new moon

In the luminous west, just proud of a gathering of feather edged, dove coloured clouds, gleams the steely sliver of the new moon, a precise, sharp tipped crescent, cut clean into the deepening ultramarine of an October twilight. Alone with the young moon in the back garden of a rented house in Somerset, utterly defenceless against the incursion of rememberance, I am recalled without warning to a garden in a more easterly county, there to gaze in retrospection upon an older moon, one waxed full and buxom, whose light embraces those standing together in commemoration of the event; a small family group, mother, father, and a daughter, one of three. Such a time ago it seems, that August evening during which we gathered to celebrate my father's newly restored sight; to be in his company when he first looked on the moon through the binoculars given as a gift, and exclaimed like a child at the wonders he could now see without the ghostly interference of the cateracts that had hitherto sorely distorted his vision.

Several years hence, he has departed this life, and his ashes are scattered in a county yet further eastwards, that which gave birth to him, but that seems woefully distant from the garden where I now salute the glowing sickle of the new moon in memory of him.

I find that I cannot curtail my tears, for although I am removed to a westerly region with a chosen one, whom I hold dearer than life itself, and have become accustomed, more or less, to our very different place of habitation, there persists a dull ache in my heart, a perpetual nostalgia for family, for places familiar, above all, a longing which cannot be assuaged, for the smile of welcome wreathing my father's face on beholding his daughters coming home to him.

the prayer

Deep in rural Gloucestershire, not far south of Cirencester, the tiny eight hundred year old church of All Saints, Shorncote is remote from it's village and reached only by a narrow country lane. Cool and quiet within, the simple interior is mostly unadorned except for an elaborately carved Royal coat of arms, and lit upon the fall of darkness solely by oil lamps mounted at intervals on the walls of the nave. Appreciative as I am of the humble grace and depthless silence of the building, it is, however, the unexpected paintings on the north walls of the chancel, and above the chancel arch that inspire within me much emotion and delighted surprise. They are mediaeval; according to the guide dating from the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuaries, and depict a regular, repeating pattern of rectangles, as though a wall had been painted upon a wall, each rectangle containing a ruddy, daisy like flower. A substantial fragment remains, despite the destructive plaster and wash of later periods, enough to be able to imagine the appearance of the chancel when the paintings covered the walls in exultant glory, crisp edged, poppy bright, surprisingly contemporary for all their naive rendering.

Each time I behold ecclesiastical paintings from the mediaeval period, I am astonished by the fervour, candour and directness of communication with which they were made, and passionately regretful that they should often have been obliterated by succeeding generations of church authorities, even though my partner has explained to me that faith evolves like everything else, and that the paintings may perhaps have come to be held as inappropriate, irreverent, possibly even blasphemous, or simply outmoded; that other interests were at work. However, I remain profoundly moved by such intensely realised evocations of faith in a God seemingly often vengeful, capricious and unpredictable, a God meting out such extremes of destiny according to one's earthly deeds, and it appears to me to be an act of desecration to have destroyed these works of art and religiosity from an earlier, unimaginably different and difficult time.

I am thankful for the exuberance of the remaining mural at Shorncote; it implies a God less exacting, one exhibiting painstaking attention to the minutae of life on earth; the very flowers at our feet, a God extending a merciful hand to those labouring in their faith and fields, One who cared enough for His creation to gift the painter thus. I feel uplifted, light of heart, grateful to the unknown and unknowable artist, or artists, as close to prayer as I have been since childhood.

When I told my mother of our intended visit to this, and other churches, being unable to accompany us, she asked of me that I should indeed pray for her, and although I usually find it difficult, if not impossible, to participate in her child like faith, on this occasion, I felt honour bound, and able,  to comply with her simple, heartfelt request.

I respect my mother's strongly held, if somewhat unorthadox, Christian convictions, finding particularly touching her belief that instead of resurection to an Heavenly afterlife, she will return to the earth following her death in the form of a modest, wayside flower; a daisy, or buttercup perhaps, her scattered ashes having nourished the soil to give rise to new life. The elegant, ancient, eight petalled blooms painted in a once brilliant ocherous red on the otherwise naked lime washed walls of the little church call her vividly to mind. She would have loved their symmetry and simplicity, would, if she had been able to be with us, have understood the intensity of the celebratory piety that had originated them. It seems appropriate, therefore, to answer her plea whilst gazing on this frieze of flowers, to offer both thanks for the endeavour of the painter, whose work remains to enchant the eye and refresh the spirit, and the prayer for my mother, whose passion is for the Creator, her children and the garden she shared with my father.

Standing alone before the innocent blooms, for my partner is gone outside, I enjoin the Lord to keep my mother from harm, ask that she should have many more years in which to care for her beloved garden, years of health and plenty, that her own, tenderly nurtured plants should flourish each in their season, that she may eventually leave the life with which she is at present so fiercely engaged in painless slumber.

Days afterwards, whilst joyously picking blackberries from a roadside bramble, she lost her footing and fell heavily on her back to the ground, sorely bruising her ribs and spilling her patiently gathered fruits on the pavement. On learning of her misadventure during our evening telephone conversation, I am conscious of an acute sense of shock, a feeling of outrage that she should have been hurt, a swift chilling of the blood in my veins, unwillingly being brought once more to recognise that she is increasingly frail and unsteady, although she retains an indomitable independence of mind and spirit.

I do not share with her my uncomfortable conviction that the prayer I uttered on her behalf seems to have failed, to have missed it's mark, that perhaps, after all, it found no recipient, but had been merely a whisper unto empty air, a hope against hope, a child's exhortation to a child's God, a God who shields one's parents, siblings and friends for all eternity, watches over the defenceless, mends broken wings and restores vanquished life; a God of immeasurable tenderness. Perhaps a prayer from one unaccustomed to worship is indeed doomed to failure, however sincerely intended. I am cast irredeemably into doubt, my mind swept agonisingly by loneliness and fathomless despair, not only for my mother, but for  those whom I also love, for the tide of all living things condemmned to suffer and to perish. In my distress, I forget the celebration of material life and of the God who makes it so evinced by the painter of Shorncote, the implication of the rightful cycle of replacement upon replacement, of evolution and extinction which embodies the drama of wordly existence, the unaffected, passionate connection which my mother maintains with her garden and her God. Instead I find myself most painfully and deeply bewildered, as much a child in my bewilderment as when a child I prayed each night for the safekeeping of my mother and father, my sisters and friends, the flowers, trees and creatures of the earth, those of the air and waters.

I ask my sister why our mother had fallen. She answers, "Because life is random".

sapphire

A narrow footpath flanks the playground of the infant school, where I help in the classroom during the afternoons. Each day, I pass along the path on my way to the school office, where I must sign in. I always arrive whilst lunchtime recess is taking place, and the children whom I have come to know are at play in the playground. More often than not, I am espied and the children run to the fence separating the footpath from the playground, calling my name and waving to me, which I find most touching and uplifting.

One  breezy, brilliant afternoon in early summer, I am hailed as is customary, this time  by a little boy whom I recognise as having been in the reception class where I help a couple of years ago, although I do not recall his name. I pause to speak with him, and he asks me a question, which at first I do not understand, but catch the word, 'artist'. Intrigued, I ask him to repeat himself, and then I realise that he is enquiring of me whether I am a "great artist"! Surprised, much affected by his question, I shake my head in denial, and reply that, no, I am not, although I would like to be almost more than anything in the world. He answers that he remembers me as having been good at drawing. I thank him sincerely, astonished that he should remember me at all, much less ascribe to me proficiency in a discipline I have not practised for years, although I do assist the children in their own work where appropriate. I take my leave of him, and continue on my way, a glow of appreciation having been kindled by the child's praise.

The little boy has eyes of an intense, unwavering, crystalline blue. They meet my own with the candour of childhood, ingenuous, confiding, reminding me that I have a duty to safeguard such innocence and vulnerability, however delighted and moved I am with the compliment bestowed upon me by one so youthful.

Later, I am given to realise that I have been made the gift of a new gem to hang on the necklace of compliments safely stowed in the far reaches of my mind; a sapphire, perhaps, of the same azure brilliance as the eyes of the little boy who unwittingly laid balm upon a wound.

paper plane

Above my head, suspended from the bedroom ceiling by a length of black cotton, and a brass headed drawing pin, there swings a polystyrene model aeroplane, much faded by the sun, crafted by my youngest nephew from a kit, when he was a little boy. I am visiting my mother, and have chosen to sleep in the back of the house, in the bedroom once used by one of my sisters, and now designated the room of her son when he comes to stay. I awaken very early, to a pearlescent morning, pale light seeping through the summer curtains, and casting a fragile shadow of the aeroplane on the ceiling, a shadow tracing each delicate manoevre of the plane as it turns slowly in the current of air drifting through the open window. Unable to return to sleep, I lay and watch the subtle pirouetting, captivated, and then moved by a sudden impulse to photograph the eccentric craft and it's attendant shade, although I have at my disposal only a tiny digital camera.

Across the landing, a few steps away, the door remains closed upon the room in which my father slept during the latter years of his life, a room quiet and pleasing of aspect, that, as the eldest daughter of the house, was originally my own, and in which, after I had finally left home, in the tranquility of the back of the house, he found peace and security. The wardrobe still contains my father's clothes, most poignantly his homely, plaid dressing gown, and the tweed jacket he was wearing on admittance to hospital after having suffered the stroke that paralysed the lefthand side of his body.

When I visit my mother, I take pains to open the curtains of this closed room in the morning, perhaps opening the fanlight if the day promises to be warm, drawing the curtains again against the coming of night, and shutting the window. The room is not intended as a shrine; it is simply that my mother cannot bear to remove the possessions that speak so powerfully of my father's presence; his hairbrushes, watch, and spectacles, the  knitted garments contained within the chest of drawers,  his jackets, shirts and overcoats hanging neatly in the wardrobe.

Longing for the sound of his voice, the generous, delighted smile with which he greeted us, the gentle pressure of his hand upon our head or shoulder, as though we his daughters were still tender children, I often pause whilst in the room, to open the wardrobe door, taking care that the sound does not reach my mother, to touch the clothes that he inhabited, lay my cheek against the reminiscent roughness of woollen cloth, draw in the lingering scent of his skin, his hair, until either comforted, or overwhelmed by an unassuagable grief, I close the wardrobe, and steal from the room on tiptoe.

I once asked my father if he could make paper aeroplanes, knowing that, as a child, he had created little models from balsa and thread, which he hung from the ceiling of his bedroom, much as did his grandson generations later. We were travelling together on a train bound for a London terminus at the time of my question, leaving him small scope for demonstrating his skill, and would soon part company, myself to journey onwards to Scotland, and he returning home to Hampshire, but a day or so later, a manilla envelope addressed to me in my father's fine, rhythmic italic, arrived by post, bearing within an elegant aeroplane fashioned from a sheet of manuscript paper. I have it still.

Days

                                                         Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.


From The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin, first published in Faber Paperbacks, 1971. Reset in 2001

foam bath

As a child, I delighted in the glacial mounds of glittering bubbles at bath time, and find that my enthusiasm has not waned with the passing years, although I no longer pretend that I am piloting a fragile craft between castellated ice floes, in grievous peril of running aground.

The bath at my parental home is the original, cast iron, squat legged vessel, installed when the house was born, a little short of ninety years ago, deep, steep sided, bone white, a delicate mineral patina running from tap to drain. It is my pleasure, when visiting my mother, to take a cool, foaming bath on a  summer's evening, following a hot day of labour in the garden below, to shed soiled clothing and ease my weary body into scented, shimmering water, sinking below the brittle skinned froth until completely submerged, holding my breath for as long as I am able before rising in a flurry of bursting bubbles to the surface.

I prefer the bathroom to be unlit, the sole source of illumination the dimmed evening light seeping through the lowered blind, so that the ghostly bergs gleam softly, and the intervening straits shine like pewter. I recall other, noisier bathtimes, and, although often prey to a painful nostalgia, am grateful, nevertheless, for the mature tranquility of my mother's house, the silence in the bathroom broken only by the water rippling in response to my movements, and the sound of late birdsong drifting through the open window.

the close of a difficult day

An evening telephone conversation with a dear  friend does much to restore my equilibrium, sorely disrupted following a night of troubled, anguished dreams and a morning of unproductive drawing practise. She is an artist, and we speak, as always , of art, most particularly of drawing, her own principle area of practice. I confide to her my problematic return to the making of drawings, and the destruction of all but two of my most recent attempts, which two I have for now secreted at the bottom of one of the boxes in which I store unframed drawings, knowing that I will, in all probability,  destroy them also.

She likens the process of beginning to draw again after a long absence, to hill climbing after a protracted period of abstinence; one is out of breath at first, weary throughout one's entire body, defeated in spirit and perhaps unable to achieve the summit, but that, following several determined attempts, one regains a former fitness for the exercise, becoming more proficient, one's confidence improved.

With her wise and reassuring words resounding in my ears, I take my grateful leave of her, and, as the evening is wearing on, venture into the garden, from which I have absented myself for the greater part of a beautiful day, to water my collection of potted plants, which have withstood the heat and drying wind of the afternoon in silent fortitude. I hear the bees still in clamourous throng about a densely flowering shrub growing along the length of the wall enclosing our small garden, and realise with a sense of humble admiration that they have been hard at work throughout the day, going about the business of collecting nectar with an engaging fitness of purpose for the task and an unshakeable dedication to duty.

After watering, an undertaking made pleasant by the knowledge that I am supplying  the needs of my beloved miscellany of plants, and by the accompanying sonority of the bees, I repair to the kitchen for a glass of wine, and return to sit on one of the old wooden, garden benches from the lodge, beneath the bee busy shrub, my spirits eased by the melodious notes of a thrush  and the over- arching sky of softly and exquisitely layered cloud. Gazing upon the beauty of the cloudscape before my eyes, I arrive once more at the realisation that I do, after all, wish to return to the making of drawings of clouds, however difficult the first endeavours may be.

Dusk is falling. The clouds above me are dove grey, arranged in folds of exceeding delicacy, deckle edged, indescribably subtle. I determine to re-apply myself to the attempt of rendering this fragile world of vapourous forms with pencil, on paper.

Suddenly the bees are silent, for, as if at a signal, they have departed the garden. My wine glass is empty. I re-enter the house, strengthened in resolve, at least for the present, quietly satisfied with the written work I have accomplished during the course of the afternoon, and with a profound sense of gratitude towards the bees, the garden, the sky and the thrush, for it's generously uplifting evening song.