Evening beachtrip

Such a gorgeous evening here in Cornwall. I love this time of year, when the days are long and the light is so pure and clean. I'm making the most of the empty evening beaches - won't be too long before summer fully arrives in the guise of campers, caravans and flocks of tourists who dither uncertainly in the streets like confused flamingos. It wouldn't be Cornwall without the summer tourist rush, and it's good that we get so many great festivals and happenings throughout July and August, but I've always loved this time right now. The quiet before the wonderful storm. And it really is beautiful.

Carne Beach, Cornwall

Perfect spot for evening meditation

Drawing lines in the cold, damp sand

She forms the words that lie softly on her lips,

As if those she loves will read them

All those thousands of miles away.

These thoughts,

Soon to be written into deep white waves

And whispered to the ears of distant shores.

She stands small and alone,

A pale figure in the midst of this open beach,

Calmly singing her hymns to the sea.

Sustainable Living II

And another:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/textile-recycling-challenges-industry

Sustainable Living

Makes for an interesting read...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/sustainable-lifestyles-leisure-behaviour

Grandmas are great fun

My grandma has language students staying with her on homestay visits, and from time to time they can’t do their homework, she can’t help, and so we get phonecalls of desperation begging us for answers on the most random things. Who was the tenth king of England? What’s a town in Dorset beginning with a J?? Who was the Roman God of agriculture???

Clearly, this is where I’ve been going wrong in my short career as an English teacher. Why spend time on fluency and conversation when all the students really need is to be able to complete an average pub quiz. Needless to say, most of the time we don’t happen to have that information on the tip of our tongues, but a quick trip to google can normally fill in  the blanks.

Last night was something else though – food and drink idioms.

Picture it. One bewildered Italian student with a piece of paper of photocopied pictures of foods and blanked out phrases. One grandma who has lost her reading glasses and whose hearing is not quite top notch. One dodgy phoneline. And, to make the entire exercise a bit more tricky, the photocopy hadn’t come out very well and even between them they couldn’t tell what half of them were supposed to be, and quickly reduced themselves to giggles.

“Potatoes maybe, but smaller…like peas. Except peas aren’t knobbly. No, not peas. Eggs? Or raspberries? Maybe nuts. But bigger…no, I think they must be potatoes, but not normal ones. Those special kinds of ones you get sometimes that look different. They’re stuck together. Or, it could be…what’s the word for that food, you know, pizza! No, not pizza….um…spaghetti!! Is there an idiom with spaghetti?? ” (sadly not grandma, no)

Now, how any picture, however badly photocopied, can potentially resemble potatoes, peas, eggs, raspberries, nuts and spaghetti(!), I simply cannot begin to imagine. Did have fun trying though! I’m almost tempted to take the train up and take a look at this crazy homework myself.

However, four phonecalls, two books, some frantic googling of random possibilities (egg feed? raspberry feed? pea feed? beer feed?...chicken feed!) and a lot of laughter and guesswork later. Hurrah! Sense of achievement!! The poor language student went straight to bed, completely exhausted and no doubt more confused than ever about this list of completely random phrases that make no literal sense and which she will probably never use anyway.

Maybe crazy and impossible homework is the way forward. Might apply that to my next group of unsuspecting students and see what amusement comes my way…

Wimbledon Fever

It’s that wonderful time of year again. Totally addicted to Wimbledon and it’s only day three of the championships. Wimbledon and procrastination go hand-in-hand, so it’s not working out to be a productive week! The TV which has not been watched for ages (aside from one amazingly cheesy volcano disaster film the other day when my joints were not cooperating) has now been on since lunchtime and I am completely glued to Venus Williams vs. Kimiko Date-Krumm. Come on Date-Krumm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fabulous match. Keep stopping typing to watch the dramatic moments! Eek!!!

Tennis aside (another fantastic point just won – go Kimiko!!!!!), the garden is flourishing in the rain and we’ve now got more salad leaves springing up than we know what to do with. Delicious peas and strawberries have been demolished already. The potatoes have woven themselves together into a kind of protective forest canopy – not quite sure how I’m actually going to wrest any potatoes from them – and the beetroot has picked up the pace and at least looks vaguely like it belongs in a veggie garden now.

Got some new physio exercises the other day after a rather painful encounter with a cheery physiotherapist up at the doctors - certainly making my muscles work very hard and aching is preferable to pain any day so I’m confident that it’s a good thing. Self-management of my problematic joints without painkillers is the ultimate goal, and I’m hoping this is a good start to heading in that direction. The yoga and meditation are going well – forehead straight to the top of the shin in a seated forward bend today without even a murmur of discomfort from my hip. Happy day!!

…final set, 6 games apiece…I’ve just found myself cheering at the TV and shall have to give up my plan to do anything productive this afternoon and go share in the drama. Go Kimiko!!!!!!!!

Ambling

I seem to have inadvertently switched my hamstrings for a pair that are several sizes too small. Ouch. Tried stretching them out by ambling around Antony today. They've got incredible trees in the gardens there. Simply beautiful.

Beauty – Grace Nichols

Beauty

is a fat black woman

walking the fields

pressing a breezed

hibiscus

to her cheek

while the sun lights up

her feet

Beauty

is a fat black woman

riding the waves

drifting in happy oblivion

while the sea turns back

to hug her shape

Distractions

I’ve been so distracted this week that I never got round to updating on here. I’ve been reading lots, practising some Spanish and relishing in the rain that has come just in time to save the vegetables in the garden (and they are delicious -homegrown veg tastes so good!). I’ve surprised myself by really enjoying growing veggies this year. I don’t have much interest in growing things that can’t be useful, but it’s been a very interesting experiment that I’m thinking of expanding this autumn.

I’ve got some fascinating books on the go at the moment: The Cage by Gordon Weiss, which is about the conflict in Sri Lanka and I would really recommend it; Sacred Sierra by Jason Webster, about his life on a mountain in Spain; some Schopenhauer, some Rilke…and a wonderfully light read by the wonderful Lloyd Jones called Here at the end of the world we learn to dance. Love it.

The spiky massage ball that I’ve been using on the muscles around my hip really seems to be helping a lot, so I’m moving around a lot more than I have been in recent months, although it’s still quite exhausting. This newly found freedom, plus my reattachment to yoga and recently discovered interests in both organic growing and meditation are leading to new possibilities for autumn forming in my mind. I’m reconsidering uni in favour of working for an environmental organisation in Spain that I’ve wanted to visit for years and years. Either way, autumn is now in sight, and that makes my impatience with my hip easier to manage. It’s great to have a goal, even if I’m not quite sure which goal to aim for yet.

Here's a lovely Rilke poem I came across yesterday:

Whoever you may be: step into the evening.

Step out of the room where everything is known.

Whoever you are,

your house is the last before the far-off.

With your eyes, which are almost too tired

to free themselves from the familiar,

you slowly take one black tree

and set it against the sky: slender, alone.

And you have made a world.

It is big

and like a word, still ripening in silence.

And though your mind would fabricate its meaning,

your eyes tenderly let go of what they see.

Milestones

Just walked 2 miles around a lake. No crutches, no painkillers. I would never have thought that could feel like such a huge milestone, but all these joint problems have made me realise how much I take for granted. What a perfect afternoon.

Finland

 

 

 

Sauna at Villa Elba, Kokkola

My thoughts are drifting to Finland today, with the places and many wonderful people I met there. I hope you are all well and happy. I'm sorry to have not seen you in so long but I think of you often, with a smile, and feel inspired.

Sunset in Naantali

Drawing lines in the cold, damp sand

She forms the words that lie softly on her lips,

As if those she loves will read them

All those thousands of miles away.

These thoughts,

Soon to be written into deep white waves

And whispered to the ears of distant shores.

She stands small and alone,

A pale figure in the midst of this open beach,

Calmly singing her hymns to the sea.

Spanish lesson for the day

Even more than the bizarreness of the story that a luggage thief in Barcelona hid in a suitcase to get inside the luggage compartment of an airport coach, I love El Periodico for producing a 5-stage diagram of how it was possible:

http://estaticos.elperiodico.com/resources/pdf/8/4/1307480433648.pdf

 

10 years of ballet black

10 years already? Really?! If only they had more performances over the summer...

http://www.balletblack.co.uk/index.html

Hips, Yoga and Fidgeting

"Remember to fidget"

Ah, the voice of reason. Not that I've ever needed any encouragement myself, but it is the kind of thing that gets you scowled at surprisingly often. Along with some praise for yoga and a spiky rubber massage ball seemingly designed to inflict pain on muscles people never knew they had, it's been an interesting morning.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never even realised that hypermobile meant anything more than being a bit flexible but a bit of googling has proved that's not necessarily the case. I'm desperately hoping that 'third time lucky' applies to diagnosis as much as anything else, and that I'll get my hypermobile joints back under control sometime soon with a bit of physio, some lovely yoga and a lot of fidgeting.

Itchy feet, Chagall and Schumacher

Itchy feet are well and truly setting in. I've not been in the UK for this long in years, and I'm finding the temptation of escaping abroad more and more appealing each day. Temptation is a ridiculous thing. The more you know you can't do something, the more tantalising it becomes. I'm beginning to wonder if I can stick out a year of uni and the city living that entails without spending the entire time yearning for a simpler life somewhere calm and green. Decisions never have been my strong point...

Newly added to my growing list of places to visit is this: http://www.musee-chagall.fr/ I'd forgotten how much I love Chagall's paintings until yesterday when I woke up with one of his pictures in my mind. Colours, goats, trees, music, wings...they've just got everything in them. Gorgeous.

Also came across a nice passage in a book of E.F.Schumacher's essays. He's got a succinct way of putting things on paper, which makes him interesting to read even if I don't agree with everything he's saying. This list was his response to the question, what is freedom?


I don't want to join the rat race.
Not be enslaved by machines, bureaucracies, boredom, ugliness.
I don't want to become a moron, robot, commuter.
I don't want to become a fragment of a person.


I want to do my own thing.
I want to live (relatively) simply.
I want to deal with people, not masks.
People matter. Nature matters. Beauty matters. Wholeness matters. I want to be able to care.

Miracle Theatre - The Death of Sherlock Holmes

Spent wednesday evening perched on an old tyre that makes up part of Mount Pleasant Eco Park's mini amphitheatre, watching Miracle Theatre (5 actors, 1 set and about 10 props) perform The Death of Sherlock Holmes. Fantastic simply can't describe it well enough. It's amazing what they are able to produce from so few people, props and space. Grassroots theatre really is the best. They're around and about in the south west all summer, so go and see them if you get the chance: http://www.miracletheatre.co.uk/ You really won't be disappointed!

Continuing the theatre theme, one of my friends went to see Songs of the Wanderers last night:  http://www.cloudgate.org.tw/waterstains/english-2.html How much do I wish I lived in Dresden right now? Looks amazing...

Went up to St Anthony's Head yesterday evening and watched the world go by from the top of the cliff while the others scrambled down to the sea at Porthbeor. It is such a beautiful place to be. I could have stayed for hours.

Back on the yoga track

A good yoga day at last! What a relief. After struggling through my attempts at some kind of daily yoga practice for the last couple of weeks, this morning everything seemed to click into place and I suddenly felt more relaxed than I have in quite a while. The only thing I don't know is why the sudden change, but at the moment I'm inclined to not ponder on that too much and just enjoy it.

I'm wading through a book called Anatomy of Hatha Yoga (H. David Coulter) that I found whilst scrabbling around the local library a while ago. It is dense. Not to mention so heavy that I feel like I need to build some arm strength before even trying to pick it up. But looking past the terminology - to be fair, the author did put a warning in the introduction - it's actually really interesting, and, I think, useful. I'm figuring that if I can understand how my hip actually functions, I may be able to get more of an idea of what yoga postures might help and what might make it worse. Not to mention a hope for more productive conversations with various doctors in the future.

Aside from that, I feel a bit like I'm floating through the days at the moment. Not being able to work is beginning to take its toll on my sanity, so I'm taking refuge in books. Any books pretty much. I've never read so widely before; it's quite an interesting experiment in how much my mind can actually absorb. I really should get back into studying Spanish, but the motivation I had at the beginning of the year has dissolved and I know that until it returns I won't make any discernable progress. So, reading it is. And hopefully, more good yoga days to come...