Tag Archives: friends

September 2, 2020 · 4:39 pm

That’s Life

Family-friendly recipes and snippets of family life from an Irish kitchen. Irish Recipes, Chef Recipes, Baking Recipes, Dessert Recipes, Dessert Food, Rachel Allen, Apple Desserts, Apple Recipes, Cooking Forever

I lost my blog, and had no idea how to get it back until dear Linda at coloradofarmlife.com told me how to find it, after I told her how frustrated and helpless I was. However, I was still writing, and this is the result of my labours:

Dearest Alice,
I know what you mean about time getting away from you… it’s got away from me…
What an interesting letter, thank you… loved the stuff about the trees drinking the water…. have been fascinated by the life in them ever since I read how they communicate with each other through their roots, and there is a mother tree who is leader of the pack !!!
Like all animals… It broke my heart to read that when a grandmother elephant was returned to a zoo recently where her daughter and granddaughter were, after a twelve year parting, she immediately entwined trunks and showed how she remembered them… we break up animal families without a second thought… years ago I read about a sheep farmer who milked her sheep for feta cheese, and she told how when she banged on the bucket to milk them, they all came to her in their family groups of three or four generations, great grandmothers and all their offspring…

Wild swimming, we did it without thinking when we were young didn’t we – swam in rivers and lakes without ever thinking it was wild swimming! – lovely for you to find a place where you can… do you feel you’re settling into your new home?

Huntington’s chorea – ugh – a terrible illness… we also knew a family with it, and all the children in this generation decided not to have children…

We’ve been having strange times here… got back from the dentist in Thames the other day to find a snowstorm up here, and drifts of it lying around for ages it was so cold. We’ve never had snow in this temperate region with a podocarp – almost tropical forest… The night before last we were awakened by a stiff earthquake, the rattling of everything in the house woke us, and then we felt the tremors… we went back to sleep and slept through the after-shocks… then last night another earthquake…
Strange times … first snow, then earthquakes, maybe a plague of frogs next – I hope they’re the environmentally threatened Archey’s that we protect here !!!

D- is busy putting an elegant coved ceiling in the sitting room, it feels so snug and light and airy… plus a lovely wrought iron chandelier a friend gave us when she didn’t want it… I painted it cream and it looks great…
And now a small gang of quail have arrived for a snack of bird seed… they’re eating us out of house and home, but D- adores them…

I was thinking about spring coming soon, and an old memory came back… when we were at Guildford you gave me a book of funny rhymes, and I still remember :
In the springtime come the breezes.
With the breezes come the squeezes,
With the squeezes come the maybe’s
With the maybe’s come the babies !!!

It was my twenty first birthday, and you also gave me a beautiful silk scarf of pink and white squares which I loved. Very useful when you had the hood down in your MGA.

Just off to make a fudge icing for an apple cake I’ve made to take to some very old friends. There isn’t a swish restaurant in Thames where they live and we wanted to take them out to lunch. So I’m taking everything to their lovely house, oyster bisque and rolls, cheeses and pates, and the cake and champagne… I’ve known them since we were neighbours back in 1975….

Andrew was lovely, and I’m so glad you have such happy memories to comfort you…
Much love, dear friend,

To a grandson

Darling, when you rang yesterday, you explained / apologised for not ringing me last week.
I Really want you to know that there is no onus on you to ring me regularly. I always simply love it, and feel smiling and happy when we ring off, because it is a gift…
But I do not expect it, and know too that you Are busy so I always appreciate it when you think of me, but would never start wondering why you hadn’t – if you didn’t!
D- always says it’s a ‘bloody miracle’ when you ring me, (meaning that so few young people remember oldies ) he thinks you’re so wonderful to think of me, and usually makes me a tray of tea when you ring, so I can sit and enjoy talking to you and sip my lapsang souchong at the same time…
I think you’re wonderful too, to include me in your busy days, so thank you, thank you for making the time, and know that it’s a bonus for me, not something expected.
You have always been so special to me from the moment you were born and I held you while V-  had a shower – and that too I felt was such an unexpected joy and a gift…. and when you were fretful in the days after you were born because your head had been so squished out of shape and it must have been so painful, I used to hold you to my chest
and sing Tallis’s Canon over and over so that the sound would reverberate and throb and beat against your heart to try to comfort you.
In e.e.cumming’s words, I have always held you in my heart.
So much love from your Grannie XXXXXXX

To my son,

Hi darling, thought you’d be interested in this comment about Sophia’s video from Jilly, I had sent it to her. She wrote:

I must comment on your amazing step-grand daughter’s video. Thank you for sending it, and what a great story it is. She readily admits her family had to make huge adjustments, and I do know just what that means. It is a lovely uplifting story and I felt she is a very strong and gracious young woman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ahGz2nhOps

I’ve watched it again, and it’s amazing just what a person with tetraplegia can do and what she is making of her life.

Such courage and persistence.

From Daughter:

Got these lovely beeswax candles in Wanaka at lavendar garden and put in Great Grannie’s candlesticks today…

Me: Oh, how gorgeous… they always smell divine…. you can get more at the church shop on the corner of the Ellerlie off ramp. I hate the ordinary candles, which burn paraffin, and I discovered, because we burn candles quite a lot, that they actually leave grime on the windows… funnily enough D- bought me a pack of beeswax candles while I was at the dentist on Thursday, to cheer me up…. we’ve even explored the internet to buy beeswax, and make our own, but it’s just as expensive as buying them….

I’ve often thought I’d like to tell the family that I don’t need any birthday or Christmas presents – just beeswax candles !!!

Daughter:

Found these on Trademe. $12 for the pair which is cheaper than church shop. It’s a shop in Hawkes Bay that makes their own…

Me: Thank you darling.

To another grandchild….

Lovely to see you darling… to continue our conversation – I knew how you felt about BLM when it started… I really hadn’t realised how subtle  much racism is (and simply bad-mannered) until you explained, and I could really sympathise with the movement in its beginnings. But I now feel differently. It was the last straw for me when the German director of the treasured British Museum said ‘we’ (obviously forgetting Germany’s painful past) had to face up to the painful facts of British colonial history and ‘cancelled’ Sir Hans Sloane.

He was the person born in 1660 who funded the British Museum, the British Library, the Natural History Museum, Chelsea Physic Garden, gave medical attention to the poor every morning for free, and gave his salary to the Foundling Hospital, as well as being a scientist and naturalist who was a benefactor to these fields of English endeavour as well.

His wife owned slaves in the colonies, so Sir Hans, a kind, good man and generous philanthropist, has been symbolically tarred and feathered, and his statue moved out of sight. I wonder what these fanatics thought people living in those times should have done. If Sir Hans had freed his wife’s slaves, how would they have survived in the society in which they had been enslaved. No-one would have employed them when they had their own free labour – their slaves… so these freed slaves would have faced a life of starvation or deprivation and outlawry, having no place in society.

I read this comment below, in a newspaper  story dealing with all the destruction of treasured heroes of the American past from Washington, to Lincoln and U.S. Grant, whose crime was to be given a slave by his father in law and to free him within a year, at some cost to himself since he was  on the bare bones of existence at the time.

“This describes a lot of us. Tread lightly! My tolerance is running out. I never cared what colour you were until you started blaming me for your problems. I never cared about your political affiliation until you started to condemn me for mine. I never cared where you were from in this great Republic until you began condemning people based on where they were born and the history that makes them who they are. I have never cared if you were well off or poor because I’ve been both.

“Until you started calling me names for working hard and bettering myself, I’ve never cared if your beliefs are different than mine. Until you said I am not entitled to my beliefs, now I care. I’ve given all the tolerance I have to give. This is no longer my problem. It’s your problem. You can still fix it. It’s not too late, but it soon will be.  I’m a very patient person at times. But I’m about out of patience. There are literally millions of people just like me. We have had enough.”

I know where he’s coming from! We’re never going to make a better world for all those who feel deprived or victims, until we stop shaming and blaming everyone for the colour of their skin. Many white people don’t feel privileged at all! Many of them are descended from ancestors who lived lives very nearly as hard as slaves, working crippling hours in mines, being impressed into the navy, making lace in badly lit attics and going blind to mention only a few instances… history is full of injustices.

So is the present, with slavery still being practised /endured all over the Middle East and Africa… and China too, in all but name. Those are the people who are suffering today. BLM being victims of the past doesn’t solve the present. Patience, tolerance, kindness and generosity are the things that may. And until we all try them we will never know.

I’m still learning all the new terms to keep myself up to date! –  have mastered woke, and now there’s cis-gender, transgender, AFAB – that’s a funny one – Assigned Female At Birth – don’t think anyone bothered to do that with me – they just supposed that on the evidence I was a girl!

Looking forward to seeing you when lockdown is over again…

Dearest Dick and Bella,
What a lovely, lovely occasion…. it was lovely to see you both, and so sweet of you both to make it such a beautiful occasion, flowers, champagne and fun and good conversation… Douglas and I loved every minute, thank you so much XXX
And I loved hearing about Lily, what a precious person she sounds … you brought up special people…Lily’s beauty is something really
rare…
It was such a celebratory event…you are so good at them, thank you !!
And then, to get home and savour more generosity, all your beautiful gifts… The beautiful posy is sitting in a big pink paisley patterned
mug, with the word love on it… not quite as unique as your mother’s gorgeous green vase, but it works!
Oh Bella, what a collection of treats in your beautiful hamper – so spoily and undeserved – you are amazing… I slowly unwrapped each treat, feeling more and more amazed at your imagination as well as your generosity… the eggs – what a precious way of presenting them… it made me realise just how exquisite eggs are… the ginger puddings – echoes of childhood when we Always had a pudding – steamed ginger, apple pie, treacle tart, or just stewed apple or plums or rhubarb with rice pudding or custard… I shall savour them, as well as all the other beautiful handmade goodies… the extra special chocolate, and the lovely scented soap…and that darling delicious little bell… so delicate and beautiful… thank you so much for all those thoughtful imaginative treats… The lemons look lovely in an antique French provincial pottery bowl I recognised in the op shop, and which they sold disdainfully ( ‘tatty old pottery thing’ ) for five dollars… and  I can’t wait for the house to be back in order after all D-‘s efforts when we had already planned to celebrate with lighting some beeswax candles, and now we have them, thanks to you !
I feel really moved and quite overwhelmed with your generosity dear friend… thank you thank you… I do hope you’ll feel like the journey here when the weather improves, so we can try to spoil you XXX

Now, the apple fudge cake – I still have the 1987 cutting from the Herald in my scrapbook… Elizabeth Pedersen, a nice Dutchwoman I think she was… The recipe calls for three fresh Grannie Smith type apples, but as I mentioned I do it the lazy way now with a tin of apple, chopped small…she says vegetable oil, so I tend to use grape oil… and I usually use slightly less milk in the fudge topping so it’s a bit dryer and more manageable as a cake…and I use SR flour instead of plain plus baking soda ( a lazy cook !)
12 oz SR flour
tsp salt (I just use a generous pinch)
10 ozs vegetable oil
13 oz caster sugar
3 eggs
3 medium sliced apples ( or one tin )
few drops of vanilla essence – (I use nearer a teaspoon)
Oven gas 4 or 175 C
Cream oil with sugar till light and smooth. Beat in the eggs one by one, vanilla, then the flour in three batches, and then stir in apples. Bake for one to one and a half hours. When it’s cool, spread the topping…six generous ozs brown sugar
60 ml milk
125 ml unsalted butter
vanilla (I use half a teaspoon)

Melt, and stir until smooth, boil for two minutes, then cool, stirring occasionally. Stir the topping over ice until it begins to stiffen, then spread over
the cake, letting it drip down the sides…
As you can see – so easy.

So that’s some writing in the life of… letters…and now to catch up on all my blog housekeeping, and with all the other old friends around the world linked by our network of golden threads called WordPress.

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August 25, 2018 · 9:47 am

Crimes, Dogs and Bugs

Valerie35

Shirley took this picture as we said goodby to them

Another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs

The atmosphere in the Supreme Court shocked me. The Chief Justice seemed to be in a towering rage all the time, and there was a sense of apprehension in the court. Outside the glass doors at the end of the room a man was hovering. The Chief Justice caught sight of him, and loudly instructed a court official to tell him to take his hat off or go away. And that was the sort of irrational domineering energy with which the whole judicial procedure was conducted.

The police and the crown prosecutor sat with a relaxed and satisfied air, confident that the findings would go their way. The Thomas family and supporters including the farmers and countrymen on the Re-Trial Committee sat and hated them. And I hated the lawyers who were not partisan, but who all knew each other, fenced with each other in court, and joked and chatted outside!

At the end the Crown prosecutor read out his summing up from the second trial with all the lies, distortions and half truths in it which had helped to destroy Arthur Thomas’s credibility and convict him. So all through that night in his hotel room, Patrick (not the dilatory lawyers) went through it fact by fact, line by line and re-butted it all with the truth, the real facts and the new evidence which he’d published in the newspapers over the past eighteen months, and which negated the crown prosecutor’s summing up. As he wrote each page, the counsel’s secretary copied and typed it in her room.

The four other judges (not the Chief Justice) were impressed by this prodigious achievement when Arthur’s counsel read it out in court, but it didn’t change their opinion one little bit. When their findings were published months later they had accepted that Patrick had proved his theory about the cartridge cases, but said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that there were bullets and cartridge cases in existence which could prove the Crown case. This extraordinary logic meant that Arthur Thomas remained in prison.

The rest of the evidence, they glossed over… things like a gold watch wrongly attributed to Arthur in the first trial and covered in blood and mucus. It didn’t figure in the second trial because between trials, the real owner had contacted them to say it was his watch which he’d taken into the jeweller to have it cleaned after pig killing. Patrick learned of this when an anonymous caller rang and said, “Find Fisher”. He had no idea who Fisher was, but sleuthed and finally tracked down the owner of the watch who now lived several hundred miles away. When he went to see him, he asked Fisher if he still had the watch and they found it in his children’s toy box. The helpful mysterious caller must have been an honest policeman.

When Arthur’s supporters including Patrick and Jim Sprott, his father, and the Chairman of the retrial Committee took the case to the Privy Council in London, the same bias operated against them… the Crown Law Office had phrased the appeal to ask for an opinion. When everyone had spent huge amounts of money getting to London, the Privy Council threw it out saying they only dealt in rulings, not opinions.

We were all devastated, and on his return from London Patrick was instructed by his firm to stop his work on the Thomas case – it was the end of the road. But he refused saying that a thing that was wrong didn’t stop being wrong just because they hadn’t won yet. He continued to write stories and place them to keep the case in the public’s mind, and by doing so put his career on the line. We weren’t sure where to go next, but we knew we had to keep going wherever it took us.

He wrote a book called Trial by Ambush and sent a copy to every member of Parliament. It disappeared into a pit of silence, and I suspect that none of them bothered to read it.

While we waited for the results of the court of appeal in Wellington, and Sir Richard Wilde’s judgement, we had enjoyed our first Christmas in our new home, with Patrick’s eldest daughter, husband and grandson joining us, and also a large black and white bull which ambled through the garden and stuck his head in our open bedroom window to greet us on Christmas morning.

With the coming of New Year Bill and Shirley now arrived to spend two days with us. Bill had to report to the police every day, so he had done this first thing in the morning before they left for us and he did so late the next day when they arrived to stay with friends the following evening. This meant, they thought, that they would have the two days with us, when the police would have no idea where they were, and the SIS would be unable to tail them.

This was optimistic. Months later, when Patrick was discussing the trial with one of the Star’s reporters, the reporter said to him, “Of course – the Sutch’s stayed with you at New Year, didn’t they?”… which told us two things – one, that the reporter was an SIS spy, and two, that the SIS must have bugged Bill’s car, and knew exactly where he was – with us.

My letters to Shirley and hers to me would take ten days to reach us and had obviously been steamed open.  Our letters were perfectly innocent but it felt unnerving to know that we were under that level of surveillance. The two days Bill and Shirley spent with us was full of fun and laughter. The shock of the spy arrest had changed Bill, a proud and rather arrogant man – now he had become very gentle, and almost humble… Shirley was her effervescent articulate self, and their conversation was both provocative and thoughtful…

We had a lot in common – including Quakerism, for though neither of them had a belief in God, they had many Quaker friends, and I had been an enthusiastic Quaker attender for years. ( Quakers are committed to non-violence, and a belief in the light in every man)

Our new friends both loved the children – my son, who we jokingly called the mad gardener, who towed his collection of beloved potted plants on his trolley to different parts of the garden which he thought they’d enjoy, before leaving for school every day. Bill gave him advice on how to fix a lawn mower engine to this trolley to make it faster!

My daughter gave them a spirited exhibition of the Maori poi dance, and began a friendship with Shirley sharing their love of art that lasted until she died. Shirley later gave her the wonderful advice that when she went to University she should choose subjects she loved not subjects which would be useful.

We waved goodbye to our guests, who drove off to stay with a friend called John Male who was working with Quakers and other peace lovers to create the New Zealand Peace Foundation of which he became founding president… an unlikely friend, the SIS might have thought for a spy…

Both children were learning the piano and they also wanted to learn the flute and clarinet respectively, and played duets together. We walked our dogs up the lane every day, which now included Patrick’s elegant afghan, and two Cavalier King Charles spaniels, both rescued, and both adored. It was about this time that as we were walking the dogs, my daughter said to me, “You know, most mothers think their geese will grow up to become swans, but you think we’re swans already!”

It was true! And I loved trying to create an idyllic country life for them, going strawberry picking and blackberry hunting, making jam and bread, trying my hand at bottling fruit, crocheting counterpanes for our beds.

We always had a holiday project, once it was applique, another time learning to write in copper plate handwriting, which was a disaster for my son, who’s deeply disturbed teacher at the village school, hated any sort of talent, and mocked him until he gave it up. Another holiday I borrowed a bike, and we explored the country roads on our bikes. We painted, and both children evolved painting what they called Happy Cards, some of which went to Oi, while others ended up in Arthur Thomas’s cell in Paremoremo Maximum Security Prison, two and a half hour’s drive away, when we all visited him.

The children also created Happy Boxes, in which valued objects from shells to cards, photos, letters and other treasures were stored. These began as painted shoe boxes, but as time went by, both children used Christmas money to buy themselves a beautiful antique box each for their collections.

When they’d done their homework and their music practise, I used to read aloud to everyone every night – one husband, two children, and three dogs in the audience – starting with ‘The Little Prince,’ laughing over Toad in ‘The Wind in the Willows,’ agonising over the fate of Boxer being carted off in ‘Animal Farm’, crying our eyes out when Dora died in ‘David Copperfield’, while the death of Gyp, her beloved Cavalier King  Charles  spaniel, delivered the coup de grace to us all. We ended this ritual with Doris Lessing’s ‘Shikasta’ when my son was sixteen.

These were good days and though there were many challenges to come, we all had enough belief in what we were doing to carry us through… challenges which included my car crash, a price on Patrick’s head, and the ignominy of never winning a prize at the annual Flower Show!

To be continued.

Food for Threadbare Gourmets

After supper the other night I had the plate of ginger, dates, walnuts and dried figs leftover which we had grazed on instead of pudding. And all the packets containing them were open. So I decided to make one of my favourite cakes.

A reader gave me the recipe forty years ago, and even drove all the way out to our house with a sample cake. I’ve made it ever since ! The basic ingredients are a pound of dried fruit to two cups of flour, half a pound of butter, three eggs, a cup or more of sugar, and a teasp of vanilla, almond essence and orange essence.

But I have played with it and added to it, and each batch is different to the last. I usually add a bit more fruit, and sometimes a dollop of golden syrup as well as the sugar, which is always brown. If I have bits of apricot jam, ginger marmalade or honey sitting in the bottom of jars they go in too… sometimes I do half butter, half oil… sometimes a cup of whole meal instead of all SR flour or a cup of almond meal with all the flour.

This time, the fruit consisted of all the stuff I’d already opened, chopped small, plus a good cup and a half of sultanas, some chopped prunes, and the remains of some Christmas mince which I found in the back of the fridge, and still seemed good to go. Boil the fruit in a cup or more of water. Add the sugar, golden syrup and such-like, then the butter/and or oil. When the mixture has cooled slightly, stir in the beaten eggs one at a time, and the essences. Finally the flour.

If I’ve added more fruit, and all the other ingredients, I’ll often have topped up more butter, another egg and more sugar, which means at this stage, more flour.  I simply add enough to make a firm consistency. It’s as though you can’t go wrong with this cake.  Poured into a couple of greased cake tins, lined with greaseproof paper, I often arrange crystallised ginger on the top, and sprinkle sugar to give it a sweet topping (if I’m going to over-indulge in cake then I want it sweet). I often use loaf tins instead of traditional round cake tins.

If I use this for a Christmas cake then obviously, I top it with marzipan but not always icing… Place in a moderate oven to cook for an hour or until the skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin, and then, if I’ve made two, one is wrapped in foil and a plastic bag, cut in three and put in the deep freeze for future use when someone calls.

Food for Thought

Some fun from Isaac Asimov:

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

 

 

 

 

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March 5, 2017 · 2:56 pm

A friend and The Golden Key

My friend Oi ( pronounced O-ee) had ideas so advanced that even Quaker Meeting – that most liberal and open- minded Christian group – threw her out.

She was born in 1900, the youngest of ten, to a father who was sixty years old, and she died when she was a hundred and four – so the two life-times covered a hundred and sixty four years, and went back to 1840. Her father was a cabin boy on a ship that was wrecked on the NZ coast in 1856. Local Maoris formed a human chain to rescue him, and he stayed with them for some time, becoming very close to the chief. After returning to England, he came back with a seventeen-year-old bride, and the Maori chief gave him land to start his life here.

Robin, Oi’s father, established a huge sheep farm, built a big beautiful house, cottages for his shepherds, barns, wool-sheds and an exquisite little chapel, where Oi and her nine brothers and sisters played the organ and helped hand out prayer books to the shepherds and their families as they entered.. As each child arrived, the generous chief had given them Maori land. He ceremonially adopted Oi, and gave her the Maori name Oiroa, which roughly translated, means: ‘compassion for those in need’. Though it was shortened to Oi, she lived up to her name always, and when I met her was beloved by many people for very good reasons.

She married a distinguished Auckland architect – sometimes known as NZ’s Frank Lloyd Wright – who created many of Auckland’s great buildings, like the Railway Station, and beautiful private homes including some famous ones in the Hawkes Bay. Oi herself was very musical, and played the piano, and was so deeply involved in the musical life of her adopted city, that in the early thirties she and another musical aficionado, started the first orchestra in the city, whose descendant is still thriving.

She was beautiful –  and open-hearted and sweet-natured. She was also unhappily married to a much older controlling, jealous and angry man. Other men loved her, and I picked up hints over the years of tempestuous scenes and dramatic confrontations, one in which her loyal cleaning lady divested a desperate suitor of his shotgun at the front door. Oi received and declined her last proposal in her eighties.

Her zest for life never diminished, in spite of a son’s suicide, a difficult life, and much loneliness. Neither did her kindness fail, or her energy, for that matter. I was sure her inner life kept her young. She was often busy driving “old ladies” shopping until well into her nineties. She obviously didn’t feel she qualified for that label – yet! Her spontaneity and authenticity, happiness and serenity, endeared her to all ages.

I met her at Quaker meeting, where we were both what is called attenders, as opposed to members. On occasion when the beautiful and mystical silence was gently broken by a deeply felt message, if it was Oi, as she was known for short, it would be a profoundly mystical and eminently practical thought.

Throughout her life she was drawn to mysticism, a branch of the spiritual life which has always been mistrusted by organised religion, as its devotees seek union with the Source, whatever it is called, thus bypassing the need for priests, mullahs, rabbis, gurus or whatever. Whether these mystics were Muslim, as in the case of Rumi and the Sufis, or Christians like Master Eckhart, or St John of the Cross, they often came to a sticky end at the hands of their respective religions.

Luckily in the twentieth century, this fate is not so common, and Oi escaped lightly by just being blackballed by Quakers! She explored most branches of both Western and Eastern mysticism, and in her thirties, became a lover of Ramakrishna’s teachings, keeping a photo of him by her bed-side always. He practised several religions, including Hindu, Islam and Christianity, and taught that in spite of the differences, all religions are valid and true, and they lead to the same ultimate goal- God.

After Oi introduced herself to me, and invited me to her beautiful house (I had not been long in NZ then), we became close, and she became my mentor. My two small children looked on her as a grandparent and we loved going to her serene and peaceful home.

Though it was in the city, it sat among mature trees and a rambling, flowery garden with a stream. Her architect son had designed it for her. Music, in her mid-seventies, was still her passion. Sometimes I would arrive at the garden entrance, and hear the glorious sounds of a trio or a quartet streaming out of the windows, and I’d stand silently outside under the persimmon tree, listening to Mozart or Mahler.

When the children and I were there, we‘d often end up singing round the piano with the student who boarded with her, and was a brilliant pianist and lovely tenor. We’d all sing favourites as diverse as Handel’s, ‘Where e’er you walk”, to: “Feed the birds,” from Mary Poppins. I had another musical friend, Phillipa, whose unbearable life (a romance I ‘ll tell another time) was slightly improved by taking clarinet lessons, and since her ambition was to play in an orchestra, she needed practice playing with others.

Hearing about her, typically, Oi offered to play with her, and through music-making, they learned to love each other too. I was spending the day with Oi when I learned that the ship Phillipa was sailing on had caught fire, and she and her two small children, one handicapped, plus her six-month-old baby, were adrift in a lifeboat in a violent storm. I never saw them again.

Oi’s unorthodox thinking, which of course, was not confined to spiritual practises, but spread into all areas of her life, alienated her family who were very religious and ultra- conservative. She rarely saw them, so she began spending Christmas with us until one son who disapproved of us too, was shamed into inviting her for Christmas after many years.

So it was that her funeral – which was attended by all those people from all walks of life, whose lives she had touched with love and compassion – was a very traditional one… which slightly puzzled me, as I was sure Oi would have wanted something different.

At the end her family left, and only five of us gathered round Oi’s coffin as it was lowered into the void – the student – now a judge, her cleaning lady for the last twenty years, my two now grownup children, and I.

The judge said to us, “That wasn’t the sort of funeral I expected Oi to have”.                    “No,” piped up the cleaning lady, “I still have a copy of what she wanted!”

I suddenly remembered how Oi, when she was too old to cope with driving in inner-city traffic, had asked her lawyer to call in and take possession of her will for her funeral. She had showed it to me – an exquisite collection of sayings on love, from mystics of all faiths. To my horror, the lawyer had charged this beautiful old lady in her mid-nineties, an exorbitant fee.

Standing by her coffin now, the judge wept over this betrayal of Oi’s wishes. “One more thing for her to forgive her sons for,” he sobbed. We all wept with him.

Before she died, Oi gave me the books which had sustained her, and influenced her thinking, and which had helped her  find her path to expanded consciousness and freedom. One of the joys of reading them was that she’d underlined or marked the passages which sang to her. Not only did I find this a wonderful aid to a deeper understanding, both of the texts and of Oi, but it also taught me the pleasure of marking and making my books my own, which I had never dared to do before.

I’d grown up learning that books should be treated as sacred, and never marked, turned down, or in any way treated as familiar friends. I do it all the time now, knowing that others who eventually find their way to them will – or might – enjoy the same pleasures of insight and intimacy as I have done.

Oi’s words still remain in my mind, and often come back to me. When there was a problem she would close her eyes, and focus for a minute, then open them and say firmly: “You cannot know the solution.  You can only pray that the situation evolves for the highest good of you, and everyone else involved. And know that this will happen, and let it go.”

She’d quote T.S. Eliot: “It is not our business what others may think of us,”… or: “God wastes nothing”. She’d say : “Let go and let God.”… and, “Happiness is like water in the palm of your hand. If you gently hold your palm open, it will stay. But if you clutch it and try to hang onto it, you lose it.” She died thirteen years ago, but her loving wisdom sustains me still.

The gift she gave me, which I treasure the most, and use constantly, is ‘The Golden Key’, a tiny spiritual masterpiece of only a few words. I give it now with love, as Oi did, to anyone who thinks it may be useful to them… https://morningstar.netfirms.com/goldenkey.html

Food for threadbare gourmets – those of us who qualify for this description will go hungry today, as I feel this post is so long, I can’t expect you all to go on reading, while Food for thought is contained in Oi’s sayings and in her life…


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September 15, 2012 · 3:30 am

Life’s Like That

My life, like many, is not so much a drama as a tale of tiny things. But in the end they add up to a life. This is the tale of a few days of this week.

Tuesday          When I walked through the cemetery to the marble bench to sit in the sun, the grass seemed to be sprinkled with flowers like pink confetti. They were bright pink with yellow centres, the size of primroses, but only growing half an inch from the ground. I sat on the warm bench and looked over the turquoise harbour.

A monarch butterfly floated across and came to rest on the purply-blue flower of a creeper in the tangle of shrubs leading down to the water. I watched the orange and black wings spreading over the amethyst flower, and watched it lift off again, and swoop and flutter in a wide circle before coming back to the same flower. It then drifted to another flower head, before settling on the grass, presumably to digest its meal.

When it rose again in the air, it dropped down to a shrub where another monarch was already feasting. The two rose in the air, fluttering and dodging around each other, until my butterfly was driven away, and did a wide arc halfway round the cemetery, before coming back and settling on another bush.

I drifted back home, missing Cara the cat, and realising that when she had stopped coming with me but sat by the gate, and then, didn’t even cross the road, but sat by our path, waiting for me to return, she wasn’t being cussed – she was obviously too weak or weary in those last months to come springing across the grass with me, her tail held high, and perfectly straight.

Wednesday          Went for a walk to get away from the problems besetting me in the house. I passed a monarch butterfly fluttering on the pavement. It’s wings were almost completely chewed away, presumably while still in the chrysalis by a voracious praying mantis, but its head and body were intact. It lay there, fluttering the fragments of its ragged wings. I put it in the grass, and went for an illegal wander round Liz and Richard’s empty beautiful garden looking over the harbour.

On my way back I looked, and the butterfly was still struggling. I nerved myself to carry it to the pavement so I could stamp on it and put it out of its misery. I laid it down, and it spread its pathetic little rags in the sun, and I had the sense that it was enjoying the sunshine. I just couldn’t bring myself to stamp the life and the consciousness out of it. So I carried it gently back to the grass, and laid it in the sun.

The colours today are like summer, aquamarine sea, and snowy white foam as the waves dash onto the rocks below. The sun shines, and a bitter wind blows. It seems to have been cold for weeks, so we’re chomping through the walls of logs piled up in the garage.

It was hard to go out tonight, but I’m glad I did. Our monthly meeting when people talk about their life. Journeys, we call them. A woman who lives nearby told us how she had dissolved her three generation family business in fashion, and looked for somewhere in the world to serve. She ended up teaching in a Thai monastery, where her experiences there and at various healing sanctuaries were life- changing. She was glowing.

Thursday          Another bitterly cold day with the sun shining brightly. But the oak tree is shimmering with its new spring green, the crab apple has pink buds peeping out, and nasturtium and arctotis are beginning to spring up in their lovely untidy sprawl through the other greenery. A clutch of tuis are sucking the honey in the golden kowhai trees across the road. They are all covered thickly in their hanging yellow flowers along the roadside, and always seem like the heralds of spring.

Yesterday I got my sweet cleaning lady to help me rip down the white sheets which serve as a canopy on the veranda in summer. Have n’t had the strength in my arthritic hands to do it myself. I’ll wash them and use them to cover things in the garage – not sure what, but there’s bound to be something that will benefit. She told me the four ducklings she’d rescued sit cuddled up to each other at night and cheep for ages. “ I’d love to know what they’re saying to each other”….

Before going to Tai Chi, I rang Friend to thank her for lunch on Sunday, and found her devastated. They’d taken Smudge the cat to the vet because he’s dribbling blood and saliva. He has cancer of the jaw, and they’ve brought him home to try to eke out a few more weeks with him….

Tai Chi was freezing in the scouts hall. Coldest night for a long time. I noticed how pinched all our frozen old faces were by the end – and even the few young ones!

Friday           I rang Friend, she was struggling to get the cushion covers off the sofa, where Smudge had taken refuge from the icy night. They were covered in blood and saliva, so I promised to get my sheets from the veranda washed and dried by tonight so that she can drape them over the two sofas. Then took her for a consolatory coffee at the Market, where we gorged ourselves on good coffee and delicious lemon cake well blanketed in whipped cream… so much for diabetes and arthritis!

As I was writing this, I heard the noise of many children all chattering at once.  Got up to look out of the window to see why, and saw two little girls making their way down the steps. I got to the door as they did, and was assailed by both of them talking at once as loud as they could. They were collecting for an animal charity, and the commotion was simply two seven year olds talking at once, and neither listening to the other. I emptied my purse of change and they went on their way well pleased.

So this is life, what happens between getting up to make a cup of tea to take back to bed in the morning, checking the e-mails and reading blogs, keeping the fire piled high with dry logs, and going back to that warm bed at night, with the electric blanket on high, a tray of tea for last thing, and a good book!

This is the raw material, and whether we make a silk purse out of it, or see it as a sow’s ear, it’s up to us. It can be satisfying or it can be boring, but the choice is ours. But as I go through my gratitude list at night before slipping into sleep, there seems much to thank the God of Small Things for.

Food for Threadbare Gourmets

Friends dropped in for glass of wine, and apart from a tin of olives stuffed with anchovies, which is a waste of good olives and anchovies to me, I had nothing for the wine to soak into. (I’ve taken to heart the advice to always have a few bites of something first, so the sugar in the wine doesn’t go straight into the blood stream. I also find the wine tastes much nicer if it isn’t sipped on an empty stomach). A dash to the village shop, and I came home with a little pack of the cheapest blue vein cheese, and a carton of cream cheese. Mixed together they make a lovely spread on little chunks of crusty roll, or any good water biscuit. It was enough.

Food for Thought

We thank God then, for the pleasures, joys and triumphs of marriage; for the cups of tea we bring each other, and the seedlings in the garden frame; for the domestic drama of meetings and partings, sickness and recovery; for the grace of occasional extravagance, flowers on birthdays and unexpected presents; for talk at evenings of events of the day…

From Christian Faith and Practise in the Experience of the Society of Friends.

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