From Turnpike Lane to Waterloo

I am reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry at the moment. It is the story of a bloke that walks from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed to see/save an old friend that is dying of cancer. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or just down to the fact that I’ve had Harold Fry on my mind, but this morning I decided to walk from Turnpike Lane to the Southbank where I was going to meet my Dad. I get that 6 miles has nothing on 647 but.

In every other place that I’ve lived in London, walking to the centre has been one of my initiation activities. A way of recceing out where I am in relation to everything else. A strange sort of staking my ownership kind of thing. Turnpike Lane has, however, seemed a little far for this activity. Plus, it’s been hard to resist the lure of the always-on Piccadilly line. Nearly 6 months in, however, it felt time to see how this bit of London joined up and, inspired by Harold Fry, I decided to ignore the March drizzle and put my new walking boots to the test.

Turnpike Lane is a funny area. I have always lived in places with the same set of high street shops peppered with cute boutiques but there’s very little of that around here. Instead, the shops spill onto the street and are full of food from all over the world and the craziest vegetables I’ve seen. There’s none of the uniformity that I have come to expect, and there’s a real sense of the shopping streets and the streets where people live being one and the same.

Green Lanes, the road out of Turnpike Lane into London, is transitional and far longer than I imagined. By the time you’re nearing Manor House, the Turkish and Polish restaurants are dwindling away and it’s back into English pub and corner-shop territory with a few stretches of park. This section took me nearly an hour and felt like the longest bit by far. London seems to fray at the edges but once you hit the centre, everything suddenly seems to tighten up.

I had expected Camden road but Google decided that I was going via Highbury, and I’m particularly pleased that this bit of the walk happened before my phone died and I did. I’ve been to see friends in Highbury Fields before and swum in the teeny pool there, but I hadn’t realised quite how cute the area is. With beautiful houses recalling Victorian London and an actual field isolating the area from traffic, if I ever win the lottery, I will definitely be moving there.

From Highbury, I walked along Upper Street towards – and then over – Angel and along St John’s road. This is another part of London that I would quite happily uproot too. Just between the City and the always busting Upper Street, the houses get smaller suddenly and the roads a bit windier, and it starts to feel a little like you could step back in time. There is something about the heart of London that is hard to put into words but you can feel in buildings and roads which have lived far longer than the come-and-go shops and the fast-flowing crowd.

By this point, my phone was on its last legs, so I decided to follow bus routes for the final part of my journey. Trailing the 4 out of Angel and then the 341 to Holborn, I took a sharp left at Chancery lane and headed down towards Fleet Street and the Strand. The City was blissfully quiet and, stopping to pause outside Kings and look up at the creamy old buildings, I felt like a tourist. It is good to live in a City that feels like both an adventure and home.

The last stretch was a bit of a rushed blur to be honest. Suddenly, the unfamiliar snapped into the familiar and I found myself heading down Embankment and aware of how cold my hands were and how much my legs ached. I arrived with ten minutes to spare, feeling strangely proud and independent. It’s been a while since I remembered how amazing a pair of legs is.

Thirty three

It was my birthday last Wednesday.

According to the authoritative about.com, women in China are advised to chop a piece of raw meat 33 times behind the kitchen door on their 33rd Birthday to ward off bad luck. I have not done this though I was tempted. I have noticed, over the years, that I am becoming slightly superstitious with age. Most people get wiser but…

I have been reading up on superstitious thinking because things like an apprehensiveness of the number three are quite inconvenient. The instinct to try to assign meanings to things when we’re feeling uncertain is, apparently, not uncommon. There is a bizarre and flawed logic in trying to make a quite scary and ambiguous world feel safer by deciding that, if you avoid the number three or remember to touch wood, everything will be okay.

Anyway.

Apparently a few other people have been concerned about turning 33 because that’s the age that Jesus died at. I have to admit that I am yet to see the import of that parallel but it’s nice to know that it’s not just me who can sometimes be a bit crazy.

I guess I just have to keep reminding myself that you can choose to ignore some thoughts.

And that, if the start of my year is anything to go by, 33 might actually be pretty okay.

Tenerife

I have just come back from a holiday in Tenerife. It was not as I expected. I guess there are many versions of a place. The one we saw was wild and remote instead of concrete and packed full of tourists. It is funny how quickly volcanic craters and an endless ocean became familiar: the grey pavements and crammed tubes don’t feel quite right yet.

On the most north western point of the island, there is a place called Punta de Teno that we visited on the first day. You reach it via narrow bendy roads that curl around and through the lower ranks of the mountain: one road in, one road out. I held my breath for most of the journey. At the end, the ocean crashed on black rocks and a lone lighthouse was the only sign of civilisation. The mountains behind blocked the island and cacti grew up along a rocky coastline. It was so quiet that the sound of every breaking wave and scurrying lizard was amplified.

I am a people person. I love living in the city. I like background noise and knowing that there are things around me. It is good to connect with the world on a different level every now and then.

On the third day we drove 2,000 km up to a hotel in a volcanic crater. I’m still not quite sure why I had envisaged a building at sea level but I somehow had and the journey was a surprise. At about 1,700 km, we encountered the grey swirls of cloud that we’d watched rising off the ocean earlier that morning. Later, the landscape changed from thick forestry to desert, rocky crags to pitted moonscape. When you took a cable car up El Teide, you were above everything, including the clouds.

I don’t know whether any films have been shot up there but I spent two days feeling like I was in a set from a Western or Star Wars or something. You could wander for hours without seeing another person and the land shifted dramatically and quickly. Black sand with strange spaceship-shaped plants; red rocks that reminded me of The Waste Land; grey boulders that seemed safe after the sliding gravel; shining granite; crumbling banks of deep terracotta; volcanic crags that hid the landscape. Once, we came across a collection of abandoned stone houses, camouflaged into the landscape: there was an eerie quality to the desolation that made it kind of unreal.

On the last walk, we looped round magma rocks that had been thrown up in a volcanic eruption. Every curve brought a new landscape and the final stretch ascended steeply up a gravelly cliff face.

I am always surprised by how we do the things that we think we can’t do. About how possible it is to extend the possibilities of a world by stepping over the limits you lay down. One of my many limits is high things. I’m really glad that in this instance, it didn’t get in the way –

Both sitting above the clouds and knowing that you have done something that felt impossible were pretty amazing experiences that I hope I don’t forget.

The Language of Flowers

My Dad gave me a Kindle for Christmas. I know there’s a whole minefield of ownership issues out there and physical books are infinitely more treasurable, but I feel like I have just discovered reading again. The iPad app has nothing on the convenience of the immediately connected, longer lasting, fit-in-your hand real thing. It is like having a library in your bag.

I have just finished The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. I found it courtesy of “people like me” on Amazon, the source of the past 5 books which I’ve read and enjoyed. I am glad that online discovery is getting more sophisticated.  I can still feel the shadow of the book in my head: it is like I have spent the past few days in another world.

The Language of Flowers reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale, at first. I can’t quite work out why. Maybe the ominous undercurrent evoked the same feelings or maybe my head just remembers more than I do, which feels a funny thing to write. I don’t think that The Language of Flowers is set in the future, but time is certainly on the periphery and the context is recognisable but not familiar.  Maybe that’s more of a reflection of Victoria’s (the protagonist) view of the world than, as in The Handmaid’s Tale, a narrative construct. It is funny how the same world can look so different depending on where you stand in it.

Victoria’s world isn’t great for a lot of the book. It starts out pretty horrendously and she keeps the pattern going. We are often our own worst enemies and it is hard not to empathise with someone whose finger is so obviously pushing self-destruct. It is, in part, the intensity of the emotions that makes what could be a relatively generic combination of coming of age / overcoming adversity so compelling. The language of flowers that we learn as the book progresses is the other thing that makes it really standout:  in a strangely beautiful twist, the pivotal communications often take place through bouquet choice rather than through words.

On Valentine’s day last year, my boyfriend sent me White Roses, because he is a Yorkshire man. I don’t think I have ever thought much about the significance of flowers, even though I know that they are bound up in traditions and symbolism and even though I have felt their somewhat magical effect.  According to the language that Victoria learns, each flower has its own distinct meaning. Yellow Roses symbolise infidelity; Jonquil, desire; Hazel means reconciliation; Mistletoe, I surmount all obstacles.

There are so many codes written into the world. I loved the experience of reading The Language of Flowers but it is this new way of reading that I will ultimately take away.

January

January is a funny month. It feels like everything should be new and shiny, like in September; but, in fact, the days are both too short and too long, and the post-Christmas nose dive seems inevitable, even when you’re prepared.

I am aware that there is a group of detoxing, fitness-finding, 2013 enthusiasts out there, fired up for action, but it doesn’t seem to be catching.  January feels like enough of a challenge without piling more pressure on.

The Harvard Business Review had an approach that I liked: dream in January, in February it all happens.  The friend that I just had lunch with suggested hibernation. That sounds good too. I have overloaded January with things and I now realise that curling up on the sofa is what I want most.

I would also like to start dreaming and I wonder what has stopped me.

Perhaps I have got jaded and forgotten how to let my imagination wander. Perhaps the busyness is easier than stepping back and just being, or stepping back and thinking about what you want. Once you’ve realised that, you’re kind of obliged to act on it.

I am embarrassed that I write that like it’s a bad thing.

Maybe I actually need to put a bit of time aside and see -

Fuerzabruta

After my last circus fiasco, I am pleased to report that Fuerzabruta was every bit as good as I was led to expect. While opinion seems to be divided on whether it was a meaningless spectacle or the story of a man’s journey through death, I enjoyed every minute and these are the things that I hope I don’t forget….

The drumbeats that went through you, at the beginning, and the sight, suddenly, of five brightly dressed people flying out of the darkness above you.

The metallic curtaining that drew around the standing spectators and across which two girls chased each other in cartwheels. The notion that the ground was not always horizontal but simply what was under your feet.

A man, in white, running faster and faster on a treadmill. The white against the darkness. A barrage of paper flakes and rain. An increase in speed. The sound of a gunshot.

And the same again.

A swimming pool suspended above the audience. The bubbles that followed the swimming bodies around and the shapes that the water made when it was sliced and splashed and spun in. The surprise of watching diving from underneath. The surprise that the swimming pool didn’t leak.

A plastic bubble inflated over the audience and the bodies that came down through the portholes to pick up unsuspecting spectators and make them feel what it felt like to fly. The delight of that possibility.

A rainstorm of foil paper that transformed the audience and which I am still shaking out of my clothes. The sense of excitement that accompanied the surprise. The idea that anything was possible.

England. Differently

When I was a kid, I was convinced that I had been born in the wrong country. All the great things, it seemed, happened in America. England was grey and overcast and full of small square houses and proper people. America was shiny and blue-skied, full of sun-kissed golden-haired ‘cool kids’ and houses that were surrounded by lawns and laid out Beverley Hills style.

I remember walking home over the motorway bridge with my then boyfriend, trying to describe how out of place I felt in England, complaining about the injustice of it all. I remember the surprise I felt when he did not agree. He said it was the best place in the world.

I have just come back from a weekend in Lincoln. After spending the first three decades of my life firmly below the Watford Gap, I am now exploring what’s on the other side. It is funny just how much one little island can contain.

On the way to Lincoln, the landscape changed from city to green farmland to rolling yellow fields. It was softer than the Northern England landscape that I started to familiarise myself with last year. Less dramatic and more picture book. On the one-carriage train from Newark to Lincoln, we went past tiny rural stations that wouldn’t have been out of place in The Railway Children or another century.

The old town of Lincoln is on top of the very appropriately named ‘Steep Hill’. I liked leaving the Saturday crowds and all too familiar High Street shops behind, even if the effort was painful. As you got nearer the top, the cobbled streets bent and narrowed, and the buildings became wonky and squashed into each other. The lampposts were old fashioned and diamond-shaped which was enough to shake time. When you were walking along the castle walls at the top and looking out over Lincolnshire, it disappeared all together.

There is something magical about standing in the same spot that you know people hundreds of years ago stood in. It is impossible not to try and see through their eyes as well as your own.

I fell in love with Lincoln Cathedral. I normally find Cathedrals intimidating and cold, but Lincoln’s was surprisingly warm and welcoming, despite its enormous size. I don’t know whether it was the choir practicing at the back or the red flowers brightening the organ base or the brilliant blue stain glass windows or  just the friendly old woman who sold me tickets that made it so…but I didn’t feel the familiar spine shiver and I enjoyed, rather than appreciated, how beautiful it was.

At night, the yellow stone glowed in a sky that was so much darker than London’s is.

The following morning, the towers were submerged in a thick fog that kept new Lincoln hidden until we reached the bottom of a winding Roman trail. Every now and then, you could see where the old stone walls were incorporated into the modern red ones. Layers of old and layers of new.

I have been thinking about the importance of variety lately. About how we discover more about what we like and what we don’t through broadening our experiences, through trying more and different things. As we came back to London along the tiny rural train line, and via the oddly mixed Newark, and past industrial chimneys and golden fields and flooded parks, and then the high rises leading into Kings Cross, I realised that this variety is one of the many things that I have under-appreciated about England.   That there are a hundred Englands out there to explore. That there will always be something surprising, and always something to discover in the contrasts.

2013

It has taken 2 paracetamol, 3 large glasses of water, 6 chicken McNuggets, 8 chocolate coins and 75 minutes of afternoon sleep to stop my head from spinning.

This is not the post that I envisaged posting today, nor the start of 2013 that I was anticipating. If I could take back the last 16 hours, I absolutely would.

Regret is a bitter pill and all that.

In the post that I envisaged posting, I had a long list of cool stuff that I wanted to do in 2013 and a jokey head-nod to the fact that the 13 is making me kind of nervous. I wondered if getting it out there would make it go away.

I don’t think it would have.

My boyfriend brought me a lucky Whitby duck at Christmas to counteract whatever bad things I am expecting. Maybe the only cure for a silly superstition is to balance it with something equally silly? It is frustrating to see the absurdity of your feelings and yet still feel them.

So this is a post about a New Year that I am slightly wary of because it ends in 13 and because it hasn’t got off to the best of starts. It is about how my challenge for 2013 won’t be to learn the Charleston or to ride across London on a Boris bike or to chew less gum or drink less diet coke….it will just be to not get worried by ridiculous things and to believe that the outcome of the year is dictated by me, rather than by two small digits. That at any moment I can take a deep breath and start all over again.

Which I can.

Happy 2013. I hope that you make it everything that you wish for.

Christmas in Whitby

Christmas does funny things to time. It seems to slow it down and speed it up in equal measures. Days are drawn out and then gone in a flash. Afterwards, the world feels a little like it has been pricked with a pin. It takes a while for Thursday to become Thursday again.

This year, I spent Christmas beside a grey winter sea that was as beautiful as a blue summer’s one. If you looked out of the window of our apartment, you could see the waves crashing into the pier, during the day, and, at night, nothing. It is rare to stare out into nothing. On Christmas morning, we walked out along the beach. The water made the sand firm and spongey. When you pushed down, it glistened as the water emerged, temporarily. The sea was strangely quiet in comparison to the wind.

In the church watching over Whitby, there was an old iron stove and tens of Christmas trees, each representing the organisation which donated it. I have not seen a Christmas tree adorned in lobsters before. Behind it, the Abbey was dramatic and austere. I wonder why that feels like the word to describe it. There was a clifftop walk, just beyond it, which we followed until the feeling that the sea directly below was waiting to swallow us up became too intense to me. Some places don’t feel like they are from this time.

On Christmas day, we forgot the outside. We ate smoked salmon, for breakfast, and turkey with all the trimmings when the Queen had finished her speech. I had been attempting to beat last year’s Christmas dinner record in the run up to Christmas but I am beginning to think that Turkey tastes better when you have forgotten how tasty it actually is. And when you’re enjoying it with friends. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about the day.

I am not yet accustomed to being back in London. Outside, the traffic roars past and I can already feel my body switching back into fast forward. It feels like the holiday is shrinking but I do not think the urge to clutch onto it is helpful. I have enjoyed, I guess, the unusual opportunity to properly unwind. There are few occasions when I’m just enjoying the moment rather than overlooking it to see what’s coming ahead.

A slightly unexpected post on phones

My boyfriend texted me from his office Christmas dinner to say that his phone was about to die. I wonder how we coped before mobiles. I know I’m super nervous but I felt my stomach clench, a little, and a flurry of panic.

I remember my first mobile phone. I was 18 and just starting university. It was the bank bribe (should have opted for a rail card) and shaped like a brick. I was a little wary of using it. The guy I was going out with at the time refused to have one. At that point, it was more optional. Within a few months, however, I had forgotten what being phoneless felt like.

Sometimes I crave for a space where there are no pings and buzzes and vibrating chimes. Where I do not feel compelled to reach for my phone, every hour, to see what’s going on.

In the middle of the night when it’s lonely and I can message a friend, or when a quick call can result in an evening of unexpected fun, or when I get a text that makes me smile, the sentiment is very different. I feel that my phone is a wonderful thing.

I wonder if that is healthy?

I suspect it is not. The flurry of panic smacks of dependency. There are a lot of feelings that can be avoided when you think you have permanent access to someone else.

I wonder why this debate hasn’t been resolved. I could have written this post a few years ago and the sentiment would have been the same.

It is fascinating to watch the introduction of a new technology. To be on the cusp of before and after. To remember, just, what it felt like when you had to plan in advance, or go and see someone, or manage the voices in your head. To realise that you are, in some ways, in an enviable position: you only fully appreciate the value of something if has not always been around.

Maybe the cause of the confusion is simply that. Maybe with every big leap, there comes an awareness that things have fundamentally shifted and you can’t easily go back.