This FB page used to have a link to my Solent Green blog, but since I changed my hosting last autumn, those posts have moved and the link doesn’t work (there again, this one wasn’t on Solent Green, it was on Southsea Storytellers – maybe I should have shared it from there to the SS FB page instead).

But I was thinking about this poem a few days ago and thought it would be appropriate to share today.

In Sainsbury’s I didn’t buy sandwiches, but bacon and baps (as well as dark chocolate and ginger biscuits, and mini Reese’s peanut butter cups – can’t go out in the van without chocolate).

At the country park I went where I always go, to one of the car parks near the ‘dog activity area’, up among the trees. I set off to walk – going downhill, which is not a good plan because then you have to go uphill on the way back, so I circled around, scrambling between tree stumps and bramble patches, moving roughly parallel with the road. This is my usual route – plunge off in between the trees as far as the cycle track, head uphill towards the large car park where the toilets are, make use of the facilities then wander back to the van and put the kettle on.

There were occasional flashes of light between the trees when the clouds briefly parted, but not being a proper photographer, just a point-and-click merchant, my attempts to capture the light shining off twigs or patches of grass were obscured by the contrast between the dark ground and lighter sky creeping in to reduce the exposure. Not a twig twitched in the still air, no rustling in the tree-tops, not even any bird sounds, just the drone of the motorway in the valley.

It looked as though the area where I was had been managed in rotation – there were patches with individual bramble twigs a few inches high, like the ones that pop up in my garden, others where they were spindly bushes maybe a couple of feet tall, still spaced out but close enough so you couldn’t walk between them, and later, up near the toilets, proper overgrown briar patches. I wondered about this, it must have been cleared at some point, presumably chopped back to the ground or uprooted (again like my garden). I didn’t think it had been done by grazing, I don’t think there are any grazing animals in the park, and anyway, does anything eat brambles? Maybe goats – definitely no goats around though.

I went back to the van and lit the camping stove. I couldn’t find the frying pan – must have taken it out to wash up and not brought it back, I suppose, like the cups that other time. But there’s a grill pan – not that I’ve ever used the grill – so I used that on top of the stove. I found the removable handle in the drawer and attached it to the grill pan, but because it was on a slope the pan slid and the flames caught the handle. I managed to grab it in time and blow the flames out, but the plastic had melted so that now the detachable handle doesn’t any more.

But the bacon baps were delicious.

Walking beneath the
conker trees, I realise:
I missed the blossom.

Out of the corner of my eye
I see a shadow.
Somewhere in my inner ear
I hear a whisper.

Echoes from that long ago,
another life,
one of the many.

Fears and expectations
of the world that was to come,
the world that came
and went away.

Now here I sit,
surrounded by familiar things –
this place will also be
a memory one day,
a passing dream
of future, past and present intertwined
into the here and now.

The thread that passes through,
that binds them all
the common centre where they intersect:
myself alone.

Linda Rushby 19 June 2020

But I remember that yesterday I’d got as far as wondering about how we learn to relate to other people, what advice our parents give us – specifically, what advice mine gave me – and by implication, what we pass on to our children. Thinking back, it seems to me that most training of that kind came either through example and observation, or through being told off for breaches of some rule that I might or might not have been aware of. Come to think of it, those methods were often in conflict – following what the grown-ups did was not always appreciated, and neither did they always follow the rules they laid down for us. There’s another layer of complexity to unravel.

Something I will say for my parents, which wasn’t typical of the time, class and place in which I grew up, was they were very opposed to racism. Not that we encountered many non-white people living in Scunthorpe in the 60s, but in the abstract, all men deserved the same respect and opportunities and the Apartheid regime was an abomination – actually, it went beyond race, to class, to a very deep-seated chapel socialism and republicanism (Dad was raised a Methodist), a belief in fairness and equality that has also always underlain my own personal and political values – to this day, my party loyalties may have wandered over the years, but I have never voted Tory (god forbid any party further to the right) and never will.

But what I was going to say was that this universal respect for the brotherhood of man in the abstract (and I use that terminology deliberately, because I think the attitude towards women was more problematic) didn’t necessarily extend to individuals – I’m not talking about racism now, but a lack of tolerance when it came to other people’s behaviour and what we might now call ‘lifestyle choices’. Maybe that’s not so contradictory, I’m not sure now. What I mean is that although my parents were opposed to prejudice and intolerance of groups of people in the abstract, they could be extremely judgemental about the people we knew, whether family, neighbours or workmates, and they would quite happily exchange gossip and criticism for any minor infractions of ‘the rules’. Maybe that also came from Methodism, but there was certainly no truck with: ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’ in our house.

Well, I thought today I was going to write about my inability write fiction, but that will keep.

There are jobs I don’t mind doing,
and some I can’t be bothered.
I’m an independent woman
but I’ll take help when it’s offered.

Now in these troubled days, we all
must help our blighted nation,
and I wouldn’t put my friends at risk
in times of isolation.

So I thought I’d cut my hedge alone
to prove that I am able
and this is how much I got done
before I cut the cable.

Linda Rushby 26 April 2020

Not feeling poetic
or even writerly.
Out of touch
with reality.

Starting to wonder
what is this reality
we thought was so real?

And maybe one day
we’ll reach that reality
that’s really real,
and what happens then?

Linda Rushby 25 April 2020

Posted something on another blog this morning, and thought i would be able to share it on here, but apparently not.

And I couldn’t really think of a poem, so sorry about that.

https://southseastorytellers.news.blog/2020/04/25/treasure-trove/amp/

A work in progress (or possibly regress).

Linda Rushby 19 April 2020

Am I going to write another whiney piece about why I don’t write any more – don’t even want to write – to add to all the others I’ve written over the last year – or two – or however long it’s been? The endless, pointless quest to be understood and accepted – when, let’s face it, what does it matter, why should I expect anyone to understand or accept me, or even want to do so (except maybe my children – or my shrink, but then, that’s her job).

Why should it matter to me whether anyone understands me? I’m trying to understand myself, or explain myself, or accept myself, but why bother? Isn’t it all just inverted narcissism?

I get into conversations where I’m trying to explain but somehow what comes back from the other parties is not at all what I mean, yet I’m too slow witted to be able to argue back, and then I get frustrated at my own incompetence and inability to communicate and so angry with myself that I just have to let it all go. It doesn’t matter if nobody understands me, or they get a false idea or don’t listen to what I’m saying. I don’t need anybody else’s good opinion, but maybe I do need my own – and yet I know that really is a hopeless quest. After a lifetime of self-hate, how can there be any version of my future in which I could possibly find any pride and satisfaction in the things I’ve done? That is what I have to accept, that I’m incapable of having those feelings and there’s no future in trying to find them. So why waste my energy and time trying?

I’m not disappointed in my writing because I ever expected it to bring me money or fame (never been that naïve). ‘Write for yourself’ people say, but why should I do that if it doesn’t make me happy? All the words I’ve written have never resulted in me creating, completing, anything to be proud of. Maybe the odd poem (though I’m not writing them any more either) but no book that says what I want to say, or even comes close to a coherent, completed, narrative. Just the endless blog full of this same drivel, day after day, started because I thought that was the way to become a ‘writer’, and continued in the face of all evidence to the contrary. And in my heart I’ve learned to understand myself well enough to know that nothing I create will ever fill the great chasm inside me where love should be.

Where did that word spring from, the ‘L’ word? It just came as I was writing, as words do. I’m writing about writing, not about that. Is that my holy grail? It’s all part of the same thing, this great hole – I nearly wrote that as ‘whole’, very Freudian. Which reminds me of Peer Gynt – when you keep peeling the onion, in the end you have nothing. Just tears.