WANTED: Small caravan with room for a bicycle (Part 2)

Tags

Amsterdam, bicycles, camping., Covid 19, dreams, eriba, families, Kip caravans, living in small spaces, porta potti, Small caravans, T@G, The Netherlands

Don’t count your chickens!

When I began my search for a small caravan at the beginning of February it was with the vague plan of living in it.

I believed I was capable of overcoming my hoarding instinct and being comfortable in a small space.

As I searched, my dream grew, but I was yet unaware of the looming dark cloud that might endanger my plan…….The Covid 19 virus. 

To buy a caravan with a limited budget means it will probably have to be, like myself, on the other side of twenty one.

So how do I ensure that it will not fall apart on the road or that the seller will not try to fool me by cunningly hiding leaks, damp, rust or maybe all three?

The answer is, I buy one from a country whose citizens take good care of their belongings and after been married to a dutch man for twenty years, I decide the Netherlands could well be that country.

I begin my search, spending my evenings scrolling through various websites.

Soon Speurders, Marketpltts and others automatically pop up on my screen and I peer longingly at photo’s of Eriba puck’s and pans, kip shelter’s and the tear drop shapes of the T@B.

There are lots to choose from, each different from the other except for one thing.

They are all very very tiny.

Now, as mentioned above, I am a bit of a hoarder.

An important consideration in my plan to live in a very small space.

And I also buy things, not because I need them, but because they catch my eye. My apartment is filled to the brim.  Baskets for my thriving house plants, a pretty enamel container for my paintbrushes, books, rugs, oh and of course bicycles.

I have inherited this hoarding gene from my parents.

Yes! We are ‘stuff’ gatherers.

Some stuff we collect is useful, some not so and some downright embarrassing.

March 1975.

It’s my first day of nurse training. No one knows me except for one girl who unfortunately (you will soon see why) lives on the road I grew up on.

As she didn’t attend the same school, I hoped I would escape her notice.

Here I was, starting my career with a bunch of strangers, so I had planned to shrug off any labels and start my new life with a fresh image.

The ‘new me’ would be glamorous and very conservative. (The exact opposite to the old me).

But no such luck.

‘Hi there. Aren’t you Gregory’s sister?’ The above mentioned girl approached me with a smile. 

I admitted I was.

‘He’s hilarious, always up to some mad antic’ She continued in a friendly manner ‘ Just the other day I saw him getting off the bus holding one of those plastic ‘porta potti’ thingy’s’

There was silence, a few of the ‘cooler’ girls gathered round.

I laughed (a loud false sounding laugh)

‘Surely not! Maybe it was some kind of box’

‘Nope’ She was adamant ‘It was a camping toilet and he had his arms wrapped tightly around it’.

‘Yuck ‘ One of the girls stared at me disdainfully.

Her friends giggled and wrinkled up their noses.

Red faced, I looked down at the floor.

The irony of their reaction was that first year nurse training, in those days, and bed pan washing went hand in hand.

Maybe they didn’t realize that yet, but they would soon find out.

However reassuring that thought, it was not much use to me now.

I watched them walk away as my new identity disappeared with them. 

‘I’ll never live it down’ I cried when I confronted my brother

But he just laughed.

‘I was at a car boot sale and I spotted it. It’s never been used. Mam was delighted with it. Come on! who cares what they think.’

I cared!  But I also had to admit it was a good buy. We had an old fashioned bucket affair.

‘You’re only mad because your camping days with us are over and you won’t get the benefit of it’ He teased.

It was true. Now that I had started my career those long summer holidays in the west of Ireland were over. I had to resign myself to a couple of weeks here and there at the hospitals discretion.

But returning to ‘Stuff’.

Yes, I have plenty of it

Sitting at my table, peering out in the winter gloom I note that on my balcony alone sits

• three bicycles
• four immense bamboos,
• three over sized potted lavender plants
• one large potted hydrangea
• One maple tree, whose skeletal form stares at me accusingly (like a sheep who decides to lie down and die for reasons known only to itself, my Japanese maple has thrown in the towel. And even though I have nursed and cajoled it inside for long periods it soon became obvious that no amount of pampering was going to make it change it’s mind)

How will I fit all into my new tiny home?

But first things first!

I close the curtains and book a flight to Amsterdam.

Coming up next: Brodje harrings, Airbnb’s and Amsterdam.

 

 

 

 

Nanny Pepper Pot and the lowly Art of Tissue Paper Dancing.

Tags

cycling, dancing, dreams, exercise, flying, grandsons, JJ Cale, joy of cycling, music, Puccini, the yellowbicycle, tissue paper

There hasn’t been any great change in my circumstances since my last post.

I am still waiting to have my home back, but more than that the yellow bike is still standing patiently on the balcony.

 So, what could Nanny Pepper Pot do for exercise when she is not riding her yellow bicycle?

Well there is tissue paper dancing for a start.

I am not obsessed with exercise but I understand the need for it.

And, although I cycle a lot, I never equate pushing pedals around as a means of getting fit.

I cycle for the love of motion.

For the ingenious self propelled way of getting here and there.

I love that travelling on a bicycle allows me to be open to the elements and that from my saddle, I can get the sensation of my surroundings.

The smells of the hawthorn, honey suckle, dog roses can easily assail me as I sail by them. The sounds of the sea or running water can tickle my ears. The wind in my hair. even the rain on my cheeks all add to this awareness.

I love that cycling moves me at a speed faster than walking but still slow enough to allow me look at the passing scenery and stop easily whenever something small needing closer examination catches my eye.

The fact that all this is also exercise comes as a bonus.

I also realise that sailing along upon my lofty saddle, marginally higher above the ground than if I was on my feet, is probably the nearest I will ever get to flying.

*****

When I was young I had a recurrent dream that I could fly.

It was a very realistic dream and when I woke from it I could still remember the sensation of being airborne.

It wasn’t the graceful flight of an eagle or even the clumsy flight of a pigeon.

It was the best flight an awkward solid boned wingless creature who should remain earthbound could manage.

To begin the exercise I would stand on a chair.

Then, using a type of downward ‘swan lake ballet’ lower arm movement, with my upper arms flexible but held closer to my sides, I would concentrate on feeling the resistance of the air against my hands.

When I felt I had built up enough pressure, I would move my arms and hands faster and launch myself off the chair.

This was where I brought my legs and feet into action.

kicking furiously as though swimming, whilst continuing with the arm movements, I would sustain a few moments of being airborne.

Disappointingly I never managed to ‘level out’ but would continue in a slight upright forward leaning position, a few inches off the ground for maybe ten seconds.

It was exhausting.

I tried to explain it to a friend once and she excitedly told me that she too had dreams about flying.

But the type she described were the ‘romantic’ kind. The kind where she soared effortlessly like a bird over the mountains and sea.

I felt hers was ridiculously unobtainable, whereas mine might work if I kept at it.

****

I am leaping to the music of ‘Recueredos de le alhambra’

Jumping high into the air, arms stretched upwards.

Twirling and catching the delicate white tissue paper as it floats above my head.

Throwing it up again and again to the sky

I catch one corner and zigzag it in front of me in a sort of traditional silk ribbon dance way, its tail following my hand obediently.

I raise my arm and the tissue paper follows floating softly slowly upward.

I rotate my arm in large circles, standing on tip toe, swirling the delicate piece around and around until it becomes a swirling circle.

I grab a spare piece and faster and faster I twirl them.

They are white snakes chasing their tails and at last I throw them high and two delicate doves float gently to the ground.

I fall breathlessly also to the floor, laughing.

I am doing tissue paper dancing.

But this dance was not my idea.

It is invented by my youngest grandson.

 

‘Beware of the quiet child’ my mother always warned, ‘they are usually up to mischief’!

My youngest grandson, and partly the reason why my yellow bicycle is still on the balcony, has been in my bedroom for a while.

He has covered up his silence by inserting a disc into the CD player.

Yes, at two years of age he has figured out the workings of this complex old fashioned machine and surprises me every day with his eclectic choice.

We could start the day listening to something as cool as JJ Cale or Santana and by lunch time we might be on to Puccini.

To me there is no rational to his choice of material but he knows what he likes and though too young to read the labels will listen to a few strains first before deciding whether to let it play on or whether he will press the reject button.

So now, as the strains of the Alhambra fill the room, I know I should get up and check on him.

But before I get a chance to do so, he comes running into me with some large pieces of white tissue paper he has found in a box.

He stands in front of me and throws them up in the air, watching them float downwards.

His face is a picture of joy and wonder.

Then not content with just throwing he starts to run with them floating out behind in time to the music and so the tissue dance is born.

We are in the mid dance when my second eldest grandson arrives (I have four grandsons).

This lad is a wiry nine year old who’s interest lies in hockey, football, swimming and sailing.

I think he will laugh at us or be bored by the simplicity of our dance.

But he joins in with enthusiasm adding his own version.

We watch as throwing the tissue high, he twists beneath it and blowing with all his might keeps the paper afloat.

as it floats down again he curls low beneath it like a limbo dancer.

and lower again

and just as we are giving up hope the tissue paper floats up again.

and up.

Maybe I should rename it the Limbo tissue paper dance.

But what ever it is called it has given me hours of fun and exercise almost akin to riding my bicycle.

Hmm, I wonder if I could fashion some kind of parachute from it.

The End.

 

 

Broaching the bread (and meeting good friends)

Tags

bread, dreams, drink, friends, restuarants, stories, the sea, wine

DEFINITION: to bring up or introduce a sensitive issue/subject.

So here I am, broaching the bread!

A fine loaf it is too might add.

And this is how it happened.

I was woken the other morning from an oddly lucid dream where I was swimming in a night sea searching for my purse which I had left for safe keeping on the back of a sleeping dolphin.

I often have dreams filled with animal content.

Mostly they are related to the sky where I am flying with eagles.

In fact my flying dreams are my most vivid and prolific.

If I was to go by them, I am quite a successful flyer, being a dab hand at managing the difficult stage of getting off the ground in the first place.

Did you know that if you manage to get up even a few feet (and boy do you have to work hard at that, pushing strenuously against the air with both arms held loosely but closely by your sides and all the work being in your wrist and hand movement) that the next bit is easier?

Sadly most people give up too soon and fall flat on the ground and never try again.

Its when you get up above those few feet that you can confidently level out and start catching air currents and having fun.

But back to this dream.

It occurred to me that I needed some money and my train ticket.

But I couldn’t find my dolphin.

I passed some sharks, of whom for some reason I felt no fear of, and one large whale who laughed at me and told me the dolphin would surely have lost my purse by now. Again I did not feel it bizarre that a whale could talk plus I was convinced that dolphins, being of a conscientious nature, would mind my purse carefully.

I was beginning to get cold in the water and was thrashing around in circles when I heard the call of some seagulls.

Their cries woke me and the sea and its creatures disappeared but the cries persisted and I recognised it as the message tone of my mobile phone.

I groped for it in the dark and in doing so realised my duvet was on the floor and I was freezing.

Now we are told for best sleeps we should not have TV’s, digital apparatus including mobile phones etc in our bedrooms.

But as I don’t have a TV, I reckon my phone, which I use as an alarm clock, is small fry in comparison to the amount of digitalia others possess.

I hide it under a book and thanks also to my blackout curtains, I sleep like a hibernating frog.

Rooting further about in the dark I knock over my glass of water.

Lets hope it doesn’t drip into the apartment below.

I have already been told off by this lady for letting water from my runner beans and courgettes growing on my balcony drip down onto her sunloungers.

A handful of fresh beans and two courgettes and all was forgiven.

For now.

At last my hand closes successfully around my phone and I squint sleepily at the illuminated screen.

Have you broached the bread yet? the message reads.

I smile, my head too fuzzy from a hangover to reply yet.

I get up and tiptoe into the kitchen in barefeet.

The bread is lying unwrapped of its tinfoil and cloth covering, looking perfectly browned with three slits on the top crust.

I notice a piece missing towards the back.

Fuddled memories seep slowly through my foggy brain.

The first is of nearly falling asleep on the train home but managing to hold on to my precious package even though I let my bag slide off my knee twice and strew its contents on the floor.

The next is of unlocking my bicycle at the station and continuing my drunken journey home by bike in the darkness, holding the still warm bread to my chest and battling against the fierce squalling wind.

The third is wrestling with tinfoil and tea towel in my kitchen and hungrily tearing a lump off soft sweet bread with crust attached and devouring it.

‘About to commence the broaching!’  I texted back.

‘Keep me informed… oh and hows the head?’  came the reply

‘T’will be all the better for the bread’

I filled my small orange saucepan with water for the poaching of an egg.

A pot of green tea was added to the occasion and soon my hangover was a thing of the past.

There is a lot to be said about a good loaf.

There is also a lot to be said about good friends.

Especially when the meeting is in a french restaurant with plenty of good food and even better wine and where the waiter knows to keep all coming as he understands the importance of old acquaintances meeting up after many years.

There are none of those interruptions that occur just as you were getting to the interesting bit of the story. That ‘And how was your food?’ ”shite” that you sometimes get from young waitresses in more pretentious establishments.

He knows his food is the best and if he is annoyed at the fact that we three women chatted endlessly and swiped food from each others plates he also understood that his wine is of a high percentage and it was easy for the female of the species to lose the run of themselves.

So he let the mixing of frites and rice, chicken and steak and the fact that we used our fingers in the pinching go un reprimanded.

Later, having downed coffee to keep us upright, we staggered out across the road to a small pub by the olympia theatre whose ceiling, where not held up by black fabric, was tanned by the cigarette smoke of a thousand actors from bygone days.

We were on the hard stuff now.

Brandy and ginger, vodka and coke, gin and tonic.

The stuff of the loosening of memories.

Our stories came hard and fast and without censorship.

Our lives, the fortunes and misfortunes. The worries. The concerns. The good times. The lesson learnt.

Divulged glass by glass.

Broached without shame.

A woman in high heels much more the worse for wear than we, tottered past towards the toilets and only by good fortune made it without keeling over.

We smiled at each other.

Who were we we to judge.

We hadn’t stood up yet.

On parting we hugged and promised not to leave it so long the next time and Angela slipped a warm bag into my hand.

‘A gift ‘ She said.

I hugged it to my chest, the aroma of fresh bread made me hungry, the warmth made me content.

I waved goodbye to their parting figures and made my way homewards.

THE END.

Nine bean row’s etc……

Tags

cottage, dreams, goats, hens, hives, nine bean rows, poetry, seasons, Yeats

I like the pitch of your green corrugated roof.

Your pink painted doors catch my eye.

You would suit me fine (if I could break out a window here or there),

let some light in, on my writing table.

Hens out front I think.

Barnevelders (double laced) welsummers or Faverolles,

good layers.

calm and heavy,

no escape artists please.

(Those polish bantams are the limit)

I’ll be too busy writing to chase you lot down some boithrin.

Yeat’s nine bean rows I’ll have here,

and a hive for that bee.

Two apple tree’s, one pear,

A cherry too?

maybe.

A single row of spuds?

definitely.

(more if my back is able).

and speaking of backs, behind the house theres a fine space

for a milking goat.

Winter!

I would lay the fire from broken branches,

and maybe a sod or two of turf.

(Once when camping in a wild place someone left me a bag of the stuff,

I suspect the bachelor farmer who lived up the boreen)

Spring!

The smell of apple blossom will make me lift my head and drop my pencil,

draw me outside.

to gather warm eggs.

Summer!

I’d work ‘en plein air’,

pick beans,

(dinner would consist of beans, potato and an egg)

And ‘warm goats milk’ I hear you enquire?

Nope I’ll settle for wine.

and after, swim drunkenly in the nearby lake.

Autumn!

Honey would furnish my bread.

With fresh goats cheese

And the last of the beans, a nourishing stew.

Winter!

What made you come around again so soon.

On fearing my dreams.

Tags

cottages, dreams, Islands, lonliness, photos, Planxty, The wild atlantic way, the yellow bike, writing

My Dream is this:

I will go to a small island off the west coast of Ireland and live in a cottage on a lake and write and dream and paint.

But I fear my dream.

For it’s a lonely one and I am a gregarious creature.

And being of this nature making such a decision is a hard one.

I have thought of tossing a coin or reading the tea leaves or praying for a sign. In that way if I was overcome with loneliness and was forced to return, I could blame the Gods.

But I fear the result of that coin too.

Maybe for now I will leave it as it is: My dream.

No wonder in bygone times strangers were welcomed with open arms.

Living in isolation on the side of a misty mountain or beside the wild and stormy sea, where the sound of the wind invaded their days and nights, the sight of another human toiling up the hill against the rain with a reluctant dog in tow must have been one to celebrate.

The fire would be built up, the kettle filled, the bread, the butter, the plate of cold potatoes laid out on the table.

The apron removed and hung on the back of the door.

The stranger made welcome.

Relieved of his wet coat, he would be encouraged to take a seat near the fire.

The fireside dogs, growling at first, would shift and make space for the wet skinny one.

I do not believe strangers were feared then then the way we fear them now.

Both had too much to gain from each other.

Especially during the long dark winter months.

So the stranger would be fed, even given a bed by the fire if needs be.

In return He would share the news, tell stories, maybe pull a whistle from his pocket and play a few tunes.

Maybe he would bring thread, needles, some coloured ribbons, combs for the women of the house.

His main purpose though would be to ‘pass the time of day’ and alleviate the dark winter days.

My dream would not be to pass the days for the sake of it, but instead, I would walk and cycle the island from north to south , from east to west and think and sit and write..

Mainly write.

I have chosen my Island.

I have even chosen my cottage.

I have familiarized my self with the road from the harbour .

I know how it heads up over the hill and down passed the ruins of the church and the gravestones and on towards the beach

only to swing around to the left and past the row of cottages at the horseshoe bay with its ‘gleoteoig’ moored in the sheltered waters.

At the end of the bay the road branches in two, the right fork heading down towards the rocky shore,

The left fork heading up over the hill past the cottage with the hens

and flattening out, it trundles along by the lake where ‘my cottage’ sits waiting for my company.

I have cycled this road in my youth.

With a young lad seated on the back carrier.

(‘Surely it should have been the other way round’ you say)

Maybe, but my bike was precious.

I had already left the Inisowen peninsula on it weeks before.

A single speed black raleigh with a wooden trailer behind.

We had bravely tackled many a steep hill together

And we had many more hills and miles to do before we reached cape clear island of the coast of Cork.

I didn’t trust that the lad in his ‘joie de vivre’ (we had been drinking pints at the local pub) would’nt hit a pothole, and I would not only have a broken nose but a broken bike as well and that would be the end of my ‘Wild Atlantic way’ cycle.

A journey much talked about these days.

It was on this four month long 2,500 km cycle all those years ago that I first came across ‘my island’

Camping by the harbour of Claddaduff, I noticed two people with rug sacks boarding a small boat. When I enquired where they were off to, they told me they were going to Inisbofin (the island of the white cow)

I don’t know if it was the name that appealed to me or the sight of its ethereal shape. Like a huge whale, It dangled in the mist above the sea.

Before I knew it, the willing boatmen were hauling my bike and trailer on board and that was that.

I arrived barefoot on the Island, having lost my silk slippers (every long distant cyclist should wear them)at the Ballisodare folk festival where dancing too enthusiastically to the music, probably of Planxty

I stepped backwards into a stream.

I left my silken slippers to dry on a rock and continued dancing.

When I went back the next morning they were gone.

I fell in love with this wild Island.

And being young and carefree also with the lad, whose mother kindly gave me a pair of wellingtons.

But that is another story for another time.

A story I will write if ever I follow my dream.

Below is my Island, tranquil, solitudinal, hanging from a grey sky above a greyer sea. It does occur to me though, that most of my writings come from my observations of people.  Would I be ‘cutting off my nose to spite my face’ in going to live on in such a place. Maybe my dream is better fulfilled being what it is…….A dream.