspiration for your blog/pen name?
I was originally just Osyth (it’s actually one of my given names and I hated it as a child, embrace it now) but I needed a change to reflect the altering slant of the blog. I’m half-baked so it is too. And Paradise? It’s there if you reach out wherever in the world you are.
What happens when you get scared half to death twice…?
You jump out of your skin twice.
Why aren’t blueberries blue?
They are if you mix them with anything liquid – they bleed blue into muffin mix for example. Or porridge.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the fear of long words, but why is that word it so long?
Because it’s showing off. Like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch which is a place in Wales for those who aren’t in that particularly British mode . Egos the size of a small country if you ask me. Or an indecisiveness disorder.
What was the last lie you told?
I don’t lie. Not since the conviction 😉
What is the best compliment you have ever received?
‘ Just the right combination of Englishness and Chutzpah’ … my mentor over 30 years ago, who also invented the strap line ‘Just Do It’ Which I do and frequently curse him for the advice but the times it is right are worth the fall every time.
Would you prefer to be ugly and live to be 100 or attractive and live for 30 years?
Ugly to 100 – Bugger off all shallow fools I’m in for the long haul. and if you don’t like what you see go swivel.
Do you have any relatives in jail?
Nope.
What single piece of food could you never give up?
Cheese every time and if I have to be specific Vacherin de Mont d’Or but I could eulogise for hours on the relative merits of several hundred contenders.
Who do you most admire in life?
The mother-in-law I never knew. My husband’s mother was abused and lived as the slave of a working class man. My husband was over 3 months premature in 1952 the fifth of her children. His elder sister was only 9 months older than him, therefore. When he was two years old she ran away with all the children to Kent (North West to South East) where she hid for eighteen months before returning to their home town. She lived in a council house thereafter with her children – and as each one left home she fostered more. She never ever took benefits nor handouts. She never asked for anything. She must have wanted for much. That is inspirational. My husband once remarked that ‘She had nothing. Asked for nothing.’ Take note modern world – we still have women like Ada, men like her too. Help them to help themselves. Because the chances are far higher that they want to than that they don’t. It is easy to turn your back but far harder to understand that you yourself, whoever you are, are only ever 2 steps from the gutter. I admire those that are within a flake of skin of the gutter and help themselves. That is the size of it. My one regret is that I will never meet Ada but when I go to her city I always visit the crematorium and leave flowers for her.
Do you spread butter on before peanut butter?
It depends. If I have butter winking seductively at me I find it hard to resist with anything… but not jelly (that’s jello my U.S friends) or ice-cream.
Would you prefer to date someone older or younger than yourself?
Older as it turns out though I did go through a reverse spiral of young and younger some years ago …. I might need to write that one myself 😉
Now that I am a high profile celebrity I need to make sure I am suitably incognito when venturing outdoors
I will sit on this style and continue to smile
I live in an area where the standard quip is that we have three cows to every human. Most recognisable and the symbol of the Cantal are the Salers with their Harley Davidson horns and rich reddish brown coats. In fact the original Salers were black and you do occasionally see a raven coated throwback still. They are prized and revered and considered to be lucky. And indeed they are fortunate since you won’t find them going to slaughter in a hurry.
But this beauty is actually a Ferrondaise. There used to be far more of them but for reasons that they have so far failed to divulge to me (remember I speak like a Spanish cow not a French one) they dwindled. Now the great and good of the Auvergne are encouraging farmers to restock them. In our village we have an enchanting farmer who sings lilting songs to his Ferrondaise as he walks them between fields. The fact that he is missing several teeth does not make him self-conscious and he is happy to stop and pass the lisping time of day and share pearls of wisdom as his cattle casually amble up the main highway through the village. For my part, I don’t sing well though it doesn’t stop me from chirping, warbling and in particularly uninhibited moments positively yodelling which perhaps accounts for the look of disgust in this disgruntled beauty’s rolling eyes as we stopped to snap her. I offer her to you in response to the Daily Press prompt Eye Spy. Here are all the other fine offerings laid out for you to enjoy
PS: The title is Edward Lear. My mother-in-law lived in his house in Seymour St. London W1 for several years and he became ever more a part of the family tapestry as a result. His whimsy nonsense, delight in bending and stretching words to his pleasure and seemingly simple illustrations never fail to cheer me. This one goes thus:
There was an Old Man who said, ‘How
Shall I flee from that horrible cow?
I will sit on this stile,
And continue to smile,
Which may soften the heart of that cow.’
I did not sit on a style, nor did I try to soften her heart – I think she was a lost cause that afternoon though I don’t for a moment think she is horrible. But then I am not an Old Man ….
Vendre dit vendredi: Part Two – Chasing down a daydream
I used to joke that I had kissed a lot of frogs before I found my Prince. The same principle seems to apply to our search for a maison principale in France.
