Two weeks to go

In a fortnight's time I will be sitting on a plane, on my way to Athens.

I've planned my route and booked almost all my accommodation, and I've sorted out a lot of information on things like bus routes and ferry schedules.  I've treated myself to a better camera than the toy one I've been using for the last couple of years, and a new sketchbook.  I'm a bit nervous, now the time is getting close.  I'm also very excited.

I am at something of a crossroads in my life.  I’ve been made redundant, I’ve recently been diagnosed with a life-long and serious medical condition; things I'd been certain of have changed irrevocably.  Suddenly my life has been reshaped, and perforce also seems shorter and more prescribed (and indeed proscribed, too) than I ever imagined it would be.  On top of that, in December of this year I will turn fifty.   

I may never have another opportunity as good as this to set aside the demands of regular wage-earning, and the expected cautious behaviour of the middle-aged, and risk doing something that excites me and me alone.  And with my age and my altered health in mind, the idea of travelling alone, trying to fulfil a challenging project, becomes a kind of mid-life rite-of-passage.  

Can I still do something like this at all?  Am I going to be okay, setting off on this daft month of travelling as if I were still 23?

And then that question prompts a deeper one in me, of whether I'll be able to face the next stage in my life with a spirit of hope and adventure, or have to accept lowered hopes and narrowed horizons from now on. 

I want to find out again who I am and what makes my life feel worthwhile.  I want to prove to myself that I can still meet a challenge, instead of running away from it and hiding.

The chances are that I am now getting on for 2/3 of the way through my time on this earth.  I do not want my remaining years to be lived with the shutters drawn. 

Since the Greek government has now quit and called elections for mid-September, I'm going to be travelling during the last stage of the election campaign, and into its aftermath.  The BBC are suggesting that polling day will be the 20th, when I'm expecting to be staying on Poros, one of the islands of the Saronic Gulf.  So that will be an interesting additional thing going on.

So, I’m going on a pilgrimage, at a time of flux in my life, to visit a country also in flux.  I first visited Greece 26 years ago, and so much has changed here in that time.  The country had just joined the EU when I first went there, and has now come close to leaving it again.  When I travelled across Greece in 1989, the drachma was still the currency, and the years of dictatorship weren't much more than a decade in the past.  And it was quite an old-school place in someways.  One could get on a local bus and still find someone in the next seat carrying a pair of live chickens tied together at the feet.  It was still quite common to see elderly people wearing elements of traditional regional costume as their daily wear.  I remember it as an extraordinary shift in atmosphere and pace, after the very deliberate and self-conscious style of Italy.

 

A lot has changed since then.  Now my beloved Hellas is again in a time of transition, struggling with enormous problems, facing frustration and loss.  It would be crass for me to pretend that I, as an outsider, have any useful insight to offer on the situation of a people struggling to survive and a country rendered desperately poor by a huge complex mess of problems.  All I can speak of is my own experience, as a philhellene, trying to come to terms with my own personal problems and looking around me at larger problems, and at lives affected more drastically, and with less hope of rescue or safety.  I hope so much for things to begin to straighten out for them.

Well, when I get there, I'll see what I find.  For now, I have the remainder of my planning to do, and there are just two weeks left to do it in.  Much of which is already committed to other things (seeing friends, visiting my Mum, doctor's appointments and so on).  So I really do need to get on now.

A time of change

This has been a very strange month-and-a-bit.

In early March I finally accepted voluntary redundancy at work.  Paperwork took a while to come through, as the wheels of HR do turn exceeding slow, and consequently the official stuff wasn't actually signed till the end of March.  I am now in my notice period and I will be leaving Kew, where I've worked for the last ten years, at the end of June.  Ten years is a long chunk of a life.  It feels very strange.

Then a day or two later, feeling I had nothing to lose now, I finally told a chap I've had a roaring crush on for well over a year (& a slight crush on for a lot longer) how I feel.  I knew he was in a relationship and wasn't interested in me in that way, and he confirmed that.  He was nonetheless incredibly nice about it.  If I ever find myself (unlikely but even so) in the position of having to tell someone I like them as a person but-not-in-that-way, I now have a superb example of how to do it; with kindness, compassion, respect and even a sense of humour.  I've been rejected before, but always with the unkindness of grave embarrassment, or even with anger and disgust.  Never like this; he was just lovely about it.  I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't experienced it.

Of course, the downside of that was that it made me like him even more.  It confirmed to me why it is that I've come to like him so very much.  He's intelligent and articulate and interesting, yes; but he is also a thoroughly likeable and old-fashionedly good man.  Whoever his other half is, they have a good 'un there and I hope they treasure him as much as he deserves.

Then a few days after that, and no "finally" about this one but a huge shock completely out of the blue, I was diagnosed with diabetes.

So 2015 is turning out to be a year of change and challenges.  I am determined not to be broken down by all the things that are being turned upside down; my committment to Kew, my casual assumption of my own continuing health...   I'm on a diet, and have already lost over a stone in weight; I'm on pills that should support what pancreatic function I still have left; and with an end in sight now, my stress levels at work are decreasing.  It's all very strange, though, very strange indeed.  Things have been taken from me that I had thought were entirely stable, and my world is changed utterly.

I went to the theatre tonight.  I had supper out beforehand (I am working my way through the various Superfood Salad options of the main chain restaurants; to my relief, so far most of them have turned out to be pretty good) and then I went to see The Nether, by Jennifer Haley, which has come into the West End from the Royal Court for a limited run.  This was, funnily enough, on the recommendation of my crush; and I can see why, too.  What an extraordinary and thought-provoking play, and what a brilliant piece of staging.  Although the subject matter is disturbing it's handled with immense delicacy, and it addresses some very powerful and challenging ideas.  It's on for just a couple more weeks; if you like an evening out that makes you think, rather than just entertaining you, then I recommend this highly. 

Hier, quand j'étais jeune...

On Monday I went back to an old haunt of mine.

Years ago, in my first real job, I worked at the Quaker International Centre in Bloomsbury, just north of the British Museum. I was, heaven help me, the deputy chef. It was a great job in many respects – I learned to cater for large numbers unfazed, and as it was a live-in post I also got to make the most of being based in central London, with museums and galleries, theatres, concert halls and cinemas all within half an hour’s journey. A live-in job has its bad side, of course; one can never really get away from work, and if one has a falling-out with a colleague, there’s no escape from it at the end of the day, there they are sitting opposite one at supper… And yes, in case you’re wondering, Quakers do have fallings-out, too, though they try to be very civilised about it. They’re only human!

Ten minutes walk from QIC, on Drummond Street, was the divine Diwana Bhel Poori House. For a hungry twenty-year-old who has spent all day cooking preposterous amounts of food for other people, a Diwana thali with friends was a perfect evening out. A great platter containing dal, sabzis, pappadums, puris, relishes, pulao rice, pickles, idlis or fritters, even a dollop of something creamy and cardamom-y for desert… For years it was my insider tip for visitors to London – go to Diwana, have a thali, you won’t regret it – and it left me with a serious addiction to bhel poori with sev. I’ve now found a similar place in Hammersmith and can get my fix without having to trail up to Euston, hurrah. Diwana is still there on Drummond Street, though.

Anyway, on Monday I met my stepmum Jane there for an early supper before she took the train to Milton Keynes for the fun of an OU Tutors’ first aid training session. It was the hottest day of the year so far and neither of us had the appetite for a thali, so we settled on dahi vada and dosas, and an indulgent mango lassi each. The dosas were tasty and very filling, the dahi vada – a sort of vegetarian dumpling served with tamarind chutney and fresh yoghurt – were delicious. We talked our heads off, catching up, putting the world to rights and gossiping about my brothers behind their backs (only kidding, guys!). Then I walked her up to Euston for her train.

And then, I was at a loose end, on a hot midsummer evening, back in the heart of my old stomping ground. I didn’t want to go straight back down into the Tube (which had been swelteringly hot and very smelly), so I wandered south and west through the back streets, thinking I’d pick up a westbound number 94 bus.

My route took me down the side of Gordon Square, where once I used to relax under the trees, and right past the old QIC building where I had lived and worked, and the University church where I once gave a reading, and through the streets and past the shops I used to know so well; and it had all changed.

Well; not quite all. The Square looked much the same; same tall London planes, same slightly unkempt grass and circle of rose beds in the middle. The church looked much the same, except in need of a good clean. But QIC seems to have been shut up completely, and most of the windows are boarded. And apart from the Marlborough Arms on the corner of Huntley Street, hardly a shop or café or restaurant was the same. The flower stalls had all gone, Apollo Food&Wine on the Tottenham Court Road had gone, the wonderful Italian ice-cream place opposite Heals had gone, Byzantium on Goodge Street had gone, and the Swiss deli on Charlotte Street, and the Greek taverna, and the Polish bakery...

I walked on feeling very strange, very yesterday-when-I-was-young. It is all so long ago, and that keen, clumsy girl I was is so long gone. It was salutary, and at first I felt very melancholy. But gradually as I walked on I began to feel better.

I would not turn the clock back for love or money, after all. It would be good, of course, to have again the physical vitality of my younger self. I am stouter and slower, and have less stamina, than the Imogen of those days. It would be good to have all the time ahead of me that she had, and for that matter the opportunities (had she but possessed the self-confidence to take advantage of them). But I was an awkward, desperate, cripplingly shy creature, tortured by my inability to make everyone happy, terrified both of solitude and of being overwhelmed by others’ lives and wishes. I lived in a fantasy world most of the time when I was not cooking, and my crushes, instead of being safely distant dancers and musicians, were guys I knew well and saw every day, whose proximity was a torment and whose rejection left me bent double with self-disgust. In short, I was a mess; and terribly, terribly young.

I don’t want to be that immature, unhappy, embittered young woman. I am fearfully glad I woke up, and grew up, and made the choices and decisions I made, and got to where I am today. My world is not perfect, not by a long pole; but it’s pretty good, nonetheless, and it is my own. My life now reflects who I am with a deep truth, and no amount of youthful energy restored could replace that self-knowledge and self-possession. And for this I am very grateful. So I didn’t look around me with any regret, after the first few shocks, but with surprise and a sense of amazement, and a growing feeling of peace, and I walked quietly along to Oxford Circus, and got the bus home.

New Year, New You

...Well, that's the theory, anyway. As Kerry (flatmate, "Wicked" fan, mentioned before in context of origami) remarked in ironic tones at midnight on Wednesday "Happy New Year! - hey, our lives have just been completely transformed." We then drank a large amount of champagne very quickly and went out in the street to wave sparklers and cooo at the neighbours' fireworks, so you can see that the mood of adult cynicism didn't last. In fact we had a great evening; she has taken up baking, and produced a very creditable apple pie with a rich chocolate crust. Paulo missed out on the pie as he had decided at the last minute to try and get to the Mayoral fireworks, and announced at the kitchen door "I am going out to the streets, I may be some time"; at which we both shrieked "Goodbye, Captain Oates!" and fell around laughing, much to his bewilderment (unsurprisingly, Robert Falcon Scott is not a national figure in Portugal).

Captain Scott; author of one of my favourite quotes (from his last journal entry):

"I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew that we took them, things have turned out against us; therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of providence, determined still to do our best to the last."

As a statement of calm resolution in the face of defeat, and of what I can only call the spiritual equivalent of Truth-to-materials, that takes some beating.

I had that quotation stuck on the wall of my studio space at college for four years out of the five I was there. I remember one of the tutors stopping to read it once, then snapping dramatically at me that I hadn't taken any risks at all; I replied mulishly that I thought for me I had, and she pouted and flung her hair(ex-KIAD people will probably be able to guess which tutor this was!). I simply hadn't the nerve to say "Lady, I have taken a far bigger risk than most of the students you applaud as risk-takers - I have done my own thing, consistently, even though it was neither fashionable nor popular with you, and even though I know it won't get me a good degree."

Yea, I'm a reb, me! Ahem, kind-of, ~ish...

Anyway, going back to new years and new starts; 2008 has been very much a year of reshaping and shaking up, and of altering the basic formulae, as 'twere, so that I reached the end feeling rather different from the woman who went in, twelve months ago. Most of this tranformational process has been internal - mental and emotional and, dare I say, spiritual. I hope this coming year will be one of building on these new foundations and starting to make real headway on realising my plans and dreams.

And I hope it will be so for all of you, too. Happy New Year, everyone!