Endings, beginnings and hand-washings

If you work in a school or nursery, this time of year is always full of endings. 
Children moving onto primary school or secondary school or taking their first steps into adulthood.  Staff moving on to new jobs or new countries or new lives   
The air is crackling with a strange mixture of excitement and sadness, laughter and tears. Every year at the Nursery and Children's Centre we watch our 4 year olds skip through the door into a world of classrooms and school uniform.  And even though they don't know it, they are leaving behind the first part of their childhood and even though we should be used to it, it is always hard to see them go (most of them!)

Endings are strange things. 
Part of the reason you start reading a book or watching a film is because you want to know  how it will end. 
But often when you reach the end, it is  unfulfilling  or sad or confusing. 
A memorable ending is the greatest gift a writer or film- maker can give you. 
Memorable endings are what we spend our lives striving towards. 
When you leave somewhere, you can't help hoping that you have made a difference, that you won't be forgotten, that without you there , something will be imperceptibly ( or perceptibly) different. 
When you move house, you hope that whoever lives there next will keep something of you in it: some wallpaper, the kitchen tiles, the shelves in the bedroom.
 It's the same when you leave a job, you hope that something you did made such a difference that a little part of you will always be there. 
And when you leave life, you cant help hoping  that the world will be a lesser place for the lack of you.

The truth is that our lives are a constant stream of endings. 
The end of school, the end of childhood, the end of being young, free and single,the end of work,  the end of breakfast, the end of X factor, the end of the day. 
But every time something ends, something else begins.
When school ends, the holidays begin.
When childhood ends, adulthood begins.
When you stop being young, free and single, it is usually because you have met your partner or become a parent.
When work ends, the fun begins.
When the  X factor ends, normal life begins again.
When the day ends, night ( and best of all ) sleep begins. 

" What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from."
                   From Little Gidding, T S Eliot

And that's why endings are so confusing. 
It's hard to know how you feel: happy, sad, excited, scared, everything, all at the same time.
One of my friends and her family are leaving England for good next weekend. Before they go, they are opening up their house and letting people buy everything they have left.
"It's a nice," says my friend, " to think of things we have owned scattered across friends' homes. Like a little part of us is staying behind."
But the truth is, it's not the things themselves but the memories they evoke, that keeps those we care about with us.
The memories of evenings spent laughing or days spent gossiping. 
The memories of shopping or drinking or wandering unfamiliar streets together.
The memories of nights on star drenched beaches, sharing dreams.
The memories of normal days, made special laughter.

And as long as our days are filled with moments worth treasuring, then real life will always be better than fiction because the ending will never disappoint.

My friend who is leaving the country and I were sitting together in Nursery the other day.  I was teaching in the kitchen where children were choosing different topping to spread on crackers. 

 A dark eyed boy with sticking up hair came in from the garden, sweaty and covered in sand. He sat down at the table and looked expectantly at the plate of crackers.

" Wash your hands and then you can have a cracker," I said.
The boy stared at me and continued sitting at the table.
" First wash your hands, then a cracker," I explained again.
Slowly the boy stood up and raising his hands, spat into them until they were dripping with saliva.  And once he had rubbed them together and dried them on his shorts, he fetched a plate and sat down again at the table.
For a while my friend and I couldn't speak, tears of laughter were running down our cheeks.  
She recovered first and found her serious face.
" I think you need to use water from the tap and soap to wash your hands," she told him.
For a second the boy stared at her, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Standing up, he started walking toward the sink but half way there he let out a blood curdling scream, rubbed his saliva and sand-covered hand in his hair and raced into the garden.
" I don't think he likes washing his hands," gasped my friend through our laughter.

And that's it. 
That's the memory.
A little boy with saliva covered hands and sharing tears of laughter with a friend.
A good ending to take with you to a new beginning.

The big boring breakfast battle

Like all parents, I know that breakfast is "the most important meal of the day."
Like all parents, I know that children who eat breakfast, learn better at school.
Like most parents of teenagers, I battle every morning to get them to eat it.

The battle usually starts on Sunday afternoon.
" So, " i say hopefully to Mia (15) and Joss (13), " dad's just going shopping, what would you like for your breakfasts this week?" 
" Anything's fine," says Mia, glancing up from her computer or away from a conversation with a friend about another friend.
" Don't care," says Joss, without lifting his eyes from his phone, which buzzes constantly with tweets from his 30,000 followers.
" Anything... and... don't care.. doesn't really help," I point out. " could you narrow it down a little."
Mia sighs and rolls her eyes.
" Why do you have to make everything so dramatic mum. It's just breakfast. Leave us alone. Get whatever."
" Mum and sister arguing about breakfast again, LOL," tweets Joss.
Ninesh writes " Breakfast things-whatever," on the shopping list and leaves for the supermarket. 
And I stand in the kitchen, explaining that I am not being dramatic and that breakfast is very important and Mia and Joss ignore me.  

And then it's Monday morning.
Sleepily Joss wanders into the kitchen in his trendy, baggy pyjama trousers.
He pulls open the drawer we have filled with bagels and muffins and malt loaf, stares at it disparagingly and slams it shut.
Ninesh comes downstairs, his ironed shirt in one hand and phone in the other.
" Joss just tweeted that there is never anything nice for breakfast in our house," he says.
I stare at Joss, who is now sitting at the table, his fingers moving like lightening across his phone.
" We've got loads of things for breakfast Joss," I say, my voice rising defensively.
" Not nice things," says Joss.
" There's bagels or muffins or eggs or toast or cereal or fruit or...."
" Exactly," says Joss, " nothing nice."
Mia floats in, her eyes still full of last night's dreams.
" Why are you shouting mum?" she asks.
" I'm not shouting," I shout.
" She's annoyed because I said there's nothing nice for breakfast," explains Joss.
" Oh that ," says Mia, " There never is. Can I have some of that curry left over from yesterday."
I feel myself relaxing. At least one of my children is going to eat breakfast without a fight.
" Of course you can," I smile, " I'll just heat it up."
"No. not now. I'm not hungry yet. I'll just have a cup of tea first."
I glance at the clock. In 20 minutes Mia and Joss have to be on their way to school and I have to be at work.
I grit my teeth. 
" Ok," I say," just tell me when.  Don't leave it too late though."
Mia glares at me.
" Why would I leave it too late. I'm not stupid.  Why do you always have to say things like that. Just forget it, I don't want anything for breakfast."
 And she storms into the bathroom.
Joss stands up.
" I'm going to get dressed," he says. " I'm not hungry anyway.  Why don't you just buy stuff we like for breakfast. Then you wouldn't have to get so stressy all the time."
And he walks upstairs, fingers on phone.
Ninesh's phone buzzes.
" Mum stressing out about breakfast again. Hahaha" he reads out. 
In my head, I race upstairs, grab Joss's phone and tell 30,000 complete strangers how I'm not stressed at all about breakfast and how lucky Joss is to have such a lovely mum.  In my head!
" Just let it go," advises Ninesh, " it's only breakfast. They'll eat if they're hungry."
And I know he's right.
But somehow I feel as though I am failing if I can't get them to eat at least a spoonful of cereal.
" But breakfast is the most important meal of the day," I begin forlornly, " all the research shows..."
Ninesh is already walking  away.
" All the research probably shows that breakfast is the most boring meal of the day... unless it's a fry up," he says, helpfully.
And perhaps that's true. 
 In other countries breakfast is just as exciting as all the other meals.  String hoppers  and kiri hodi in Sri Lanka

Chinese donuts and a bowl of warm soy milk in China

A cold platter in Germany

 Curries in Thailand

A bowl of cereal in England

Perhaps I need to be more creative with my breakfasts.  
Perhaps under " breakfast stuff," on Ninesh's shopping list, I should write:
Sate chicken, 
String hoppers
A variety of cold meat platters. 
Perhaps I should get up early so that the kids come downstairs to a beautifully laid out table with a variety of breakfast options each morning.
Or perhaps I should just stop being so " stressy."
Because  I can't help feeling that whatever I do for breakfast, 30,000 complete strangers would still receive the tweet:
 never any nice food for breakfast in our house. packet of crisps on way to school nom

The hopeful gardener

As it happens, we are all feeling a bit sad at the moment.

My father-in-law Sam, has had to have brain surgery for the second time in 3 weeks.  And he is battling to stay with us, mentally, if not physically.

And we are here , waiting.

Waiting for news.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

Waiting for a text

Waiting for anything that  will tell us that Sam is getting better.

It's hangs over us like a cloud, this waiting.  Stopping any of us from doing anything, just in case.

Perhaps that is why the washing is piling up and the dishwasher isn't being emptied and the house looks like a bomb of clothes and bags and empty cups and newspapers has exploded all over it.

Or perhaps that is just an excuse.

Because the truth is, that whenever I'm feeling sad, I leave the inside of the house to gather dust, walk outside and start gardening..

When I was young, I could never understand why my parents would spend Sunday afternoons digging and weeding and planting and mowing . Why would anyone  choose to get their hands dirty and their feet muddy, when they could be talking with friends or shopping or watching TV.

I'd like to say it's an age thing. But that's not true.  

At the Nursery where I work, the 3 and 4 year olds love gardening. They spend hours digging in the dirt, pulling out the flowers and vegetables we planted so carefully with them the day before and lovingly watering the weeds.  Even the most wild of boys become intent and focussed when they are gardening, lost in that  sense of wonder that a tiny seed or hard round bulb can turn into a beautiful flower or an enormous strawberry.

So on Sunday afternoon, as Sam was rushed to the High Dependency Unit, clinging to life, I dug my hands deep into the warm soil.  I planted delicate purple flowers and tall, paper-thin  pink ones.  I filled baskets with earth and waged war on weeds.

And I felt my heart slow and my thoughts calm.

And for a few absorbing hours, I forgot.

Forgot that I was in a tiny garden, in a small city. 

Forgot that my day was clouded in a shroud  of waiting.

Forgot that sadness was only a breath away.

Because that's the thing about gardening and watching things grow.

It's timelessly and unendingly constant 

It's everywhere and all the time .

I have stood on hard, hot pavements in the middle of enormous, dirty cities and seen the startlingly bright petals of  a perfect flower poking through a dusty crack in the road.

I have sat on the top of barren, windswept mountains and seen a delicate white flower nestling behind a rock. I have driven through fields and fields of untended wild flowers carpeting the world with colour.

Nature is frightening and uncontrollable.

But those tiny flowers, those splashes of colour where you least expect to see them, give you hope.

Because if they can beat the odds, perhaps anyone can.

If the flowers in our garden can survive my inexpert, ungreen fingers - then maybe, just maybe, when the phone rings, it will be with good news.

Mud and mayhem at the Green Man Festival

If it's Summer in England, it's festival season. And everyone has to experience a festival at least once in their life. It's the unwritten rule. 
The trendy festival scene started with Glastonbury. But now there are so many festivals, it's hard to go anywhere in June, July or August without passing marquees being set up in muddy fields and signs featuring the names of bands  you have never heard of in big red letters.

So a few years ago, in order to cross it off our " things to do before we die," list, my family ( us and my brother and sister and their families ) decided it was time. So we  bought tickets  for the Greenman festival in Wales. We chose the Greenman partly because  we had actually heard of some of the bands, partly because it's very family friendly, but mostly because it's very close to where my brother lives so if the weather was too bad and the toilets too disgusting, we had an escape route.

The Greenman Festival takes place in the grounds of a beautiful house, nestled in the foothills of gentle mountains. On the rare occassions that the Welsh sun shines, it is breathtakingly beautiful. We We arrived on Friday night as the first twang of live music vibrated through the peaceful Summer evening. The hardier festival- goers had already been there for days, colourful tents and painted camper vans crowded together, like a holiday refugee camp.

 We inspected the compostible toilets, which on Friday evening, still weren't too bad and  leaving our van in the hope that we would be able to find it again, we wandered through the happy crowds to try and find the rest of our family. Children with painted faces, wearing nothing but flowery wellies, weaved in and out of tents while their (mostly) long haired parents, also wearing flowery wellies,  hammered in pegs, laid out bedding and set up chairs and tables.  Teenagers in cut off jeans tried to catch the eye of other teenagers in cut-off jeans and smells of barbecue and curries and compost drifted over from the stages where the bands were already playing. And the evening was warm, the food we  ate together at " base camp," delicious, the cousins delighted to see each other and the first multi-talented band we heard that night:  Bellowhead, were amazing. 

                            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZjnxFMQACk
 The main stage was built at the foot of a hill,  creating a concert basin with slopes to lounge on and the perfect backdrop of mountains and sunset. We danced and wandered around listening to music, poetry, stand up comedy and watching the enormous bubbles from the " bubble shop," drifting by with the beautiful relaxed festival-induced sense  of peaceful aimlessness.

And that's how the whole weekend was. 
 Full of good music, delicious food, bubbles and so much " love and peace," that it was hard to believe that bad things could ever happen in the world.  
The kids loved it. 
It was small enough for them to roam freely wherever they wanted without getting lost but big enough to feel like an adventure.       
We grown-ups based ourselves at the Chai Wallahs tent with a constant stream of beer, chai and amazing, as yet unknown, musicians from all over the world.
By the time we had to leave on Sunday evening we were so chilled it was impossible to believe that anything could ever stress us out again.  The kids, faces painted, flowers in their hair and huge bubble wands in their hands, all declared it had been the best weekend of their lives. 

 And we thought so too and as soon as we got back home we booked our tickets for next year.
The whole of the next year was spent in anticipation of the " time of our life," we would re-experience the next Summer.  We looked up the bands who would be playing so that Ninesh and I could listen to them beforehand and pretend we had always liked them.  We planned our food, our wanderings, our Chi Wallah nights. 
And the weekend arrived.
And it rained and rained.  
The mud changed from squelchy and earth coloured to compacted and unpleasant runny  brown.  
Walking was like a game where, if you made it to the other side of the path without losing a welly in the mud, you felt that you should win a prize. The toilets were brown streams and by Sunday, if you didn't keep walking, you sank!

The music was still amazing and we heard Linton Kwesi Johnson, which in itself made the weekend worthwhile.  The kids still loved the freedom of roaming unwatched, the mountains, when you could see them through the rain and clouds, were still beautiful and the food just as delicious, even the ice creams!

But somehow, the magic was gone. 
Perhaps the novelty that comes with "first-time,' experiences was missing.
Perhaps you should never do the same thing twice.
But mostly, it was the mud. Cloying and ( by the end ) stinking, we are still finding it in our clothes and van and wellies and tent a year later.
The truth is, that us " oldies," are fair-weather festival goers.  Deep down inside, I know that mud and dirt and blocked toilets are an integral part of the true festival experience but I have always preferred green grass and cleanliness and toilets that flush. 
And I can't help feeling relieved that I can now tick the  " go to a festival," box on my life plan.
I am glad it has  moved from my: " to do," to my: " have done," list.  
And when our kids are ready to festival on their own, I will willingly help them pack their bags with wellies and flowers and toilet paper, while I dream quietly of  weekends away in sweet smelling hotels with crisp white sheets and unmuddied bathwater.

Letting go

The strange thing about your own children is that however much they exhaust and frustrate you, letting go of them is one of the hardest things you will ever have to do. The wrench is almost physical. A cutting of the ties, a loosening of the knot, a lowering of the safety net you have created for them.
Yesterday our 15 year old daughter, Mia, started her work experience for You Magazine in London. The offices are in Northcliffe House, just off Kensington High Street, the building  huge and never ending with escalators that  reach to the sky.

On the train and tube, Mia had towered over me in her heels and "smart/casual," blue dress but as I watched her disappearing through the spinning glass doors , she suddenly looked so small and vulnerable. A miniscule blue dot against the imposing brown brick and reflective panelled glass.  
It was hard not to chase after her - just to check she was alright.   
But that would never do.  
It was uncool enough that I had come.
So I stood and watched her disappearing along the shining hallway, taking her first step into adulthood. 
Watched the emptiness where she had been standing.
Watched the doors spinning constantly, rotating people in and out.
Watched the world that, at 15, Mia will now know more about than me.
And I couldn't help wondering when it is that we stop being the centre of our children's worlds and start becoming mere observers, standing outside, watching their lives unfold through the reflective glass.

Perhaps it starts with the first day of nursery or the first day of school. 

Or the  first time they go to a party without you or sleep at a friend's house. But I think that maybe it starts the day you are walking down the road together and they see a friend waiting for them and shaking off your hand, they say:
"you're not going to walk all the way to the end of the road with me, are you?"

I spent the rest of  yesterday pacing the grey London pavements, breathing in the fume-filled air, feeling old and slightly unnecessary. 
And at the end of the day I waited inconspicuously at the tube station.

Until I saw her, smiling and waving through the crowds in her blue dress and high heels.
And she was fine.
And I was fine. 
And I waved back, smiling too.  
The slightly sad smile of someone who is learning to let go.

To A Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye. 

Linda Pastan

One perfect peony

The thing that I love best about Spring and Summer, is the way that gardens, which have spent all Winter looking brown and boring, are suddenly filled with splashes of colour.  Red and blue buds poke through hedges and paving stones, sweet scented pink and white roses tumble from trellises and window boxes are filled with the deep pinks and velvet reds of geraniums, so bright that it is hard to believe they are real.

 To a chaotic gardener like myself, each new bloom is a pleasure and a surprise.  I never remember what I planted  last year.  I don't plan for flowers that bloom at different times, I don't plant flowerbeds with the tallest flowers at the back grading down to the smallest at the front. I don't think about what colours would look good together.  I just see flowers that I like and put them in the ground and hope that they will grow. And each year, if they reappear, my joy at seeing them again is not just the result of their colour or beauty or scent but is filled with the pleasure of a reunion, of meeting old friends who you had almost forgotten about but now you have met them again, you remember how much you liked them.

But there is one flower that I always wait for amongst the colourful chaos of our garden. One flower that, for the short time it blooms, seems to hold the rest of the garden to ransom. Nothing seems to me to be as beautiful as our peony. When it opens its rich, red petals, I always breathe a sigh of relief. It has been growing here since we first bought our house and the small wilderness that was its garden.  If flowers had been planted, they had long ago been strangled by weeds and overshadowed by knee length grass and bits of rubble. But when we had tamed the grass, waged war on the weeds and kicked aside the odd chunk of brick, I was amazed at the flower I found, nestled in the shadow of the crumbling shed. Its deep red petals formed perfect swirls of colour. Against the peeling green of the shed and hay-like brownness of the grass,its beauty seemed almost luminous.
 In the house our newborn son was crying and our 2 year old daughter was demanding 
" more milk." But I remember standing in front of that flower and for just a moment the exhaustion of sleepless nights and relentless demands that come with being a parent, disappeared  There was no epiphany. I wasn't suddenly filled with inner hope or enlightened courage but just knowing that something so beautiful could survive despite the odds, made me think that we could too.
When I asked my gardening guru neighbour Gill what the flower was, she laughed.
" That's a peony," she said, " needs replanting though. Look at those roots! And it needs more light."
So with her help, I replanted it in a better place. It was the first planting  I did in our garden, the first change I made ( after cutting the grass ). And it did feel symbolic, as though by replanting a beautiful flower I had taken the first steps towards replanting our lives in our new home.
And so I will always feel linked to my peony.  I will always wait anxiously for it to bloom. Each year I watch as the spiked red edged shoots break through the earth, hold my breath while the strange puppet fingered leaves grow longer and thinner, hunt hopefully for the buds hidden amongst all the foliage.  And there is a lot of foliage!
" Too many leaves," said Gill disparagingly, " that's the trouble with peonies."
And I suppose she's right.  
Once again this year, the leaves have taken over most of the flowerbed but they are nurturing only one flower, deep, deep red against the green.
 But I don't care because it is beautiful and perfect- and one perfect peony is all I need. 

Murder most unfathomable

Sometimes spine-chilling things happen at the most unexpected times.  Ninesh was in London this week, visiting his dad in hospital. My father-in-law is just recovering from major surgery and Ninesh was sitting next to his bed, chatting quietly when the hallway outside the door suddenly filled with policemen armed with machine guns. As Ninesh and his dad watched, a young man, handcuffed to a wheelchair was pushed past the door.

" Who's that?" asked Ninesh.

" One of the Woolwich murder suspects," whispered the nurse... " did you see. He looked straight at me."

For a moment, no one could speak. What is there to say when an alleged murderer, who just a week ago might have stood in the street, in the middle of the day hacking someone to death, passes your door.

There are no words. 

Just raw fear

It is impossible to fathom what drives someone to commit the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man.  
It is easy to blame religion, to accuse Muslim preachers of rousing followers to hatred.
It's always easier when we have someone to blame.
But there is never one reason that causes individuals to act in the way they do.
It is never that simple. 
We are, all of us, complicated products of confusing pasts and our reaction to the here and now is always part of a bigger picture. In these times of unemployment and economic crisis there are many disenfranchised people wandering the streets feeling that their existence is pointless, that their life has no meaning - no job, no money, no reason to get up in the morning, nothing to make you believe that you matter.  Easy prey for extremists whose passionate words can fill the emptiness inside with meaning and a sense of purpose.  As young black men living in England, the alleged murderers will probably have spent their lives feeling like outsiders.  However multi-cultural and open-minded 
(superficially at least) the country we live in might be, our colour and ethnic background will always define us. Even as he was being charged with murder, Michael Adebalejo, described himself as a "British citizen," as though by being suspected of committing such an unforgivable atrocity he had at last proved that he belonged.
There is no defence, no justification for the murder of an innocent man. The fact that someone can stand in the middle of a street in broad daylight and proudly hack a man to death is the stuff of horror movies, except that it happened in Woolwich. Perhaps the murderer was mad, it is not the action of a sane man, perhaps he truly believed he was doing it in the name of his religion, perhaps it was the moment that his whole life had been leading up to. It is hard to believe that as he was pushed along the corridor of a London hospital, handcuffed to a wheelchair, the suspect felt fulfilled. 
There is a difference between faith and religion, a difference between extremism and quiet belief.  But until we can give the disenfranchised and disillusioned a sense of purpose, until they rediscover their self-esteem, it will continue to be easy for extremism to fill the gap and give their life meaning.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

 Steven Weinberg-1933

 Lee Rigby's family's request for peace, for  people to remain calm and not to allow his dmurder to be the excuse for racist attacks and religious unrest, is the greatest and most courageous tribute they could have paid to him.

Nothing can bring him back.  

Nothing can justify his death. 

Let building bridges and growing understanding be his legacy.

Lee Rigby  RIP

The importance of holiday dreaming

I am sitting here enjoying the early morning peace that comes with holidays and sleeping teenagers.  
No groaning about having to get up so early.
No last minute searches for PE kits that should have been washed.
No panicked realisation that there is forgotten-about homework to hand in today.
No battles over uneaten breakfasts.
No packed lunches to prepare.
No reproachful rushing out of the door with cries of " I'm late now. Why didn't you wake me up earlier!"

Holidays are great.

Not just school holidays but all holidays. 
And not only if you are lucky enough to spend them on sunny beaches or in exotic countries.  
What's special about holidays is that your days belong to you. 
 They are not defined by lessons or meetings or deadlines. Instead they are filled with the things that are really important in life: relaxing, laughter, friends and of course, Facebook, Twitter and re-watching sit coms. 
Like islands surrounded by weeks, holidays are what we are always sailing towards.  
The thought of being away from work or school is what keeps us going. 
Even if it is simply  staying with friends for a few days, or relaxing at home.
 The break from routine helps us re-charge our batteries, reclaim our lives and put things in perspective.
When we lived in America, I was horrified by how little " vacation," people were allowed to take.  
Working life there does not begin with a certain number of vacation days already allotted.  Instead you have to earn them: a day a month.
 If you work for 6 months you get 6 days holiday and if you use them all up on a six day vacation, you start again from zero.
 The trouble with that is (or the benefit if you are an employer ) the longer you work, the more holiday you accrue, so better to just keep working and save the vacation time. 
And in the end work becomes what is safe and familiar.
 People start to believe that they are indispensable, that if they take a holiday everything will fall apart.  
The thought of taking a vacation becomes more stressful than the thought of staying at work.  
And so holidays are put on hold, days off spent in the office.
 Enjoying life with your family becomes something you wait to do when you are retired - if your family is still together and remembers who you are by then. 
When we moved from sunny, work-driven California to the lush green pastures of family-centred Switzerland, the change in work ethos was extraordinary. 

Swiss pastures

People begin their working life with 5 weeks holiday and if you are still at work at 5.35 pm, your boss asks you if you have a home to go to or if you are experiencing family problems. 
On bank holidays and Sundays offices and shops are closed completely. The only places open in town are cafes -  packed with families and friends and laughter. 
And everyone, everyone takes all their annual leave. 
The strange thing is that the work still gets done. the deadlines are still met and Switzerland, for all its natural beauty, is a famous international business centre.

Switzerland-interanational business centre.

The hardest thing to do in life is prioritise.  
There is always a reason to believe that what you are doing now is more important than what you should be doing next. 
But if you never take a break, never take time out to re-assess, relax and re-charge, how will you ever know what is truly important - even if it is just the peace of early morning and the knowledge that the rest of the day belongs to you.


    Leisure by W H Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Brighton-ing up the weekend with friends

Ninesh and I have just come back from a weekend away in Brighton.
We were with friends from our student days.  
Friends who we have known for so long that our lives have become interwoven, held together by the threads of warm memories, shared dreams, dashed hopes, drunken evenings and the simple pleasure of each other's company.

When we first met, the 6 of us,  we were all young, free and single.  More than two decades later we are middle-aged, tied down and coupled. 
We have swapped gossip about last night's party and which pub to meet up in later, for talk about our children's GCSE options and our plans for retirement.
But there is something about Brighton that helps you to forget all that. 
Something about wandering along the sea front, browsing The Laines, watching through coffee shop windows or from cocktail bars as musicians, transvestites, old hippy dreamers and young trendy would-be-ers pass by.
 Something about it's bohemian vibrancy and colourful energy that pulls you in. 
You never know what street performers or artists you will bump into round the corner.

 Or what every day object or body part will suddenly become a work of art. 
Wandering through a tiny alleyway, we came across Jamie McCartney's body casting shop. There is not a single part of the body he won't cast for you. 
In the window he has a panel from his installation: " The Great Wall of Vagina." 

Some of The Great Wall of Vagina

It made us women blanche and our men pull out their cameras, while we chatted to the friendly artist, who almost convinced us that a group casting would make the perfect family Christmas present. ( You can even have it as a mug! )
" You'd be amazed how many people get it done," he said. 
" Are they waxed?" we asked, voices quavering.
" Mostly," he said, sipping thoughtfully from his mug of tea " but not always." 
That was enough for us. 
 We left the men chatting and went shopping. 
Consumer therapy and a bar of Montezuma chocolate is what you need when you feel faint! 
And that's Brighton. 
Even when it tries to shock you, it's done with a friendly chat over a cup of tea.  Everything is acceptable and nothing is impossible. 
And after a while you begin to believe it too. 
As the weekend wore on, we stopped talking about our children's exams or the woes of work or the daily grind that defines our lives.  
Instead we talked about the dream houses we would one day live in, the canal barges we would buy, the camper vans we would go travelling in.
 Because slowly, very slowly we realised that while we no longer believe we can change the world, there is, at least, still time for some of our dreams to come true.
As we sat over our very last cup of coffee together, we planned where we would meet up next year. London, Birmingham, Liverpool- but I have a feeling, it just might be Brighton.

Brighton Beach and the disappearing old pier

Street Partying

There's something about a street party that breathes life back into a community. 
Last year the country was full of them. Streets closed and lined with tables piled high with cakes and sandwiches getting soggier and soggier in the torrential rain that marked the Queen's diamond jubilee.

 Yet despite the rain, everyone who went to a street party will  tell you that it was the best day of the year.
One of my friend's at work told me that when they had their street party, one of their oldest residents came. He spent most of his days by himself and didn't really know anyone in their close.  But he motored around the party on his mobility scooter, balancing a beer on the handlebars.  And at the end of the evening, he wheeled his way home grinning, telling his newly familiar neighbours it had been the best day of his life.
He died a week later, not lonely and forgotten but part of a community.
I'm not sure why it is that, as a nation, we seem to spend very little time getting to know our neighbours
Perhaps it's because of the weather. 
When it's cold and wet, it's easier to stay inside huddled around the television than to brave the elements and pop next door.
Perhaps it's because none of us stay in one place anymore.  
In the past, generations of families would live on the same street, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all living next door to each other with the grand children and great-grandchildren constantly drifting through the always open doors. Your street and local community were based around your family.
Perhaps it's because we are all so busy balancing work and family, living such hectic lives that there is not enough time and it is just too tiring to make the effort.
Perhaps it's because computer games and on-demand television can keep children entertained for hour upon hour,  without needing to find peers on their street to play with.
Making time to meet neighbours who you know nothing about, who might come from a different country, a different culture, a different generation, is not easy. 
But it's definitely worth the effort.
And street parties make it much easier because, you suddenly have something in common: a  shared memory.  
And shared memories are often the place where friendship begins.   

Like many other roads, we had a street party last year, full of Union Jacks and snail races and drunken half-renditions of God Save the Queen. It was only a few hours,  but in that afternoon we stopped being just a street and became a community.
Our road is not a long road.  It has about a hundred houses. We have lived here for most of the past 13 years and yet, last year, I met people I didn't recognise. 
This year we knew almost everyone.
The Diamond Jubilee was a good excuse to close the road and dance on the street. 
This year we didn't have an excuse or a reason.  When people asked why we were having another street party, the only thing we could think to say was: "Why not?"  
And that seemed to be reason enough for everyone.

So on last week's sunny, blue-skied May Day Bank Holiday, we put up official "Road Closed," signs,  emptied the street of cars ( the hardest part, but in the end there was only one left ) set up covered tables down the middle of the road, put an urn in the front garden, a cool box full of beer on the pavement, speakers in our neighbour's garden .....and waited.

                                And gradually the tables filled with delicious food.

                                And the road filled with people. Old....

                                 
                                  and young....

                                   
                                    and teenagers ...

                            

                                 and everybody in-between.

  

And instead of cars accelerating up the road, all you could hear was music and chatter and laughter. The kids - big and little -covered the street with chalked pictures, glue and play dough.  And while the" street seniors," helped us judge our newly traditional May Day hat competition, teenagers lounged on chairs and secretly sipped Pimms, while people from opposite ends of the street met and smiled and became friends.

And when, at 8 pm we had to take away the " Road Closed," signs, no one wanted the party to end. So we moved it onto the pavement.
And children didn't go to bed and neighbours didn't stop talking and cars driving up the road again, didn't stop us feeling that old and young and in-between, we were all part of this place.  And small as our road is, we all belonged to it. 
And that sense of belonging leaves you feeling warm inside, long after the sun has gone down.

It's a simple thing, a street party.  
But it made me wonder.
Wonder what would happen if we all spent more time getting to know each other.
Wonder what would happen if we all felt part of a community, even a community as small as a street.
Wonder what would happen if, instead of building walls between ourselves and our  neighbours,we built bridges.
We live such scattered, isolated, separate lives that it is easy to forget how important it is to sit and talk and laugh. And maybe even dance.....