The Matrix - Blackhouses Village

‘Matrix – the cultural, social or political environment in which something develops.’

My first glimpse of Gearrannan Blackhouse Village on the Isle of Lewis was breathtaking, almost tearful. We were up a slight hill by the coast looking down on the cluster of thatched, shallow built stone cottages and a lane weaving through to the shore. It was idyllic. I imagined being settled there with all my family, away from the stresses and strains and everything I would like to escape from in the real world. Through my rose-tinted glasses we would have an endless supply of provisions and enough skills between us to look after each other. How cosy and warm it would be, by the fire, inside a cottage with its 3ft wide walls.  I wondered what the attraction was to the original settlers. It’s windy on the Atlantic coast. Surrounding hills offered some, but not much shelter. As I remember, the last inhabitants were re-housed as recently as the early 1970s. The cottages are renovated and well maintained. One is now a café and gift shop, two or three are museums showing visitors like us how people lived. More like how they survived. The other cottages are holiday accommodation. The revenue helps with the up-keep and nothing has been spoiled. There is running water and electricity. The village is perfectly saved for the likes of us to have a tangible insight into life through the ages, and on-going with the successful holiday lets. From an early settlement it has developed into the modern world and continues to be a conservation area. Perhaps I’ll have an opportunity to stay there and live my dream for a moment.

Matrix – ‘Something, such as a situation or a set of conditions, in which something else develops or forms the complex social matrix in which people live their lives.’

I found this, by Amy Lowell:

The Matrix

Goaded and harassed in the factory
That tears our life up into bits of days
Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,
Shredding our portion of Eternity,
We break away at last, and steal the key
Which hides a world empty of hours; ways
Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays
The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy.
Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun,
Scorching against the blue flame of the sky.
Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine
Within a granite basin, under one
The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I
Reach out my hand and pluck a nectarine.

                                      Amy Lowell 1874 – 1925

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Journey - My Epic Travels

We are all on our journey of life. We may visit many places, some planned, some unexpected, taking the good with the bad because that’s how it has to be. We may stay put, allow our imagination to take us travelling and pretend we can survive at the bottom of the ocean cocooned in a submarine, safe from Covid 19. I’m not sure if that’s a dream or a nightmare.

Lockdown again, I’m isolating again and my planned trip to Dumfries & Galloway later this month has been rearranged for springtime. I’ll miss the pre-Christmas break which includes a special dinner in Kirkcudbright for my birthday, and the Christmas gift shopping which I like to do there. Meanwhile, as safe as I can be at home, I’ll look forward to next year, optimistic for better times ahead and maybe make the long journey to Orkney.

When our children were little, we had wonderful family holidays in Pembrokeshire. It took all day to get to our destination and the journey could be made tedious by excited kids driving each other mad.

“Will you tell her? She’s nipping me!”

“Mum, he’s put spit on my leg!”

And much wailing. This would be happening before we left the M55. Threats to return home might shut them up for a while.  We would leave the M6 at North Wales and take the scenic route to our first stop at Bala. There’s a lovely playground where we would have our picnic lunch and the children would have fun playing nicely together. Back on our way and they would hate each other again. Sometimes I would swap with the eldest and put him in the front. The youngest would not be nipping me. The long drive was worth it. We would stay two weeks and a bit more, and enjoy a great time.

Holidays when I was a child, were usually spent staying with seldom seen relatives. My aunt and uncle on my father’s side lived in London and other places in the south of England. The journey to get there would be epic and it was always night time when we arrived. Three things were likely to happen to make us late. Top of the list, somewhere in the midlands I would get travel sick. This definitely, always happened and my seaside bucket would miraculously appear. It didn’t make me feel better, but hopefully, the use of it would protect the leather upholstery of Dad’s Mark 2 Jaguar, or whichever model he had at the time.  We would become lost. These journeys were in the days before the motorways linked up, so we would be south, somewhere, following a map and some instructions of which way to go after we’d run out of M6 or M1. I seem to remember this happening around Banbury. My mother, attempting to keep spirits up and sickness down would have me and my sister singing ‘Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross’ and to look for the statue. I don’t think we ever saw it. Eventually, after my dad had opened the window to ask friendly pedestrians for directions, we would be doing a ‘U’ turn and getting back on our way. Then the car would break down. A cloud of steam would rise from the open bonnet. Dad would roll up his shirt sleeves, wait for the engine to cool – this took time – replenish the water in the radiator and hope it fixed it. He usually knew what to do, but if he was stumped, he would have to find a telephone box to call the AA out. We would arrive at our relatives after dark, hungry, tired and very happy to be made welcome. Happy family times.

Isle of Harris

I wrote this poem after a lengthy journey to the North West Scottish Highlands. The scenery was and is breathtakingly beautiful.

I’ll Take the High Road

Sun-yellow gorse meets a bright blue sky

Where mountains seem low and clouds are high.

Single track, crumbled edge, shared with sheep,

The drop is sharp, the climb is steep

Then dips to touch the shore of the loch

Where gentle waves lick tumbled rock.

Then swift ascent and a chance to pause,

Admire the view and brown-heather’d moors.

Mile after slate-grey mile and some more,

Then, at last, we reach our cottage door.

The road ends where the loch becomes sea,

Dolphins are playing and I feel free.

 

Pamela Winning

May 2014

Thanks for reading. Stay safe, Pam x

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What Dreams May Come - For Branwell, With Love

I can’t remember much of last night’s dream. Vivid though it was, it faded into nothing by the time I was ready for the day and I blamed it on the amount of chocolate I’d eaten just before bedtime. Dreams are nothing more than wishes, it is said. Hopes and dreams of both the attainable and the unreachable, we can only wait and see. I would love to retire to my chosen place in Scotland, eventually.  If that dream doesn’t come true, I’ll have to cope with a compromise and increase my regular visits instead.

Patrick Branwell Bronte couldn’t cope when his hopes and dreams came crashing down to shatter his heart and soul. My interests and studies of the Bronte family have brought me to believe that Branwell, as he was known, was every bit as talented as his sisters but never approved of his own efforts.  I wish he hadn’t obliterated himself from the family portrait he painted.  His lack of self-approval led to unsuccessful career appointments and eventual self-destruction, after the love of his life, Lydia Robinson nee Gisborne let him down. She was the wife of his last employer, the Rev. Edmund Robinson, a sick man close to the end of his life, who sent Branwell packing when he discovered what was going on. Such ‘goings on’ is shrouded in the uncertainty of whether there was an affair, or if it was Branwell’s fanciful infatuation. When Rev. Robinson passed away, Branwell expected to be reunited with Lydia, but it was not to be. According to Rev. Robinson’s Will, she would be cut off without a penny if Branwell was back in her life, so she distanced herself, married someone else, yet regularly sent money to Branwell. He was a broken man, haunted by unrequited love and seeking solace in alcohol and opium.  He was further disturbed by Lydia calling out to him in his dreams. He died aged 31, of tuberculosis aggravated by alcoholism and laudanum addiction.  For me, Sally Wainwright captured his character, and his sisters, perfectly in her drama To Walk Invisible.

 

I wrote this poem about him a few years ago.

 

Patrick Branwell Bronte

 

Poet and artist, your fallen talents go to waste

And are trapped within the torment of your mind.

Forbidden love, so heavenly to taste

Now haunts and disturbs; no beauty left to find.

The call of temptation and no wish to be chaste,

But to be drunk on the perfume of bodies entwined.

Oh Branwell! Your vision clouded by opium and gin

And the burdening weight of adulterous sin…

                                                    PMW

 

Branwell wrote this sonnet for Lydia –

 

Lydia Gisborne

 

On Ouse’s grassy banks - last Whitsuntide,

I sat, with fears and pleasures, in my soul

Commingled, as ‘it roamed without control’,

O’er present hours and through a future wide

Where love, methought, should keep my heart beside

Her, whose own prison home I looked upon:

But, as I looked, descended summer’s sun,

And did not its descent my hopes deride?

The sky though blue was soon to change to grey-

I, on that day, next year must own no smile -

And as those waves, to Humber far away,

Were gliding – so, though that hour might beguile

My Hopes they too, to woe’s far deeper sea,

Rolled past the shores of Joy’s now dim and distant isle.

 

Also by Patrick Branwell Bronte, The Doubter’s Hymn

 

Life is a passing sleep

Its deeds a troubled dream

And death the dread awakening

To daylight’s dawning beam.

 

We sleep without a thought

Of what is past and o’er

Without a glimpse of consciousness

Of aught that lies before

 

We dream and on our sight

A thousand visions rise

Some dark as Hell some heavenly bright

But all are fantasies

 

We wake and oh how fast

These mortal visions fly!

Forgot amid the wonders vast

Of immortality!

 

And oh! When we arise

With ‘wildered gaze to see

The aspect of those morning skies

Where will that waking be?

 

How will that Future seem?

What is Eternity?

Is Death the sleep? – Is Heaven the Dream?

Life the Reality?

 

Thanks for reading and may your dreams come true, Pam x 

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Death - Dreaming of Loved Ones

I was only four years old when I encountered death for the first time. My lovely great-grandmother had passed away during the night. My mother held my hands and explained that Nanna Mary had died because she was too poorly to get better. The angels had taken her soul to Heaven and if we blew kisses up to the sky, she would catch them. She loved me but I would never see her again because she had gone now and I had to be brave and not cry. So that was it. No more feeding the chickens in the back garden, no more cuddles in the big chair by the fire while we shared an orange, no more throaty laughter, no more Nanna Mary.

When I was born I had my parents, two sets of grand-parents, my great-grandmother, three great-aunts and a few uncles, aunts and a cousin. The angels took my family one by one, usually without warning and by the time I reached the age of thirty everyone had passed away except a couple of aunts, an uncle, a few distant cousins and my younger sister. For years I had the desolate feeling of emptiness associated with grief as I had to accept the changes and carry on like every bereaved person does. Even now I can feel the overwhelming sadness at the memory of someone I’ve lost, yet at the same time feel blessed to have known them as part of my family. My childhood was filled with love and joy.

Some time ago, when I was being treated for a serious illness, I had a recurring dream. Dreams don’t bother me generally but this one did.

In the dream I was entering a room full of people. The main source of light came from the blazing fire in a stone hearth that everyone was sitting round. Happy and smiling, they turned to greet me, saying my name. I felt more welcome than ever before, anywhere. These lovely, warm people were my family. Some of them I’d never known because they had lived and died before I was born. My mother was elated, reaching out to me. At that point, and always then, I would realise my father was not there and I would wake up.

The dream disturbed and upset me. Perhaps it was the medication or the condition of my illness. It’s the only time I’ve considered my own mortality.  I haven’t had the dream since I recovered. I decided that my father was missing because he wasn’t going to let me die. It made me wonder what death is like. Will my departed family be waiting to welcome my soul? Will anyone blow kisses up to the sky for me to catch?

 

Most of my dear departed are at rest in Southern Cemetery, Manchester or Brooklands Cemetery, Sale. These are my own photos.

 

 

This is my favourite sonnet from Christina Rossetti.

 

Remember

 

Remember me when I am gone away,

     Gone far away into the silent land;
     When you can no more hold me by the hand,
     Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
     Remember me when no more day by day
     You tell me of our future that you planned:
     Only remember me; you understand
     It will be late to counsel then or pray.
     Yet if you should forget me for a while
     And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
     For if the darkness and corruption leave
     A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
     Better by far you should forget and smile
     Than that you should remember and be sad.

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam xx

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Politics, Ice creams and Dreams

Politics, Ice creams and Dreams

I had a dream

And in that dream there was trust

And that trust was justified

And that trust was gratified

And that trust was unified

With all my brothers and sister

I had a dream

And in that dream politicians cared

And that caring led to happiness

And that caring rid us of hopelessness

And that caring gave us wholesomeness

For all my brothers and sister

I had a dream

And in that dream love conquered all

And that love put an end to hunger

And that love stopped the warmongers

And the love silenced the guns of thunder

Between all my brothers and sisters

Then I woke from this dream

And I spoke of this dream

Told my MP about this dream

To make reality this dream.

But I might as well have been driving

A car made or ice cream

For the good it did me.

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