Author Laurel Lindström

What matters?

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Fractured pictures crack and crumble happy moments into very sad ones: persistent awareness of a dear friend’s deteriorating illness; news of an old friend’s patchy health; some random stranger’s sobbing sorrow on the bus; and an author friend’s terminal diagnosis. You sit and try to take it, hold it, add it to the pile of horrid things that have happened. You wonder at the whelm of sadness distant friends and families, strangers are fighting. You wonder how many more bricks the tower can take before it tumbles. And then as you pause to wallow in sadness, there’s the fascination of a fly’s personal hygiene. She’s taking an earthbound pause in her busy schedule. She’s stopped to check her wings for dust and her feet for spider web remnants. She’s darting back and forth, taking tiny shots at the table’s surface with her long sucky tongue. She’s testing, seeking, looking for something she won’t find and then she’s back up into the air. The debris on her wings and feet, the fascination of the table top, the moment where it mattered so very much, it’s all gone. Fleeting. Over.

I guess sad news of failing heath and imminent death comes more often with lengthening years. Getting older means to expect more news of the fragile and their vulnerabilities, more capitulation. For many, surrender comes with age and yet determination to ignore the legacy of the years can also be unwavering. Eventually the years may be many or not. Either way they will win and yet when they are many so are the memories, what’s left of others. The pictures of faces and places, people and friends keep dancing in imagination and dozing dreams and they are no less real, no less present, no less in need of our attention.

It’s been just over five years since our dad moved on to somewhere noisy and smokey and jazzy and filled with pretty women and brilliant musicians. His children, six of us, didn’t all grow up with him for all of his parenting years, but his influence on us was profound and enduring. A man of intense focus and commitment, but not always to everything and everyone at the same time. Apart from the music of course. A man of brilliance, renown and fame who was always surprised that anyone was interested in him or his achievements. And they were many as you may be aware. We miss him still and every day I see his smile. I hear his guffaw and smell the scent of sweat and second hand smoke settling on the pillow when he was home from a gig and came into our bedroom to kiss us goodnight, deep in the darkness and us deep in sleep. A snatch of a scene, and there is so much still to say.

And riding again this morning, lively horses and too much bounce reminding us that the getting old stuff is absolutely all in your head. Go with it. Push on. Stride along. Don’t forget to steer. Renewed power in the hips, so riding with back again as well as hands, balance and legs. That and faith of course. It works, but it’s a reminder that getting old doesn’t have to be so bad. And how you deal with it is up to you. Our dad was still performing at 87 and still filling in gigs in his diary and planning his solos in his head, which is where he mostly lived. Imagination isn’t just about denial, it’s also about life and living and reaching out for what happens next.

The sad news that seems to keep coming can‘no’t be ignored, but it can be a reminder that there is always something coming next, good or bad, for someone somewhere, for you. Our time will surely outrun our imaginations, but in the meantime keep believing in who and what you are. Keep sharing. There’s only one of you, and you are surely loved. What more do you want?

Care Don’t Care Don’t

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

At various, usually demanding, points in life it’s hard to take things seriously. And yet you recognise that understanding how you reached that point is a serious matter. You see the paradox that is not giving a toss, yet you’re wanting to understand why it is that you don’t. So you sit there in tremulous balance, Scylla and Charybdis-like, wondering what it is you truly care about and questioning if it really matters. You consider the people, the things, the seasons, the strangers who’s lives are surely more interesting than yours, your pets and favourite books, whether 90% cocoa chocolate is tastier than 85% and if so is it 5% tastier or more. At the same time you wonder why it is that you don’t take any of what’s going on seriously, why you really don’t care. It’s not an all the time thing, it’s a point-in-your-life thing but it’s limiting and debilitating and it gets in the way of contentment and happiness.

This taking things seriously paradox can hit at any time, so don’t think it’s about getting old because it isn’t. Apart from anything else remember that the old only get old if they give up on life or allow life to give up on them. This is separate from what happens to the body, you understand. The body’s constantly deteriorating and all that we do is about slowing or avoiding that deterioration and eventual collapse. The body’s always going to be letting you down one way or another: it’s not the body it’s the mind that makes you old. We all know people in their twenties who’ve the mindset of a 55 year old. 

Not taking things seriously when you ought to hits at any time, from childhood through the approach of life’s end. Maybe at that point not taking things seriously is handy, but before then it’s far more of a hindrance. It gets in the way of committment. For example, when your parents let you down because they separate and leave you alone to deal with what’s happened by yourself, you really should take it seriously. You’re told to just get on with it, so in a state of confusion and distress you do. But you can only do so by telling yourself this massive change isn’t serious, not really. Change now is not relevant because the future is just a flicker of a moment someone once told you about. Things will get back to normal soon because this isn’t serious, it’s temporary.

But when childhood trauma hits, it can’t be understood or effectively processed without someone explaining it. If no one bothers to explain it that surely means it doesn’t matter. Whether or not you should, you trust the world around you, so if it mattered someone would tell you. If no-one explains anything then whatever’s going on doesn’t matter at all. What’s happening is deeply shocking and is having a serious affect on your life, but you can’t see it. It isn’t really there. But this is not temporary.

And then there’s the time a person comes into your life who takes you very seriously indeed, but you really don’t understand why. Maybe you should take them seriously but you don’t. Instead you idly ponder their obsession. Is it desire and sex? Is it some fear of being alone they have? Is it their need to nest, to settle down and build a new, family-centric life? When you think about these things, horrified at how close and tight they’re erecting the railings, you can’t believe someone would want to be so intensely serious. Not now, not with so much left to explore. But the idle pondering leads nowhere, and the answers to the questions are uninteresting. Attempts to make you be serious are really not serious, they are trivial, gossamer, someone else’s gig and they don’t involve you. Yet they do. When you wonder about the why of this, you have no answer so you don’t bother. You leave it and you move on, oblivious to the hearts you’ve broken. When in some other context you think about them again, all you remember is that someone else’s feelings might have been trampled. But you tell yourself it wasn’t your fault and don’t see the broken heart, not for a very long time. 

And then there’s trying to be a grown-up in those final months of your degree course. You possibly recognise that the season for learning has shifted and life is going in some different and exciting unseen direction. The original goal and its process are no longer serious, no longer worth the cost. You’re tempted to ditch the whole endeavour, or maybe only almost ditch it with some sort of postponement, a less ambitious goal. But the paradox rears its head again and you struggle to care. If  common sense prevails, you come to understand that you mustn’t give up. You recognise that all the loans, the working double shifts, the scrimping and going without, the hours alone with textbooks, other peoples’ ideas and endless essay writing, the opportunity costs, are indeed serious. You vaguely understand that somewhere deep in the layers that don’t take anything seriously there might be something else. You get that none of the huge effort can be ditched without impact. You fear you’ll be left with a sense of futility, of pointlessness and this you do take seriously. You see that giving up will pollute everything you ever do going forward, so you don’t give up. You make a profound commitment and finish the degree and don’t notice the change in you for years.

There are many such moments in an individual life. The moments when you’ve tried hard to be serious and it hasn’t worked out. Relationships, jobs, shared excursions and holidays that turn sour, deaths; it’s an endless list. Your choice is to keep trying to take things seriously or not, to take a high-risk chance on random and directionless drift. Avoiding committment might require extricating yourself from a key relationship, family, job, friendships, but the wreckage could be truly terrible. And the wreckage is not temporary. Once again the paradox.

Creating wreckage that you understand but don’t want to take seriously is inevitable, unavoidable, but it’s on a sliding scale. Sometimes escape matters more and this lets you not take the wreckage seriously. Successful escape will leave you with another inevitability, being terrified that taking things seriously again will once more entrap you. And it will. That’s the point of seriousness, of commitment, of not being temporary. And that’s the point of not understanding why you can’t embrace it. The paradox keeps on driving us to the next and the next and the next encounter. It might be a person, a book or song, a horse, cat or a hamster. Or it might just be the face staring back at you from a bright and shining rain washed window. It’s daring you to get with the programme and stop trashing what you love.

When Brenda met Luke

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

The day was his he decided, his to do as he liked, without bothering with her, without the strain of thinking up new transgressions, new excuses for her punishments. By the time Brenda was wrestling with the Asda app at Gatwick airport he was showered and had changed his clothes. He microwaved a steak and ale pie and mash and settled in front of the television with his cigarettes and a lager. She didn’t come when he called for another, or the next time. Nor did she come to empty his ashtray or bring him a cup of tea and some biscuits. She didn’t come, so he found his phone, plugged it in to charge and sent another abusive message, with many more to follow. Drunk and angry he told himself, “stupid fuckin’ cow’s gonna cop it. Bitch.” It never occured to him that Brenda might have gone for good. He told the television once again what he would do to her when she came back. The television said “he’s the man hoping to strike it, he’s having a word with his captain” and Luke spat back. “I’ll bloody strike it, no word with no captain”. And lost in the game for a few minutes he hears the television say “touch from Lampard was of an accurate nature” and says back “… be more than a fucking touch, the cunt”. Luke watches and the television draws him in and he forgets about Brenda. But when the game is over and they’re chatting about who did what and something about maintaining a position and through a drunken animation he saw Brenda when he first met her. She’d brought her old banger to the garage for its MOT and Luke saw straightaway that passive anxiety, her innate fear of everything and her fascination as she watched him roll out from under the car, lying there looking up at her both of them wide eyed, but only one of them thinking, this might be the one. He wanted a wife. He was bored of all the girls wanting him, wanting him different, wanting more, wanting. He wanted an old-fashioned woman, a woman who would look after him, not expect too much, not believe that there was anything real behind those oh so male shoulders, the bulging thighs and his musky scents.

Brenda had been flattered, amazed that this gorgeous man, a man with a known reputation as a flirt in the village had shown even the slightest bit of interest in her. He had started politely, offering to drop the car to her once it was ready. “If you could give me a lift back, that would be nice”, as he flashed a smile and ran his hand through his shining black hair. It was probably the only time in his life that he would ever use the word nice in a sentence addressed to Brenda.

A couple of dates in the local pub, collecting her from work at the local council, and he knew he was almost there with this young girl. Her parents were dead and she lived with her Aunty and Uncle neither of whom ever smiled. He didn’t know if they liked him or not. It was hard to tell. Brenda never smiled either, except when she talked about the bloody civil service exam. That was the only worry for Luke, that she would go ahead and follow that path. It was a path that lead to too much power. Money for a start, she’d be earning but much as this tempted him it was easy enough to persuade her that all he wanted was to have her at home, to know that she would be there when he came home from work, to know that they would be together every evening, all weekends and that they could go on holidays together. “You know you’re the one for me, you do know that don’t you Brenda?” It had been in the Spread Eagle, his favourite pub because of its high ceilings and cheap sometimes flat beer. Brenda had remarked on the sticky carpets and Luke had nearly lost it but hid his anger with a slurp of beer and a glance at the dartboard. “Fancy a game of darts?” He had said, and although Brenda was rubbish at the game he couldn’t help but be impressed how fast she was at scoring, from the 501 start to the finishing triple 19, every shot was scored in a second. He liked that the other blokes playing were also impressed, at least at first he liked it. But then a muttered “You don’t wanna show off like that darlin’, no, you don’t do you?” And Brenda looked wide eyed back at her hero, who had won four games straight, and said “no, no of course not.” She took her time with the arithmetic that evening and always, whenever they were in the pub and she was watching Luke play darts with his mates.

Lost Fragments

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

The concrete and tarmac. A scent of privet and petrol fumes. The shouts of children playing on a large tyre hanging from a tall tree on a frayed rope. The children would swing out over pavement and street and dared each other to take their go when a lorry was approaching. And no one came out of the silent houses to say no. There were no grown-ups around to see the children as they flew, as they urged each other to go higher and higher on the tyre. Stevie swung furthest and most often. She was the biggest child and she looked like a sad Snow White with shiney dark hair, alabaster skin and a rose red pouty mouth. Sometimes she had rose red cheeks and bruised eyes too. But she never said why and none of the other children ever asked.

It was the school holidays and the men were at work and the women were doing washing or cooking or cleaning or whatever it was that women did, whilst Stevie and the others sailed the molten summer air. Stevie’s mother was one of the women and she had bruises of her own to ignore. Back then they didn’t call what housewives did work. Women’s labours didn’t count as work and a swift backhander was often the pay. Stevie’s mother, Patsy, had a wide smile when she wanted, a straight even nose turned up at the end. The pixie nose sat under roguish eyes that sometimes glittered with sly glee. But not often. The children didn’t notice her eyes or understand that her smile was mostly lost behind a face tensed up with concentration as she dumped mashed potatoes and cheap sausages onto twelve chipped plates. Her sister, similarly worn and scuffed looking, filled plastic beakers with weak orange squash from a tired plastic jug that didn’t sit straight on the table. Her pouring artistry made sure each of the twelve beakers held the exact same amount. The sisters had short wiry hair and short tatty skirts, with worn slip-on slippers on their feet. Bare legs sported odd little bruises, sometimes not so little. They spoke rarely but when they did it was with aggression, their tones defensive, guarded against the world.

At some point, Stevie’s mother’s voice would shriek from the house to call the children in to dinner. That’s what they called it, not lunch. Dinner. Her voice would screech out once only and the children would react as one, a single ragged tangle hurrying into the house, blinking at the sudden dark of indoors. They were noisy and clumsy, bumping over one another, rushed and excited desperate to get their favourite place at the table. The boys wanted to be together and the girls were fussy about which girl they sat next to. Sweaty and pink urchins pushing at one another, elbows out, feet reaching under the table to land random kicks.

Patsy’s call to the table sawed loud and scared the birds. Mostly the birds were London pigeons blackened with city dust, idling in trees also blackened with London dust. The year was circa sixty something, London in the last century when the clean air act was still new and air that was supposed to be clean was still being washed in the rain which loaded endless soot into the raindrops. And the rain fell on the trees, the buildings and the bushes and grass to leave a murky slick of black. Concrete was charcoal streaked but the tarmac was black already so when it rained the roads and pavements shone with oily rainbows and the promise of what might come next.

Stevie and her comrades would sit at the table grubby and rowdy and no one would be told more than once to wash their hands or be quiet. No point. They were a mismatched crew being babysat by Stevie’s mum and Stevie’s aunty. Two of the children, little girls with a pretty mother who had an eye for clothes, could see that Stevie’s mum and Stevie’s aunty were old looking. But they knew that their mum and Stevie’s mum were friends. They could see the colourless ugliness of the short A line skirts and battered slippers, and they could observe strangely pointy breasts held tight under thin unmatched twinsets. No pearls.

These women had rough red hands and lined faces with little space for joy. Between them they had six children with six more joining in the school holidays. The paying extras were: a pair being raised by a single father who worked for British Rail, waving a flag; a pair from a family where both parents went out to work, her in an office and him in a band; and a pair from a couple who lived above a shop in a flat full of cardboard boxes filled with knock-off stuff and fake brands.

They knew the names, but the children were shapeless to the sisters and for the children the sisters were anonymous, like most grown-ups. The arrangment was transactional with no expectations other than that the single dad and the working woman would fetch their children at the end of the day. Sometimes the man who lived above the flat would collect his boys. He was well-fed and jolly with a large nose, jovial and with an air about him that was slightly conniving. He was helpful with whatever you might want, but it came at a price. Sometimes his wife would come early and sit at the kitchen table smoking and smirking. Plump with deepset calculating eyes, she pulled her bleached blonde hair that always looked dirty into a ratty pony tail. She enjoyed watching her friends doing the washing up and peeling spuds as she told Patsy and Audrey about the latest goings on at the market, the Liebfraumilch her husband had got in stock and how delicious it was. She liked that word, picked up from an overheard conversation at her husband’s stall. She reminded Patsy and Audrey of the richness of her wonderful life, that she didn’t really need to park her kids with them. But her boys liked playing all day with the other children. Of course she made sure it was known that she knew Patsy and Audrey needed the money.

The single man had lost his wife, somewhere near the hospital after their second son was born. They were on the way to the bus stop and she’d turned back. “I’ve left my slippers,” she’d said. It was the last time he saw her. This was not known to him as he watched her new red coat change colour when the sun came out, sparkling the wet pavements. So he waited at the bus stop with the new baby in its pram, holding his other son’s hand until little Robert got tired and wanted to be picked up. Mr Walters went back to the hospital and they looked uncomfortable as they explained she’d gone but had left him a note. The note was hastily scrawled, yet certain and definite. It said “I’ve had it Ron. I didn’t want the first and now I don’t want either of them.” Bewildered he had shown the note to the duty nurse in the maternity ward and she’d shrugged awkwardly and told him he should leave. “That would be best for you and for the children. You’ve no reason to be here Mr Walters. You should be taking them home for their tea.” Rather pointlessly she added “it’s stopped raining now.” The duty nurse had handed him a bag containing two bottles and some baby formula. As a last minute concession she added a sympathetic smile and the encouraging hope that “Mrs Walters will be home soon I’m sure.” Except Mrs Walters wasn’t home soon. Not soon, not ever. She never did come home and she never saw him or her boys again and she was glad of it.

Patsy and Audrey never spoke of Mrs Walters and weren’t even sure if she was Mrs Walters or someone with a completely different name. They weren’t even sure that she’d been part of their world except for the boys who looked a lot like each other and nothing like their father. Occasionally Robert talked about her, saying that she was the most beautiful lady in the world and that she cried a lot. He cried a lot too so he thought he must be a lot like her.

Those city summers were long, loud, dusty and chaotic. There was never quite enough to eat and the food was always just sort of stuff on a plate. This was understood. It was expected that there would be minimalist corned beef hash that was mashed potatoes laced with stringy pink meat. On the plate it looked like a swirl of white plaster of Paris daubed with a brush with a hint of pink on it. Reliably there would be fish fingers, soft and yellow also with mash. Or sausages made mostly with rusk and stuff that’s now banned. Easy on the teeth, flavourless and nutritionless. Sometimes there would be a grisly stew with dead carrots and onions floating alongside unchewable bits of meat in watery brown gravy. By the time this made it to the plate, the gravy was going cold and its greasy surface was misting into a soft grey congealant. Sometimes there would be chips and always there would be orange or lemon squash in plastic beakers. The hungry children rushed and jostled and elbowed each other for no other reason than it was more interesting than sitting still. Except for the two little girls with the pretty mother, the children didn’t notice what they were eating, thrusting forkfuls at speed into their greedy pink mouths. The two little girls pushed their food around their plates, glancing sideways at one another, and slowly finishing so that they could have the Angel Delight (pink, yellow or brown) that was for afters.

At the single dad’s funeral in a seaside town when the children were all grown up, no one could remember the swinging tyre or the corned beef hash or afters. They remembered not much at all, except each others’ names, held in pairs according to who the children belonged to. They remembered the pretty mother bringing sweets when she came to collect her daughters. Lost in the mess of years there wasn’t much left to talk about. The trials and tribulations of adulthood had usurped memory’s shreds. No one cared about the days where children got smacked and ate what was put in front of them, allergies be damned. No one cared, no one questioned and no one remembered anymore. 

Beecraft

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

“Do you know what you’re doing?” The beekeeper looked at her, trying to ignore her shape in a beesuit. Tight gathering at the waist. Makeshift belt with hanging beekeeping tools, a thick string with knotted loops. Penny answered, “not really; I thought it time to try. I’ve watched you so often.” The beehive at the bottom of Penny’s garden had been in place some weeks, ever since a swarm arrived in her chimney. A tall, wiry beekeeper had dealt with it.

The plan had been that the bees would be moved elsewhere. Unawares, she’d found random reasons why they should stay a little longer. Mr Westerham kept coming back. Sweating, she was shoving the thin metal edge of her hive tool under the hive roof to loosen it. She’d seen him do this many times. From afar it hadn’t looked hard. Despite her new, impenetrable beesuit she felt less confident than expected. She prodded at the propolis seal bees had worked into the gap. It was hard to break. Her special gloves were too big; their rubberised layer stopped her fingers moving properly. She shoved harder and heard the cracking sound of propolis coming away from the two surfaces it glued together. She loosened the hive’s roof and beaming, dropped the tool to grasp and lift off the roof with both hands. 

“Oh,” she whispered, stepping foot to foot, looking about, blank: what should happen next? He reached over, took the roof, leant into her warmth, sensing her worry. He put the roof against the hive stand and stepped back, saying “now do the same with the crown board, it’s much easier.” Then he turned and walked away. “Yes” she said, “crown board,” watching his long lean strides move up the garden. She pried off the thin wooden layer sitting between roof and bees, and put it on the ground.

She was in the breath of thousands of honey bees, the complex mingling of propolis, honey, pollen. Now beesuited, Mr Westerham was back, peering over her shoulder into the hive, his scent blending with the bees’. In unexpected light the bees were momentarily agitated. Their sound rose loud and a little angry before settling slowly back to a steady hum. “What next?” she said as he drew in closer. He took her hive tool in hand, stretching for the first of several frames hanging in the hive’s top box. As he reached over she felt herself pulled slightly closer to him as the tool on her belt rose up. She breathed a drowsing blend, exhilarating yet soporific. His hand on hers guided the tool to loosen the frame as he whispered “you can take one side, I’ll get the other.” Together they lifted the frame, heavy with summer’s honey. Her small warm gasp. They two, holding a full frame of honey, watching bees calm and busily shaping spaces for winter stores and new bees. He found himself held still in a space he didn’t quite recognise, beekeeper or not.

The Bees in the Chimney – 3

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

“Do you know what you’re doing?” The beekeeper looked at her with raised eyebrows and tried to ignore how unexpectedly sexy she looked in a beesuit. The tight gathering at the waist; a makeshift belt had hanging from it a hive tool, a bee brush and a rag. The belt was a length of thick string with loops she’d fashioned into it. Penny didn’t look up but answered, “no, not really, but I thought it time to try. I’ve watched you so often.” The beehive at the bottom of Penny’s garden had been in place for some weeks now, ever since the swarm had arrived in her chimney and she’d had the local bee wrangler come to deal with them. She hadn’t expected someone quite so tall and wiry and she found Mr Westerham a little intimidating.

The plan had been that once settled the bees would be moved elsewhere, say to his house or to a local apiary. But he’d kept coming to check on them and unawares she’d found random reasons why they should stay a little longer. And here they were. And here he was too. Again. She’d worried about the weather at one point, but he never did get to the bottom of what the weather had to do with it. Bees are bees. They go with whatever the weather is, wherever they are.

Sweating slightly, she was shoving the thin metal edge of the hive tool under the hive roof to get it loose enough to remove. She’d seen him do this many times. From afar it hadn’t looked that hard. Despite her new, super impenetrable beesuit she was less confident than she had expected. She prodded cautiously at the proposis seal the bees had worked into every possible gap. It was much harder to break than she’d expected. Her special gloves were a bit too big and their rubberised layer meant her fingers couldn’t move properly. She shoved a little harder with the hive tool and heard the cracking sound of propolis coming away from the two surfaces it was gluing together. She loosened the hive’s roof and with a beaming smile dropped her hive tool and grasped the roof’s edges with both hands and lifted it. 

“Oh,” she said breathless, stepping from foot to foot, looking about her, her mind a blank as to what should happen next. He reached over and took the roof from her, leaning into her warmth and sensing her worry. He leant the roof against the hive stand and stepped back, saying “now you’ve got to do the same with the crown board, but that’s much easier.” And he turned and headed back to his car. “Yes” she said, “the crown board,” watching him move up the garden on long lean strides. She pried off the thin layer of wood sitting between the roof and the bees, and less stressed put it on the ground against the roof.

She was held in the breath of thousands of honey bees, their propolis, honey, pollen a complex mingling of summer intoxications. Now in his beesuit Mr Westerham was back, peering over her shoulder into the hive. The scent of him reached slowly into her senses. In the unexpected light the bees were momentarily agitated and their sound rose loud and a little angry before settling slowly  back to a steady hum. “What next?” she said as he drew in closer, taking her hive tool in hand to reach for the first of the several frames hanging in the top box of the hive. As he reached over she felt herself pulled slightly closer to him as the tethered tool reached top stretch. She felt herself breathe in a drowsing blend, at once exhilarating and soporific. His hand on hers guided the hive tool to loosen the frame as he whispered “you take one side and I’ll get the other.” The clumsy gloves didn’t help, but together they lifted a small wooden rectangle, heavy with summer, heavy with honey and she let out a small gasp amazed at what she was sharing. Standing still, holding a frame full of honey and watching the bees calm and busy, shaping their spaces for winter stores and for new bees. He too was held still in a space he didn’t quite recognise, beekeeper or not.

Alternative but highly effective therapy

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Feeling overwhelmed by the world’s current horrors can lead one to strange behaviours and weird gratitudes. These responses tend to arrive unannounced. They’re part of our desire and inclination to find hope in any situation, any adverse circumstance. Like unexpectedly finding a welcome counterpoint to the Orange Half-wit’s capacity for stupidity. He’s taught an evil regime they can monetise a vital asset. How clever is that? And yet you can hope, maybe, that it will help said evil-doers to engage more positively with the rest of us? What arrived unannounced into the heart of these gloomy thoughts for me, was the unexpected joy of yet another listen to Kate Bush’s debut single from her debut album, The Kick Inside.

In 1978, when Wuthering Heights (sorry about the ads) came out, Kate Bush was 19, a wild fragile being swirling about on Top of the Pops to change so much. She knocked ABBA’s Take a Chance on Me from the top of the UK chart and Wuthering Heights stayed at number 1 for four weeks. Apart from the marvellous musical innovation, Kate Bush gave us a song that is probably the BEST therapy for dealing with our terrible times. Find a recording and have a go. Suggestions for what to do and not do are below, but first some background.

This mad ballad apparently has many lines echoing the novel, making it wonderfully gothic. It’s a first person narrative with the dead heroine of Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, begging her lover, Heathcliff, to let her come back to him. Despite their intense bond (she says “I am Heathcliff” at one point in the book), she’d bogged off and married someone else. Then she died and now wants to make everything right, scratching at his bedroom window and the like. Bit late now dear. Instead Cathy has to do as Heathcliff tells her somewhere in the novel: “You said I killed you, haunt me then!” Powerful stuff.

The immense range of this song is perfect if you need to get things off your chest. It’s like carefully choreographed scream therapy, from the deep lows through to the wild ethereal screeching. And of course Ms Bush’s performance has the added dimension of an English accent. This has to be appealing for Americans who want to use the song as for therapy purposes. They can do a faux English accent with complete abandon and inaccuracy and no one will laugh.

Speaking of choreography, Kate Bush also gave us some hysterical moves to try out, thrashing therapy if you will. Dancing to this song is hard but stalking about the kitchen or living room with the occasional leap and a long floating scarf is entirely possible. You can pull all the faces, make your eyes super-starey and wave your arms about frantically. You can stretch your arms and legs out as far as they’ll go and wiggle your fingers and toes until they cramp up. As you sing along, remember to march madly up and down, but don’t be tempted into doing cartwheels unless you’re in a padded cell already. Even if you can’t do any of this, you can surely manage the old-person-at-a-wedding dance moves which are a fine replacement for youthful athleticism.

Singing and prancing about to this song is deeply satisfying. It leaves you puffed out, slightly exhausted and deeply relieved, de-stressed and maybe slightly dizzy. This is a good thing. This kind of therapy reminds us that something more is always coming, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be more of the same horrible. We’re reminded to trust in the unexpected and the intangible. Sometimes life brings us wonderful surprises and even if it doesn’t, somewhere some artist will add light when we most need it. You can find the lyrics to Wuthering Heights here: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/katebush/wutheringheights.html

In from the cold

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

There was somewhere in Len’s remote memory the image of a girl. Or maybe she was actually a woman, a being fully grown, an adult? But no, Len preferred the girl image instead. The girl he was thinking about would be a woman now he understood, but the memory of her from his schooldays was far more engaging. She was winsome and pretty, with mouse brown hair and the occasional spot amongst her freckles. Maybe he’d see her again sometime and she’d remember him. Such were Len’s musings as he ambled along on his dog walk, smoking his eighth cigarette of the day, unaware of the scent of early bluebells drifting from the woodland floor as he trampled them underfoot. His dog was off somewhere and Len’s big boots raised soft divots from the saturated ground.

The trees swayed and shivered in a chill spring wind as Len’s dog came bounding up and turned almost immediately away again. He took a long drag and fancied he saw a girl come slowly into focus. Len’s memory flashed so many convincing images that he almost called out to her. It was as well he didn’t because the girl that Len could see wasn’t a girl at all, definitely not a teenage girl and not even a young woman. The person who came into view was muddy, slightly overweight and dressed in too-tight jodpurs and top boots. An ugly crash hat was crammed down over her brow, its forlorn silk hanging wet and loose. This was definitely a woman, older by far than the pictures in his head now evaporating into wispy scraps and fragments. Noting the mud and that she wasn’t walking quite straight, Len called “are you alright?” As she approached he saw a tear stained face and the drooping silk. He could see it was attached to the helmet and wondered what it was for.

“No I’m not alright,” she said crossly and then more politely. “Have you seen a chestnut horse come this way? Filthy dirty? We fell over in a boggy puddle that was deeper than it looked. She took off”. Dozey Bitch was fawning at the woman’s knees and she pulled off a glove to fuss with the dog’s ears. She waited for some response from the man who seemed to Melanie to be a few pennies short of a pound. He might have been trying to parse what she had said as he puffed his cigarette. Too impatient to care Melanie decided he was probably just a bit simple. “Have you seen a loose horse pass this way?” she said slightly more loudly and with suppressed impatience. He wasn’t short of pennies, but in the wake of his nostalgic musings Len was indeed struggling to keep up. He watched his fickle dog make a new friend and mumbled something about horses not really being his thing, but that Dozey Bitch was enjoying herself. He stumbled forward to reclaim the dog apologising, “no, sorry, no sign of a horse, but we’ve only just come onto this path”. He tried to be helpful adding “your horse maybe headed up to the fields, maybe it followed the light?” He’d heard somewhere that animals and people went for the light or downhill when they were lost. He wasn’t sure if it was made up or not. He was sure that he’d headed downhill when he’d started losing track of his life. Perhaps it made some sort of sense for horses too. 

Melanie considered this a not unreasonable suggestion and revised her opinion of the slow-witted man, upgrading him from stupid to simply vague. She glanced about looking for where the most light might be, standing in silence with the man and his dog for a moment. Len couldn’t bear the empty quiet and started to move along saying “we’ll be off and we’ll keep an eye out”. In an effort to be helpful he added “maybe you should head up that way”. And as he turned and pointed away towards the fields at the edge of the wood, they saw the golden outline of mud splattered horse. It was nosing at a patch of grass, its reins on the ground and a stirrup flung over onto the wrong side of the saddle. The horse gave its nose a blow as it looked up, noted their presence and then went back to grazing.

Melanie was beaming. “I don’t suppose you’d mind just standing here while I catch her would you? I don’t want her to think she’s being chased. She can be a bit flighty sometimes.” “Not at all” Len said wondering if the horse was looking flighty or not. She just looked like a horse covered in mud and eating grass. He admired her tail floating sideways as the chilly breeze gave it a lazy push. Len looked on as Melanie walked carefully towards her horse. Something in her movement brought back the image of that girl he knew at school. It was the same image that had been floating in his brain when he’d seen this horsey woman from afar, and past bled into present. He watched her approach the horse and catch hold of the rein as she gave the horse a little pat. He continued to watch as she peered about looking for something that would work as a mounting block. Len wondered what she was doing. Horse people. He didn’t understand that the days when Melanie could just vault into the saddle from a standing start were no longer hers. They belonged to a time long ago, to her teens. And the times when she could put her foot into the stirrup and spring up into the saddle were also long gone. She remembered sometimes that they ended somewhere around the time of her second child’s fourth birthday. Much ended at around that time, although it had taken some years for Melanie to notice.

With nothing to use as a step, Melanie had no option but to ask for help. “I don’t suppose you could give me a leg up could you? My name is Melanie by the way, and this is Rizzo.”  It took Len a moment to understand that Rizzo was the horse and not an imaginary friend, as he raised a hand in greeting. He pulled Dozey Bitch back in time to stop her planting a couple of paws on Rizzo’s foreleg. “Len. And this is Dozey Bitch, DB for short. Happy to help. Not sure if I can but I’ll try, a first for everything right? What do I do?”

Rizzo and Dozey Bitch were giving each other little nose to nose kisses, but the mare was less inclined to get up close and personal with Len. He had a strange scent about him and he held onto the dog a little too tightly. At least that’s what Rizzo had got from the dog in their brief conversation. Melanie still could see nothing she could stand on where overhanging trees didn’t get in the way of her swing, or where there would be room for Rizzo to stand while Melanie climbed aboard. The wind was getting colder, she was wet and her hands were freezing. What had started as a glorious excursion in the early spring sunshine was turning miserable. Len was still there standing with a dead fag end in his fingers and a gormless smile on his face. It was a kind face Melanie noted.

He repeated that he was “willing to have a go, but what should I do?” “Ok. What you have to do is to cup your hands, so that I can put my foot into them like they’re a stirrup. “Right” said Len observing the muddiness of her booted foot. “Then on the count of three, you give me a boost and I get into the saddle. Does that make sense?” Len pondered this. Given his twenty a day habit, total lack of upper body strength and Melanie’s general bulk, he should have said that it made no sense whatsoever. But with remnants of his teenage fantasies tangling his memory and his manly pride in play, Len did not say this. Instead he crushed his defunct dog-end into his pocket and found himself bellowing with considerable enthusiasm “Perfect. Absolutely. Let’s get this done”. Melanie looked at him askance as he crouched down and leading her horse away took Dozey Bitch to a nearby tree. She looped the lead over a low branch and knotted it tight. She then came back to Len, still bent over, positioned Rizzo closer to him and waited. He became aware that Melanie wanted to give him instructions, so he uncurled and stood upright. “This is how you need to stand and how you hold your hands,” she said, crouching down in a half-squat with her hands cupped in front of her, arms extended, elbows slightly bent.” 

As she showed him what to do, Len was reminded of how rugby players get into position for a scrum and remembered that once upon a time, he played rugby for his school. He could even run quite fast. But that was before the fags and the stress of business, marriage and kids, relocations and missteps, all the things that made him feel so very old. How did he get such a distance from the Len who played rugby, the Len besotted with a spotty teenage girl whose image had unexpectedly floated up from the bluebells on chilled spring air.

He cleared his throat with a little harrumph and looked to the side. He made a vague engineer’s calculation of the total load, the height he would have to lift up to and the duration of the carry. “How hard can it be,” he said with a laugh as he approached the mare and went to half-heartedly pat her neck. She immediately swung away from him, a suspicious look in her eye. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll have hold of the reins and keep her head facing in your direction.” Rizzo, well aware of the entertainment value in swinging away from Melanie when she tried to mount, understood that this new version of the game might even be better. Rizzo could smell the stranger’s concern mingling with his peculiar bodily stink and the sweet aromas of bluebells and aconites. Melanie was waiting. Len nodded and stretched up manfully ready for a go at the required half-squat. “Let’s give it a try shall we?” she said trying to sound encouraging. Melanie was getting cold and the mud was drying on her clothes, as well as on her horse. It would be too chilly to hose Rizzo down once they got home so she’d need to be brushed, she thought crossly. “Ready?” she said plastering a bright smile on her face. She gathered up her reins taking care to hold the nearside one a little shorter and half turned towards Len who shuffled closer, his hands ready to take Melanie’s left foot. But he wasn’t quite close enough and as Melanie placed her muddy left boot into his cupped hands the mare took a small step sideways and Melanie swung over into empty space as Len tumbled forwards into her ample rear. He let go of Melanie’s foot and fell to his knees as she also fell while DB barked her encouragement. Unperturbed Rizzo rested a hind foot and gave her head a little shake. Melanie tried hard to be patient and not irritated, as she helped Len back onto his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m so sorry. What did I do wrong? I’ll get it right this time.” His voice was shaking a bit, as he searched for the someone lost in his life’s maze who was the man who could do this. Surely he was still there. Surely he could be sufficiently bold to stand close enough to a horse to help a lady get back into the saddle. Trying hard not to hiss as she spoke, Melanie pointed out that he needed a) to be sideways on to the horse and b) close enough to said horse that his shoulder was almost touching her. She added that c) he should give her, Melanie, the biggest boost he could muster. And that he should let go of her foot once Melanie was airborne. 

These instructions Len repeated, a), b), c) trying to joke that c), a), b) probably wouldn’t work. Melanie gave him a blank look and began to think that walking home was an attractive option, despite the lowering sky and the oncoming dusk. One more try though, so they got into position for the second attempt. Rizzo’s reins were more tightly held and Len’s back more tightly bent, his legs more firmly planted. Melanie got her foot into his hands once more and felt an upward boost at best described as pathetic. It got her ample bosom only as high as Rizzo’s saddle, and she had no prospect at all of casting a leg across the horse’s back. Dropping back to the ground Melanie noticed that Len was wheezing as he tried to make light of the second failure. “Well, at least she stood still this time,” he observed encouragingly. “Let’s give it another go, I think I’ve got the movement now”. 

Len crouched once more, braced and ready to put every bit of his middle-aged unfit self into the heaveho. On the third attempt Len lifted her so forcefully that Melanie shot up into the air and came down hard onto her horse’s back. A much surprised Rizzo shot forward in alarm almost unseating her rider and knocking Len once again to the ground. Melanie lost hold of one of the reins so Rizzo, pulled to the left and circled back towards Len now on his knees coughing and spluttering. He struggled upright in time to feel Melanie’s foot hit square and hard in his chest, as she reached for her stirrup. An epic coughing fit turned his face a shade of sunset crimson and he dropped his hands to his knees in an effort to get back his breath. Her stirrup, reins, control and composure regained, Melanie pulled up her horse, turned her and returned to her new friend at a measured jog. His face still puce but his breathing getting steadier, Len was wrestling with the very tight knot Melanie had put in his dog’s lead. He had almost stopped coughing and wheezing and vowed aloud that he should stop smoking. “Yes you should,” Melanie agreed as she turned towards home. “Thanks again for your help. Are you sure you’re alright?” “Fine. Fine. Glad you’re back on board” he wheezed. Len clutched at Dozey Bitch’s lead and headed for home. He watched as Rizzo, carried her bouncing mistress away and out of sight. He leant over to cough with more vigour but the cold air was making his lungs hurt. He let DB off the lead and saw her head off at speed after Rizzo. DB ignored Len’s feeble calls and he soon reverted to his coughing. The afternoon chill reached into his over extended lungs, slicing like razor blades. Len tried to find the space where he’d been a mere half an hour ago, calmly smoking and lost in the memory of a teenage crush and youth’s warm glow. The sound of his wheezing reminded Len that he wasn’t dead yet and that he probably shouldn’t try to hurry after his dog. He even wondered if she might follow Rizzo home, and that Melanie might try to bring her back to him in the dark and chilling woods. A teenage girl on a horse and a promising rugby player might yet end up somewhere warm, somewhere they could come in from time’s unrelenting cold.

A Bookish Crossword Puzzle for You

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

I have no idea how this will work, or if you will enjoy doing it. It’s pretty easy, so I hope you have fun. Let me know. I’ll post the answers next week. I wonder if AI can do this?

Enjoy!

PUZZLE blankDownload

Here are the clues. Most of them work. 4 down is a fudge.

AcrossDown
1 (5)Silence of the …2 (6)Dr Seuss’ Xmas thief
2 (7)LOTR Wizard3 (3)Plus
5 (4)Dorothy’s little dog4 (4, 1, 6)Erica Jong classic, almost
7 (5)Not the Odyssey5 (6, 5)Author of Jude the Obscure
9 (3)Not in6 (4)See 5 across
10 (5)Key somewhere beachy?8 (5)Goes with Prejudice
12 (5)Kazua —-guro10 (5)Nabokov’s best-known novel
13 (5)Goes with Pride11 (4)Runners look forward to it
17 (3)A person from Hooville13 (6)Harry?
19 (3)Estimated Time of Arrival14 (4) To mock
20 (3)It’s for its own sake15 (2) —  Profundis – Oscar Wilde
21 (5)Mr Pratchett16 (2)California
24 (2)Mother18 (2)Either?
26 (3)A thing cast22 (3)It’s Adam’s
27 (4)Awful thing to do to a mockingbird23 (3)The only answer
28 (5)Long flowing garments24 (3)Mixed Integer Programming
30 (2)Life of …3.14?25 (5)She was in Wonderland
32 (3)Alice met one from Cheshire29 (3)Australia’s tallest bird
33 (3, 7)Thank you Cervantes31 (2)Has been