Praying into the pie and letting it pass.

In order to start today, I thought about my colours carefully.  I chose a red shirt, jeans and a big, soft, fuchsia  blanket in which to wrap myself before sitting on the sofa to write.  My toenails are pink, my earrings are red and my flip flops have red and white spots.  I am ready to begin.  Breakfast was a pot of tea and scrambled eggs on toast, all the preparations are in place, the day is now mine.

You will just have to imagine the scrambled eggs.

Dominic, my youngest brother and a Catholic priest (undergoing tough treatment for advanced cancer at the moment) told me that to love yourself enough is a struggle, and you are going to fail.  It is hard, we recognise it is hard, but the struggle to love oneself daily is a way of loving God.  Dominic is full of kindness and compassion.  It is right to accept we are going to fail, because it takes the pressure off us when even liking ourselves is hard, and gives us the space and courage to try again.  For Dominic, it comes down to doing his best, recognising the daily struggle to love himself for the greater glory of God, recognising that he sometimes - often - fails, and trying again.

I have been dealing with a son who does not love himself in any shape or form.  The struggle for him is that he has turned to drugs to find relief.  He has always looked for a way to belong, and has found life very difficult.  The nightmare in which he lives now is of his creation, for him it reflects his view of life and his place within it.  He cannot be touched, he cannot be reached, not yet, not now, and in his mind, he is not wrong.  The chaos a drug user inflicts on the people around them can be truly terrible.  It is an illness, yes, but it is destructive and cruel to all who come in contact with it, not just for the user.

For the last couple of months this treasured child has been  here after he moved out of his flat in London.  On Thursday, I told him that if he did not leave I would call the police.  He left, of course he did, he took a few things and disappeared on the Thursday morning.  He had been given a few weeks notice, but my fear at his behaviour made me call the police for advice and help.  On Thursday, they were ready to come, but my son slipped away and I didn't have to face them escorting him away from my house.  The silly, stupid thing is, he didn't say goodbye.  Considering his behaviour with his drugs, considering his paranoia, and considering his own mother had threatened the police to remove him, it is most unlikely that he would give me a cheery wave and say, "I'm off now, bye, sorry about the police thing, give them my best and tell them they won't be needed".  To be clear with you all, I have told him that when he decides to seek help, I will support him totally.  I understand that there is nothing more that I can do.  

So wrapping myself in reds and pinks today, is about loving myself.  The house has been cleaned, all of the debris, chaos, disorder and mayhem  has been dealt with, and balance, order and harmony has been restored.  We can breathe again, it feels as if there is silence everywhere.  What I have now, is a normal house, it just feels extraordinary compared to the difficulties over the last few months.  Sitting on my sofa now, feeling protected by these lovely colours, I am trying not to feel guilty that I have so much, and my son feels as if he does not.  My answer to myself here is to recognise the daily struggle to love oneself enough, and to say that my son needs time.  His struggle to love himself enough is his struggle, not mine. But I feel dreadful today.  I am fearful, tired and very sad.  I am a mum who cannot make anything right, and I am also an individual who makes choices to do the best she can for herself in order that she can be of use in the world.  Tough love, they call it.  It is tough for both of us.  

Here is my plan.  Today, I will bake the biggest pie I can.  I shall eat it all as part of the therapy. Giant Boy can have some only if he mows the lawn (the Anxious Pole is on holiday in Poland thank goodness and cannot be forced to do Giant Boy's jobs).  Tomorrow I will do a car boot sale (unless I decide not to).  Monday is a whole new world.  On Monday I will sit in the studio and think and at all times, today until the near future, I shall consider bubble baths.  My mother said of this angry confused son of mine, that he has left the table but there is still a place laid for him, and we are keeping it ready for when, if, he comes back.

So here are a few of the things that I still am doing. It is true that life goes on.  It would have suited me if the whole of  Bognor had ground to a halt recently, and had phoned for hourly updates on my situation.  I would have thought nothing of the whole world being consumed with my household - but life goes on, as it always does, without reference to us, and all the things I have to do still have to be done.

• The "Conversations on the End of Life, finding time to think in our busy worlds" are continuing.  17 September is the next one here in Bognor, at the Salvation Army community centre.  Gail Willington, my old pal from Lancashire will be there as we are doing it together.  She runs Elizabeth Way Family Funeral Service ( www.elizabeth-way.co.uk ) and everything depends on whether she can get away or not.  I will be there though.
• Dying Matters want me to write another guest blog.   
• AGD is going to Ascot in September, Swansea in late October/early November and to Bournemouth in March 2015
• I am doing one more painting for AGD.  I am painting and interviewing my brother Dominic.  This is about me too, when I look at Dominic, I see myself.  We have had the first interview, and we have decided how I will paint him.  This collaboration is unashamedly about me too.   
• I have a new commission following on from the idea of God's Study, a painting of a snapshot of God's study as he pops out, and all of the books, memos, photographs and personal effects that God has on his desk and laptop.  The new commission is God's Kitchen, which will be as the study, God has popped out for a moment, and this is a snap shot of his kitchen.  That will be ready for the end of August.

God's Study, with references to the person who commissioned it. I have done a few of these, they are great fun.  God's probably amazed at how accurate I am, and is tidying his kitchen now in a hurry in case I guess correctly at that as well as his study.

I asked Dom what he did when the thoughts of dying overtook him.  He said that his fear manifests as self hate, and anger at the world and those around him.  He tries to love himself, he says, and allow himself to be depressed.  He accepts himself in the process, rests and lets it pass.  He prays into it as a form of acceptance because it always passes.  And so, with Dom's advice, I will accept myself in the process of dealing with my son, rest, eat pie, and let it pass.  

Part of the process.  Pray into the pie and let it pass.

Singing the wrong song

If life were a melody, would we sing the song of ourselves throughout it?  And what if it became clear that we were singing the wrong song?

Life isn't a melody for everyone, I see that.  It is a dirge for some, silence for others.  It is a discordant and fractured arrangement for many, all of us have discord and fracture at times as well as harmony and
resonance.  But what if our lives were about recognising and building on our own melody, what if we all had the same possibility to sing for ourselves, the most beautiful song possible?  Ah.  That song may last a long time, it may not.  We may be only able to sustain it for the shortest time.  We may be able to sing the best song we can for ourselves for our whole lifetime.  We may never get to sing our perfect song at all.

The song we sing of ourselves, is about who we are and what we are doing.  If we become too used to it, this song, we forget we are singing it, we sink into habit and sing the words without remembering what they are or what they mean.  If we feel wistful, envious and doubtful, then perhaps our song is not the right one.  Perhaps it was right once, and now needs changing.  Perhaps we need new notes, new words, new meanings.  I wonder if we have just the one song each, a theme song all of our own, which we sing throughout our lives, that has parts and harmonies and notes and lyrics both added and taken away as the years pass.  We join our song with other people, and maybe stay a while, a lifetime, or leave.  Our singing jars with certain songs, harmonises with others.  Louder music drowns out what we are singing, and we sing loudly over other quieter songs.  Imagine if we all were singing the song of who we are, and what we are doing, and we could no longer hear ourselves.  Or each other.  Or, imagine if we could.  Imagine if I could hear and understand your song, and listened to it with delight.  Imagine if I had heard your song for many years and suddenly you were singing a beautiful new one.  I would be thrilled, and maybe my song would adapt to harmonise with yours, and we would sing alongside each other, for as long as we needed.  Imagine if my song were becoming slow and difficult to understand.  I couldn't remember how to sing of who I am and the part that describes what I am doing was becoming less and less distinct.  Imagine if my song was becoming discordant and clashing with other songs, imagine if it was becoming quieter and quieter, and becoming drowned out by confident and louder songs around it.  I would need to understand why I was no longer able to sing as before, and then create a new song.  A new way of bringing back the words I had lost, of describing who I was, so that they once more sang of my truth and my heart and my soul.

The last few months have been about change for me, and I have found it difficult to see where I was going with my work and my life.  I couldn't see what I had already done, and what I wanted to do next.  And then, the idea came that I was singing the wrong song.  All I had to do to make sense of things was to sing the right song.  It felt easier to see my work and my plans as a song, it made sense to me in a way that writing lists and analysing had not done.  The song I had been singing of A Graceful Death, of its progress so far, had been sung, it had come to a gentle and natural end.  A new version of my song now needed to be formed, a new melody found, and a cautious new song of who I am and what I do next begun.  All I need to do, is sing a new song of a new adventure, make up the words of my next stage of who I am, and find a tune that resonates with all that I have learned and experienced so far.  The pleasure of seeing my difficulties of direction symbolised as music and my part in it simply to find another way to sing of who I am and what I want, has made a huge difference to how I feel about myself.

My new song is forming and describes a journey I have always been about to take.  My new song sings of being strong, taking risks, and letting go of what holds me back.  My new song is gentle and powerful and can be heard simply without too many notes, by those who need to hear it, and this new melody is about being older and wiser and a little less seen.  It is about being brave and moving on, giving A Graceful Death a whole new song too, continuing to be sung as ever, lovingly, alongside mine.

So on that note, I shall end.  The song my sons are singing is one of hunger, and I shall go and sing the song of sausages and spicy cous cous. Then I shall hum happily in the bath and sing aloud to a nice uncomplicated detective novel.  It is all making sense.

My song here is the tap tap tap of the laptop while Alan sits opposite me in the sitting room.  This is me writing this blog, and yes, that is a new pink dress, and yes, it is singing the right song for me.  

Flotsam on the Heaving Sea of Life and Misty in Roots

Domestic Life

Giant Boy asked me to shave his head yesterday.  Absolutely not, I said, and we settled for a short back and sides that made him look like a sinister Russian soldier from 1945.  His hair did need cutting, and I agreed that something needed to be done.  But shaving his head makes him look unrecognisably awful and very dangerous.  As he is my baby, I can't have that.  So, he has shaved-ish back and sides and a nice flop of hair on top.  Looking like a sinister Russian soldier from 1945 will have to do.  Besides, we are going to Grandma's today, and she, at 84, doesn't mince her words and has the right to put him in a cupboard for the visit.

We didn't go for this look this time, the shaven psycho look.  Grandma will identify with the hair still on the top of his head, and I am happy, a win win situation.

Older Son is back home.  He is passing through, looking for a place to rent in Manchester, from Bognor, with the intention to try his fortune up North.  It is lovely to see him, but one more chaotic body in this home makes a big difference to space.  His clothes are in each room, under the stairs, in the garage and in the studio.  It's not much fun being so fragmented.  He is sleeping on the floor on a blow up mattress between the piano and the sofa in my sitting room, and sleeps fully clothed because he is young and alternative and doesn't care.  I remember doing that too, when I was 21.  I used to sleep in my clothes and have pink hair and write and draw all over my walls when I was at University.  I also had a bath once a week in the Student Union; the tenements where we lived didn't have bathrooms and the toilets were outside and often, it being Aberdeen, frozen solid.  I believe, if I were to meet me now, I would have me fumigated.

I still have my four lodgers.  They are remarkable people, they live here and don't go mad. In fact, my dear Anxious Pole mowed the lawn for me again yesterday.  (Same pattern as last time. I ask Giant Boy to mow the lawn, I hear the lawn mower, and Giant Boy comes into the sitting room to pass the time of day.  We sit for a few minutes in silence, the lawn mower going in the distance, and I realise that once again, the Anxious Pole is doing it.  I never ask if he is happy to do it, I don't want to know.  There must be some kind of bartering system going on, but as I say, I don't want to know.)

Work

1. The Conversations.

First one held last week, chatting over dying to waffles and coffee.  How it should be.

We did it, we held it in a Waffle cafe.  It was small, it was the first one.  Apart from Val from Community Organisers and me, we were joined by some local Bognor friends who took the time to come and support us.  Giant Boy turned up, bless, and we were happy to include two ladies who we didn't know.  Keeping the talk on track was difficult, it was very easy to simply chat about all sorts of other things.  This is something I need to learn how to do. I was delighted with the event, and am following up the New Park Community Centre in Chichester to hold one there.  Each time I do it, I will learn how to make it work.  I am also meeting with a Salvation Army man in a local community centre here in Bognor next week, to see if we can set one up there.

2. AGD

I am meeting with my dear friend Mandy Preece on Wednesday, in Bournemouth.  Mandy is a Home Funeral Celebrant and Soul Midwife, she is the business.  She and Cannon John Hyde of TESSAC (The Province of the Ecumenical Society of St Augustine of Canterbury) are holding an event in which the A Graceful Death exhibition will feature. This is good.  Mike Hardy, who I painted for the exhibition, has not been able to come to see himself on film or painting in any of the exhibitions as his Motor Neurone Disease has prevented him.  All my AGD exhibitions have been too far away or in places inaccessible for wheelchairs.  In Bournemouth, there will be a chance he can come and take part.  I am very hopeful, I would love to see him and his wife at the exhibition.

On the 27th and 28th of September, AGD will be going to Ascot to join a festival called Resilience and Self Empowerment in a Time of Transition.  It is run by a group called Ascent, and will be held at the All Saints Church Hall, London Rd, Ascot SL5 8DQ.  AGD will be muscling in there under the banner of Resilience, the rest of the festival is about conservation and climate change.  I shall do my bit, and AGD will stand tall for climate change.  And dying.

At the end of November, I hope to go to Swansea with Kiera Jones and Jim fox of The Centre fame.  Jim and Kiera have set up this amazing Centre in February 2011 in Swansea.  It provides complementary therapies for those living with cancer and other life limiting illnesses free of charge.  Keira is a palliative care nurse and Soul Midwife, and is a most loving, strong and amazing lady.  Jim and Kiera are gentle, modest, movers and shakers, they put themselves out to help others, and if I do go up there to do an AGD event, I am honoured to be associated with them.  

3. Painting

Here are two paintings just finished for two baby boys, found abandoned in Ethiopia a few months ago.  These little treasures have been adopted into this country, and are being christened today, for which these pictures were commissioned.

The little fellow on the left likes watching the leaves in the breeze, and the little fellow on the right loves drums.  Both have Ethiopian angels to watch over them.

Other stuff

They say that change is difficult.  Goddamn right it is.  I am moving on to a bigger more focused vision of using the A Graceful Death exhibition and projects, which is easy to say (write) but what the hell does it mean?  Quite.  When I was painting in the exhibition, that was my job.  It was hard, it was moving but it was strong with a painting and interview at the end of it.  I made the right decision to stop painting for the exhibition, it is big enough, and I need to move on and out into the community more.  But I am not sure what to do and how to do it.  Eeek, I say. However, despite feeling as flotsam upon the heaving sea of life, I am a tough old boot and will sort all this out in time.  I have followed some excellent advice from my old pal Jane, and have a large notebook in which to write all my thoughts and plans willy nilly, in order to make sense of them later.

I have a dream of living in a quiet household, where the jobs are all easy and nothing goes wrong with the plumbing or the paintwork.  I live happily doing all that I want, my children happy and busy elsewhere, all with cars so that they can leave soon after they arrive and they always arrive with lots of food to help with the catering.  My garden, in the house of my dreams, is wild, colourful and splendid, a gardener coming rain and shine to keep it going because he is devoted to it and longs to mend all the trellis work that collapses off the wall onto the lawn narrowly missing the long suffering Anxious Pole as he mows the grass having come to some agreement with the owner's son who should be doing it, now playing the piano inside and peeling grapes ....

And so on.  I think I long for a quiet life where I am unencumbered by domestic duties.  And I have staff.  And everyone does things for me.  All the time.

I did go to Misty in Roots in Brighton though, this week.  My daughter Fancy Girl and her boyfriend took me as a treat.  So I do have fun times.  I have not seen Misty play since 1981 and so this was a big deal.  They are elderly like me now.  Wonderful.

Hiding happily in Dorset and eating someone else's food again

Lizzie Hornby, musician, teacher, friend and Unitarian preacher, called last week and said that in return for clearing up her cottage a bit with a hoover and a duster, I could have it for a month.  "I'm off!" she said, "to America and Canada, touring with my music."  "Is the Pope a Catholic?" I replied, and so here I am in Dorset, hidden away in rural cottage heaven, with permission to eat all Lizzie's food (I have finished all Eileen's food from last week, a pattern is emerging) in return for hoovering.  I will more than hoover. I will have her cottage marble clad and have Corinthian pillars installed.

Inside this cottage, someone is eating cashew nut butter with a spoon.  Cashew nut butter that belongs to someone else.  Eating food belonging to other people is becoming a habit.

It has been a good week and I am much less tired.  I have been doing a spot of thinking and this is what I have come up with.

1. I am always like this (tired, dispirited, lost, hungry, annoyed, stunned) after a big exhibition.  Always. 
2. The tiredness is not just physical, it is emotional, mental and spiritual.  This is true for most of us, it is important.  It is also important to know that it is very hard to recognise, and we need to spend time on recognising what is happening. 
3. If I get too overwhelmed and tired, I talk utter rubbish. Difficult to believe of course, but the proof is in the startled expressions of the people I am talking to, and the way my mother phones and says I need sectioning.  Not really, she just says I need some early nights and to get a grip.
4. Just because I don't know what I am doing doesn't mean I am not good at it.  Whatever it is.
5. It takes a long time, and lots of will power, to really stop and recover.  Like driving a car very fast and suddenly putting on the brakes, you are no longer driving but the car is still pelting forwards and it all gets very stressful.  Stopping the car and making the decision to get out so you are no longer driving and, are no longer in the car, is blindingly obvious after you have done the other braking at top speed thing.
6. Life is bigger than you think and surprises are always around the corner, and when you stop and surrender, that surrender is the thing that releases you to recognise those surprises (nice ones in this context) as they saunter round the corner and into your arms.  

And so, here I am in Lizzie's cottage.

Happy times.  Lizzie shows how life can be wonderful if  you let it

 I have eaten her oat cakes and jam, and have had a pot of tea.  I know where the cashew nut butter is and have noted the price sticker on it.  I will build up to eating that (with a spoon, from bed, at midday).  This, though, is a whistle stop visit, I am away again tomorrow and if all goes well, I will be back in a week with my painting things to paint this month's commission.  Alleluia. Christening portraits each for two angelic Ethiopian babies who have been adopted into this country after having been abandoned at birth in their own.  Think bright colours, said the commissioner.  That will be difficult I quipped.

Conversations on Wednesday!

Here is a link to what the local paper says of the event

http://www.bognor.co.uk/news/local/difficult-subject-will-be-tackled-at-friendly-session-1-6154796

On Wednesday I am holding my Conversations in Bognor.  Sadly Gail Willington cannot make it this time, due to pressure of work, and though I will miss her, I will carry on regardless.  Perhaps I will pretend she is there and keep addressing an empty space until someone asks what I am doing.  "Have you met Gail?" I will say, gesturing to the empty space with a waffle on a plate, untouched, on the table in front of it.  I expect I will be asked to go back to Lizzie's cottage as quickly as possible and stay there.  

All are welcome, please come and join in.  Waffles and coffee or tea provided.  It's worth talking about death to get a free waffle, isn't it?

There's Gail, there, with a waffle, in the corner

  There was a wonderful response in Chichester to these Conversations.  I asked the New Park Community Centre if I could leave some leaflets in the cafe.  No was the answer.  Too many people leaving too many leaflets in the Centre as the Chichester Festival is now running gets out of hand.  But, on looking at the poster, the Manager asked me to go to her office to talk about putting one on there at the Centre.  "We do not allow ourselves to talk about this," she said, "we would welcome you doing a Conversations here at New Park, please let me know".  I took between a quarter of a second and half a second to say Yes and so, I will set that up after this one on Wednesday is over.  What a wonderful manager of New Park Community Centre.  

I am happy to have with me here in Dorset the one and only Mr Bedford.  He is in Lizzie's sitting room next door, in both agony and ecstasy, I can hear him through the door suffering badly watching the Men's Finals at Wimbledon on his laptop, identifying deeply with each move, each sigh, each move made on court as two giants of tennis slug it out for the Champion's cup.  For Mr Bedford, this kind of thing is personal.  As a sportsman himself, (ex American Football) and as a devoted tennis player now, he is on there, on the court, and lost in the experience.  The Grand Prix racing was on just before the tennis, and that was very tense too.   I think he won that, so he was in a good position to take on the tennis afterwards.

Mr Bedford feeling the pain but helped by a Licorice Allsort

Mr Bedford is being helped to get through the match with a packet of Licorice Allsorts, a bag of crisps and a bottle of diet coke.  Here he is, Allsort poised half way to his mouth, playing tennis in spirit at Wimbledon Men's Finals.  I am next door, with a pot of tea, a laptop, oatcakes and jam and a growing obsession with the cashew nut butter which I know is in the cupboard and I need it.  Together, and separate, we are happy in our own worlds, together in spirit and understanding, and separate in different rooms doing different things and eating different foods.  

The tennis is over!  Mr Bedford has lost!  He has gone off in the car to find food for dinner tonight, and I am finishing this blog.  When he comes back we shall sit together in the garden and feel the peace that comes from a job well done.  He played as well as he could, Mr Bedford and Roger Federer, and I have written my weekly blog despite wanting to raid Lizzie's larder.  We shall spend the evening in happy peaceful companionship, and in the spirit of surrender and letting go of tension and tiredness, tomorrow is another day.  Aaaaah.

Home again. I have been in the car it seems for all eternity. Ahhh.

I have been away.  I am back.  It is bliss.  I feel as if I have run a marathon.

I sit here, feeling excessively tired but peaceful, on my sofa in my sitting room.  There was no blog last week, I did not have the time.  This is where I long for staff, so that I always have time for the fun things in life, but as yet I have no staff.  I have an erratic Giant Boy, some moderately helpful lodgers when they are around (they are always working or asleep or silent in their rooms), and helpful friends. Though as I write the lawn is being mown by the anxious Polish lodger, so for a brief while I am under the illusion that I have staff, and I am very grateful to him.  The last time I looked, he was dutifully making nice lines amongst the weeds and dandelions in the grass, and Giant Boy was bouncing on the trampoline.  Probably best that way.

There are no chauffeurs, housekeepers, admin people, PR managers or bubble bath staff on the books yet.  No gardeners, laundry workers, menu planners or pastry cooks in my life but they will come, oh yes, they will come.  When the time is right, I will start by interviewing the pastry cooks. They will be asked to make giant pastry swans and small pistachio tarts and I will select the best one by working through the swans and tarts until I have made my decision.  And if I can't make a decision, I will employ them all.

I woke late this morning after a terrible dream where my friend Olivia was legging it into the distance away from me on a railway platform, and I could only stand still and sway, with trains featuring somehow somewhere - I woke late to find the room spinning around me when I stood up, and wondered if perhaps I was dying.  The room was coming up to meet me.  If I get to the bathroom, I said to myself, and I am still alive, I am simply over tired and the cure for it is 1.  Bed  2.  Bed.  3.  A Pastry Cook. (to cook, the pastry cook does not leave the kitchen).

Let us have a snippet of what I have been up to.  I am too tired to make long paragraphs (or sentences) so we are going to have bite size chunks - and this will suit you, too much and you will also find the room spinning and think that you are dying.  Then you too will have to go to bed with a Pastry Cook and then the whole world will start to spin.  So here is a selection of what I have been doing

• Circling the globe twice in the car
• Spending nights with friends while having - 
• Meetings with people about AGD, the Conversations and Art
• Driving a lot
• Lunch parties
• Driving
• Dinner parties
• Late nights
• Driving
• Taking Eileen to Heathrow to move to Tanzania for 3 years
• Piling my car with stuff Eileen does not want any more like her flat screen telly
• More of the above with knobs on
• Driving

Twenty First Birthday Party

Oldest Son was 21 this week.  It was a low key affair, and we had a jolly breakfast with chocolate croissants, mango and pineapple smoothies, cards and presents.  He used to love the Spice Girls so Giant Boy put them on and we remembered how Older Son used to dance to I tell you want I want what I really really want in an orange Spice Girl tee shirt when he was about 3 years old.  

Then it was time to have a smoke in the garden and get back to being cool and detached.  The real partying began when he left to go to London later on in the day, and I think they are still going now.

Yeah, well, still Spice Girls fans.  

Dolly Parton

Fancy Girl took her tired old Mum to a Dolly Parton concert at the O2 in London.  It was as wonderful as you can imagine, and I had an absolute ball.  Dolly is in her late sixties and belts around the stage for hours night after night in high heels and I have come away more amazed that she is not tired and I am, than with her spangly sequinned shorts and tops.  I expect Dolly has about three pastry cooks.  

Waiting for Dolly with my own Dolly, Fancy Girl with her tired old Mama who is sitting down for the whole concert due to not having enough pastry cooks to help her

Tanzania

I spent yesterday with Eileen in her flat as she prepared to leave it for three years.  She has moved to Tanzania to work over there for HMRC.  I got, as you read above, the flat screen telly and she doesn't know this, but all the veggie sausages in her freezer.  We went to Heathrow in a taxi, and when we said goodbye we both cried.  That surprised us both, and I have been feeling very lonely ever since.  I had to get back to her flat in Norbury to collect my car, and check a few things for her.  It was then that I found the freezer full of Linda McCartney veggie sausages and decided that every cloud has a silver lining.  

It was all a bit sad, so here is the Departure Gate behind which Eileen has gone to Dar Es Salaam and I went back to Bognor without her.

Work and that kind of stuff

I am so sorry, there is work, I do care about the dying, but I can't remember anything about it.  I have been having meetings, I have been organising the Conversations, I have been agreeing to take AGD to places but that is about it. I wrote it all down and everything I agreed to will happen, (if they remind me), but what with the lack of staff and the spinning head, I am not too sure I even went away, I am not even sure I saw Dolly.  Maybe Eileen is in the kitchen and we never really went to the Departure Gates at Heathrow....

I am going back to bed (without a pastry cook working on any pastry for me in the kitchen) now, so that tomorrow I can focus in the studio.  I do have a new portrait to do, and I have been thinking about something new for AGD too.  The idea is so unformed that I will let it make a bit more sense before putting it down for you all to see.  My dear friend Lizzie, the musician who wrote the piano music for AGD, has gone on tour again in America and has left me her cottage for the month of July.  I aim to get there as soon as I can, for a little while, to think things through for AGD and what it all means now that I am no longer painting for it.

Until then, it is probably not a good idea to ask my anxious Polish lodger to rustle up a three course meal for me, he doesn't know he filled the Staffing Dream briefly while mowing the lawn earlier.  He wouldn't understand.  I will just have to make some tea, put some veggie sausages in the oven, and give up for the day.  

This really will be good.  I am on the ball here, and Gail and I intend to roll these out as often as we can.  See you there. Exciting! 

 

End of Life Conversations in a Waffle Bar and a New Liverpudlian Lodger

Here I am with Eileen, on her last visit to Bognor, before she moves to Tanzania for three years.  I am sitting on my sofa, and opposite me sits Eileen, drinking tea and staring out of the window.  It strikes me that if she is leaving me I should stop doing the blog and talk to her.  She has been so busy getting ready to emigrate, I wonder if a bit of nothing is a godsend to her, but I have not checked so maybe she is just polite and is very surprised, as I tap away at this blog, that our last hours together in this house are not more conversational.

As I laid aside my laptop in order to chat with my dear old friend, Giant Boy came in to play the piano.  Eileen and I are now only able to nod kindly to each other on our sofas through an explosion of piano and all the while, her departure date gets nearer.  Ah well.  Perhaps this is what life is about.  We do not know what is around the corner.  Neither of us knew that Giant Boy was going to do some furious and enthusiastic Rachmaninov while Eileen and I sit on our sofas for her last hour on her last visit here to Bognor before she moves to Africa.

Eileen and I have no real need to talk anyway, we know what the other is thinking after all these years.  And so I have taken up my laptop to continue the blog because I know Eileen is thinking that I should do so.  I am going with her to the airport when she is flying out, so I do have one more afternoon with her, which I look forward to.  It will be strange to leave the airport and know that she is no longer in the country, but probably not nearly as strange as Eileen will feel sitting on a plane flying to Africa where she will be living and working for the next few years.

Since last week, when I was in a bit of a post exhibition trough, things have picked up.  One of my lodgers told me I look calm these days. I wonder if she is mistaking calm for vacant, which I have been, since the exhibition ended.   But now, the low is not so low, the down is not so down, and I am on the way back up to a happy and jolly medium.

The Conversations Project

I am excited about this.  It is very important that we have the ability to start to discuss, mention, think aloud about, and ponder end of life things without feeling it is gloomy, or distasteful, or odd.  Just to open that door in our consciousness could make all the difference when at some point, we are faced with someone (or ourselves) dying.  Gail Willington and I will roll out these simple, enabling and gentle sessions as often as we can wherever we can.  Gail is the owner and founder of Elizabeth Way Funeral Services in Lancashire. I wrote a piece about her work here

 http://antoniarollsartistextraordinaire.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-funeral-company-caring-for-living.html


The poster for our next Conversations is below.

Our Conversations event coming up, just for you.  No waffling ha ha ha.

As you can see, at last, I have found a venue for this session of our Conversations.  I had a few nervous rebuffs from other people I approached, which shows how sensitive this subject can be.  A very nice man here in Bognor called Richard, has recently opened a bright and airy Waffle and Ice Cream Parlour; just the place to chat about the dying.  Val from Community Organisers (who is supporting and helping with this event) put me onto him, and I expected him to look pained when I cycled up to the shop to ask if Gail and I could chat about death in his cafe with strangers, but he didn't.  Fine, he said.  And so the venue was sorted.  What a Waffle is a bright, colourful, American Diner type venue, so I think it will be perfect and, there will be waffles.  Lots of waffles.  Put the 9 July in your diaries, and come on down.

On the Home Front

Today, as the new lodger was moving in, Giant Boy decided to cook dinner.  The kitchen is like a mad scientist's lab from an old black and white film while he is in there, and I wonder if the new lodger thinks this is normal.

Giant Boy channelling his inner Doris

My new lodger, a charming, twinkling Liverpudlian Bouncer who reminds me of Ricky Gervais, has taken the tiniest room in the house.  He arrived today with an X Box and no other discernible luggage.  In the kitchen on his first day, was Giant Boy in an apron and a pair of trousers.  Dear Giant Boy, the meal was wonderful and while we were eating it in my sitting room, (a noodle stew/soup with veg which we ate with forks which took a long time) my anxious Polish lodger cleaned up the entire kitchen for us.  I wonder if the Bouncer thinks that is normal too.  Either all my lodgers clean up after me and my boys, or just this anxious Polish man has been singled out for endless washing up.  Whatever, I have eaten, the kitchen is cleaned, and when I last saw him, Giant Boy is still wearing the apron.   My new lodger seems to have gone out, and has not come back.  He may be in a hotel nearby phoning for a courier to come and collect his X Box asap.

This Week

This week another dear friend comes to stay, Sam from Ooop North.  Sam ran a care home for years, became utterly exhausted, and gave up.  She has lost four stone since we last saw each other, so leaving work seems to have been the right move.  There will be much to catch up on, and so much to say.  Sam put together a wonderful programme of training for care homes called Soul Carers, which goes very well with A Graceful Death.  Now that she is not at the care home any more, and may have more time, I think she should take on lots of work with A Graceful Death and very happy about it.  I think she should long to do all the difficult stuff like organising, PR, finance and admin.  I shall put it to her and wait for her to thank me with tears in her eyes.  Actually, there is much that Soul Carers and AGD can do together, I will see what she says.  She calls a spade a spade, so will tell me quite quickly to get knotted if she thinks it is not a good idea.

Sam requested this painting be done, of the wonderful way she trained her staff  to sit with the dying at any time of day or night at the care home.  Winnie here is dying but it is the relationship between the two carers that is so lovely.  The carer on the right is training the carer on the left to vigil.

And Finally

Here is why I am a bit tired tonight

• I have had a new lodger move in today, I have waved the last one on her merry way back to Poland for an operation on her leg. I saw on Facebook that she stopped off in Brighton to go to a Rod Stewart concert first, and wonder if her leg mysteriously improved for the evening. 
• Eileen has been to stay for the last time before moving to Africa. I felt a bit sad, but she is letting me have her flat screen telly so I think I can hold out till she comes back
• Other Son, my rather enigmatic and fashionable older son is here but does not like to communicate facts, so I have to guess how long he is staying and why.  
•  Giant Boy is walking around in trousers and a flowery apron making bad jokes to the foreign lodgers who think he is being serious.

On top of all this, I am making my daughter's wedding invitations.  We, Fancy Girl, her friends and I, are setting up a factory on my dining room table where we will churn out the most amazing hand made wedding invites, RSVP cards, and wedding direction/information cards.  There will be lace, there will be brown card, and there will be tartan.  Say no more.  I have promised to give them vegetarian scotch eggs and coleslaw with home made garlic mayonnaise as a treat, so I have special dispensation to go into the kitchen and cook.  I expect there will be lots of cake too, but I shall buy them from Sainsburys.

Some things to look forward to

• Bed
• My new trashy detective novel
• Old age
• Giant Boy finding a purpose in life
• Other Son finding a purpose in life
• Breakfast
• Huge success and adulation
• I have 4od on my phone now and can watch One Born Every Minute all the time

Some things to not look forward to

• Clearing up after this weekend
• Worrying about the boys' lack of purpose in life
• No one turning up for the Conversations
• Old age
• Eileen's flat screen telly not working
• Giant Boy not remembering he has the flowery apron on until after college tomorrow
• Winter 

Lying happily and cosily at last on my bed.  The sooner I can get to sleep the sooner I can have my breakfast.  Night all 

On lying under a peony and dribbling.

I heard a review of a book on radio 4 recently where the narrator rambles on in a stream of consciousness, while obsessing about and giving endless details of trivial things.  I shall base this week's blog on that author's style.

Or not.  I shall resist but that is how it may turn out. The best thing to do this week is to ask questions, and to answer them. Let us, then, begin.  Question one.

1.  What is the matter with you that you may need to ramble and obsess?

Nothing is the matter, I am in the empty space after being very busy and full of focus. This is the down after the up, the low after the high.  Working on the A Graceful Death exhibition takes an awful lot of work and concentration, and during the actual exhibition, I do 14 hour days.  Fine.  Love it.  When it was over,  I came home, I had the house to clean and reclaim from my dear lodgers and Giant Boy.  There was a small metric ton of laundry to do, food to buy, plates to remove from under the bath and so on.  The exhibition needed to be unpacked, re-catalogued, and repacked.  All that kind of thing is a lovely buffer zone between being extremely busy in the run up to and during the exhibition, and having nothing to do at all after the whole thing is over.  And now, today, I have nothing more to do.  I am sitting here on my sofa, and what I do next, is entirely up to me.  

2. What would you like to do?

• Warm up my own body weight in Cadbury's dairy milk chocolate and spend fourteen hours eating it.
• Organise the next big AGD here in Chichester and make the speakers, for this event, writers and carers.
• Paint the portrait of someone who is facing the end of life, write up their story with them, and let them keep it all.
• Lie in bed for a day dozing and dreaming 
• Lie on the beach in Bognor dozing and dreaming
• Write a book (a best seller in a single afternoon with no effort at all)
• Produce a play - or a read through - for AGD.  The late Sue Eckstein's play "The Tuesday Group" is the one I want.  Sue died recently, and I feel bad because she said I could use her play, but I felt very daunted and let it slide.  Her death recently made me understand that you just never know what is going to happen.  Now, I tell myself, is often a very good time.
• Find a venue for the "Conversations about the End of Life, finding time to think in our busy worlds".  I am looking to do this in Bognor.  And everywhere.  If you have a venue, let me know.  I'll bring the cakes.
• Win the lottery.
• Spend the lottery.
• Put Cornish clotted cream on the Dairy Milk above and lie in it.

3.  What are you going to do?

Have a bubble bath.

4.  I see.  And tomorrow?

Tomorrow, they say, is a whole other country. I do have a plan for tomorrow, it just feels as if I am going to ignore it.  I am the mistress of my own destiny, I say, probably to no avail.  It is possible that my plan for tomorrow will peter out and I will stare quietly into space and dribble. Should I be capable, here is my plan.

• Finish a really lovely portrait of an old couple sitting in their garden.  I have done the people, it is now time to put a tabby cat on the lady's lap, and add books, newspapers, pens, pencils and some African sculptures from their life in Africa, to describe who they are.  This means sitting in my studio in the sunshine, with a pot of tea.  I think I can do that.  
• Tomorrow is the day I have set aside too, to find a venue for the Conversations.  I have no idea where to find one.  I thought of lying on my sofa and willing someone to phone me up offering a nice central venue and waiving the fee because I am so wonderful.  As yet, that approach has never worked.  

The unfinished painting, the hard stuff is done, now it's just cats and books and African sculptures.  The normal stuff of life.

5.  What, then, is your conclusion? 

My conclusion is that I am very tired.  I am not needing to sleep, I am needing to day dream.  I am needing to give myself mental space, and to let all these ideas dance in my mind without trying to organise them. I do have more AGD events towards the end of this year, at an event in Ascot in the last weekend of September, and in Swansea at the end of October and the beginning of November, but that is a long time away, and I don't need to think about it now.  I don't need to think of anything at the moment, I just need to drift and dribble, as they say.  Oh, I have such hopes for the A Graceful Death exhibition and project.  I have so many exciting things to do, and so many projects to set up. But right now it is time to visit, as my cousin Maddy says, La La Land where the very act of lying down in the garden under the peonies is good for the soul.   It is at times of weariness when doubts creep into one's mind, when one feels as if one should do more not less, it is at times like this that one needs to step aside and be kind, very kind, to oneself.  Being in the low after the high, the down after the up, tends to make us bully ourselves a bit.  We blame ourselves for feeling empty, and for not having lots of things to do, for not continuing in the same productive and energetic way of last week.  But all things are cyclical, and all things wind down before starting up again. This time in the cycle when all that needed to be done, is done, is very precious and very prone to being misunderstood.  Standing still after moving  fast feels wrong. but it isn't.  It is just sensible before starting up again.  So that is where I am now.  Standing still.  In a precious moment.  Understanding that this part of the cycle is just as good and important as the busy one.  And on that happy note, I am going to find a peony, lie under it and eat some chocolate.

Sorted.

My lovely studio.  There are peonies, somewhere else in the garden, but I am not really fussy.  I can lie down under these sweet peas and eat chocolate.  I can lie down anywhere and eat chocolate.