Weddings, marriage and the great wedding dress hunt.

Strangely, I spent much of last weekend wedding dress shopping.
I say " strangely," because I know nothing about wedding dresses.
Our wedding wasn't the kind that needed a dreamy dress.
But one of my friends is getting married next year and Chichester is a good place to start  "the great-wedding dress-hunt." because it has lots of wedding dress shops, all very close together.
So despite my complete lack of experience, knowledge or expertise, I became my friend's wedding dress guide for the day.
I was looking forward to it.
Sitting, watching and subjectively advising is the easy party.
Trying on hundreds of dresses, each one fitted and flowing with miles of fabric, is the hard part.
But even I felt overwhelmed when we walked into the first shop and were greeted by  oceans of silk, miles of satin and a forest of lace and netting.

Where do you begin? 
How can you find out what style you need or what shade of white is best?
How do you know whether you need your dress to be boned or corseted, body-hugging or meringue-skirted? 
" Let me just talk you through our shop," said the first smiling assistant, greeting us at the door.
And immediately I could tell, this wasn't going to be the easy, laid-back, fun-filled  day I had imagined..
Because if you have to begin by being  "talked through," a tiny shop, down a narrow side-street in a small city, things are only going to get more complicated!
My friend, on the other hand, seemed completely unfazed by the unending choice of dresses or the complicated styles or the wedding dress lingo.
"These ones at the front of the shop are the designers with the longest lead time," explained the assistant.
" What's lead time?" I asked.
The assistant cast me a pitying look and my friend a sympathetic glance.
" The amount of time it takes for the dress to be ordered and arrive in the shop," she explained patiently." Now towards the back it's a bit shorter.  And then there's the fitting time to be factored in. Tell me again, when are you getting married?"
My friend gave her the date - about a year from now.
The assistant sucked in her breath thoughtfully, 
" You might still have just enough time," she said.
I almost fell over.
For someone, like me who usually plans what they are going to wear two minutes before they leave the house, the thought of having to plan what you will be wearing in a year's time is a hard concept to grasp.
My friend took the news bravely and began to browse through the rails of taffeta and frills and ivory silk.
And somehow, from the impossibly huge number of dresses, she managed to choose six.
" Don't worry," said her personal assistant comfortingly, " it's a start!"
While my friend  stepped in and out of fairy-tale dresses, I sat on a comfortable sofa, watching and listening and struggling to keep a grasp on reality.
Behind every changing-room curtain, brides-to-be were being helped on and off with dresses.
When they emerged, they would walk past me with a rustle of netting and a swirl of silk and survey themselves critically in a full-length mirror. 
it began to feel as though I had stepped into a world peopled only by princesses and me.
And everyone looked beautiful-whatever their size or shape or style.
Because isn't that the thing about wedding dresses?
For just one day in our often very ordinary lives,they make us feel that we are someone special and important and beautiful.
For just one day we live the fairy-tale dream.
And it works.
Every time my friend walked through the changing room curtain, she looked amazing..
But I'm not sure that was because of the dress.
I think maybe it was the flush of happiness and the thrill of excitement.
I hope it was because she's looking forward to marrying the man she loves. 

According to the office of National Statistics, every hour in England in 2012, thirteen couples got divorced.
Most divorces happen in the first ten years of marriage.
So as I sat in that " land of taffeta and lace,"  I couldn't help wondering if maybe we should be spending less time searching for the perfect dress and more time checking that we have really found the perfect partner.
Of course none of us ever know what will happen in the future, our hearts are " daft," and unpredictable, but it can be easy to get swept up in the excitement of a wedding and forget that what you are doing is getting married.
And that means committing yourself to another human being for the rest of your life: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
A complete giving of yourself.
It's hard to imagine what that really means.
Marriage is an enormous thing to contemplate.
Never again in your life will you have to make such a huge decision.
Yet people spend more time choosing dresses and venues and cakes than truly contemplating the journey they are about to embark on when they say the words: " I do."
It's something Ninesh and I were thinking about slightly nervously on the drunken night before we got married.
We were in a bar in New York.

The Kettle of Fish, New York

  
Our witness, the only person who knew about our plan,  is gay and so it was a gay bar 
( always the best bars in New York).
Mostly it was full of gay men.
" What are you doing?" they asked Ninesh,crowding around him supportively.
" Celebrating," explained Ninesh, " we're getting married tomorrow."
" That's what we mean," chorused his audience, " what are you doing? Why are you marrying a woman?"
" I tried it once," said one of them, catching hold of his boyfriend's hand, " biggest mistake i ever made. Don't do it"
Have you really thought this through?" asked another.
" Have another shot, why don't you," they said, calling the waiter over, " it might help you change your mind, see things more clearly."
But many shots later, as we made our way back to my friend's loft apartment at 5 o'clock in the morning, Ninesh could see nothing clearly but remained adamant that he not only wanted to marry, but was sure he wanted it to be to a woman.
So we woke up on our wedding-day, blurry-eyed, muddle-headed but determined.
Outside the sky was painfully blue.
Ninesh pulled his sleeping bag over his head.
" Somebody turn off the sun," he moaned " what's for breakfast?"
" Lunch, you mean," said our friend climbing down the ladder from his loft bed, " it's 2 o'clock."
" Nesh," I shouted, struggling to sit up and hold my head at the same time, " we've missed our wedding.  We were meant to get married at 10 ."
From under the covers Ninesh groaned again.
" It's ok," said my friend, handing me a calming cup of coffee, " I phoned City Hall, they said if you are there before 3.30 you should still be ok to get married.  They don't close 'til 4. We can make it if we leave in the next 10 minutes."
Which is how come our wedding day found us hungover and gasping for breath, racing through Manhatten, me barefooted so that I could run faster,  diving on and off tubes and trains, arriving just in time to get married before the office closed for the day.

City Hall, New York

And all I can remember thinking as I sat on the train watching the Manhatten skyline speeding by, is how lucky I was not to be wearing a beautiful, priceless dress. 
Because the one thing you don't practice in any of the wedding shops, is running for the subway in your wedding dress.

Neither Ninesh nor I remember the date we got married but it doesn't really matter.
It was a long time ago and we are still together.
But the journey hasn't always been easy.
Like every couple, we have had our ups and downs.
There have been times when we have had to work hard at being together, work hard at being there for each other.
Understanding someone else is never easy, even when you love them.
Marriage is about compromise, about accepting each other for who you are and not trying to change each other into someone you are not. 
But in the end the effort has always, always been worth it.
Marriage is our prize that's worth fighting for.

Of course my friend found her perfect dress.
She stepped through the curtains and took my breath away.
She looked stunningly beautiful.
" It's like a red-carpet dress," she smiled.
And she was right.
And I know, on her wedding day everyone will cry because she will look so beautiful and her future husband will feel like the luckiest man in the world.
But a wedding lasts just one day ( or sometimes just a few minutes! ).
A marriage is for the rest of your life.
So here's hoping that the rest of their life together is one long red carpet of dreams and love and happiness, even if they are only wearing ripped jeans and old T-shirts as they walk along it.

Never Again

I think I'm glad that I never have to be 17 again.
Never again  have to go through the agony and the ecstasy, the soul- searching and the confusion and most of all never again have to deal with hormones raging in uncontrollable  waves through my body.
At 17 the world oscillates from hope to despair, from laughter to tears, from unlimited possibilities to utter boredom at a break-neck speed.
It's exhausting to watch, let alone experience.
And worst of all, is the searching for love.
Fun as it is flirting your way towards Mr ( or Mrs ) Right, the emotional and mental games we play with each other are painful and often unnecessarily mean.
Everyone is too scared to say how they really feel and too frightened to risk the pain of rejection and heartbreak.
So instead we pretend that no one really matters.
Why do we do it to each other?  
Why, when we are young, is it so hard to tell someone you care, to say " I like you, let's try each other out and see what happens next."
Is it so hard to admit that you want someone standing next to you while you take your first steps into adulthood?
So hard to say " come walk and talk with me a while?"
So hard to share each other's dreams?
Meeting up, just the two of you, is rare in this social- media, risk averse age.
 Instead of spending time together, relationships are lived out through texts and Snapchats with the occasional coupling at drunken parties.
" How horrible," says my friend when I talk to her about it.  " How sad not to date anymore, not to look into a boy's eyes and feel your stomach flipping over."
And she's right, how sad and how horrible.
" You don't understand," says our 17 year old daughter "  that's not how it works.."
" Then how does it work?" I wonder.
How will you ever get to know each other, if you never talk?
How will you ever begin to fall in love if you never sit opposite each other and sense the warmth of a smile or feel the shiver of a touch? 
How will you ever share the tears and laughter that make life worth living?
And how will you ever learn what it means to really be there for someone else?
I'm not sure that writing LOL or Hahaha in a text or ending a message with a sad faced emoji, are quite the same thing.

" In my day," I tell our daughter, " we didn't have mobile phones.  If a boy asked for your number, you had to spend days hanging around at home just in case he phoned.  And you couldn't even move far from the room with the phone in because the phone was attached to the wall."
She looks at me, horrified.
" But what if the phone rang  and somebody else answered it?"
" Well," I explain, "  they would say hello and maybe chat for a bit and then come and get me and tell me someone was on the phone for me.."
" How embarrassing," she says.
Was it embarrassing?
 I try to remember.
Was it so terrible that my parents and brother and sister recognised the voices of some of my friends and every now and again managed a short conversation with them?
Was it so terrible that teenagers sometimes had to talk adults?
Was it so terrible that our lives weren't separated by the shimmeringly impassable wall of  a cyber-bubble?.
The strange thing about social networking is that it makes everything in your life more public and everything that you actually feel more private.
But maybe that's the point.
What's scary is the personal, 
Being impersonal and flippant is what keeps your heart safe.
What's important in a text is not what is actually being said but how good your comebacks are.
What's important when you snapchat is not the words but how best to capture the moment with an image showing your best side.
There's no quiet place to sit and talk in the social media universe.
No end to the constant stream of trivial information that can fill a quiet moment.
No time to sit and wonder how you really feel-the next text could arrive at any moment.
Was it so awful to have hours each day when you couldn't communicate with each other and instead daydreamed about the things you would say the next time you spoke.
It's strange, but the year that my husband, Ninesh, and I, spent apart, he in America and me in England, is probably the year that we talked the most.
All we had were our phone calls.
We talked about everything and nothing, about how we felt about each other and what we had for breakfast, about politics and partying, about work and love.
" Talking to each other is really important," I say to our kids.
Our two teenagers sigh and for just a moment raise their eyes from their screens to give me a sympathetic look. 
" We are talking mum," they say, " what do you think texting is. We're talking to everyone all the time."
" But what about talking to just one person some of the time?" I ask. " And how do you know what someone is really thinking if you can't see or hear them?"
" You have to stop asking so many questions mum." they say, fingers flying across their phone keys. " We're just teenagers and this is what we do.  Stop making everything such a big deal."
And unwillingly I have to admit, they have a point.. 
I need to stop living my life vicariously.
I need to stop feeling that they are missing out on something. 
Because I think perhaps the truth is, that it is me who is missing out.
That perhaps  what makes me sad is that as a curious parent wanting to be over-involved in my children's social-life, their texting, snap-chatting universe excludes me.
" I'm writing a blog about being 17" I say, walking into the living room where our daughter and her friends are huddled together on the sofa under a duvet, passing around phones to make sure no message or image is missed.
" Cool," they say, " can you take a photo of us so we can be in it? It's about us, right?"
And that's when I remember the good part about being 17.
The part where the world revolves around you, where " right now," is all that matters and where you can eat as much chocolate and ice cream as you want. 
" Good idea," I say "Remind me how to take a photo with my phone."

Ollie, Charlie and Mia

And they are compassionately patient as they explain yet again what buttons I need to press.
And I don't think it's that I can't learn, I think it is that with every bone in my body I resist it.
Perhaps they are right, our teenagers, that just like my parents before me,  I don't understand how modern relationships work.
And sometimes it's cold out here in the land of yesteryear where phones were attached to walls and the only way to communicate was by talking.
But I can't help remembering that heart-melting feeling when you stared into the eyes of someone you cared about and, reaching out to each other, walked hand-in-hand into the perfectly setting sun.

The most precious of things.

 One moning ( in the days when I was still working )  one of my friends came into our office looking pale and completely exhausted.
" Are you alright?" i asked.
She nodded.
" I've just been awake a long time," she said, "I went running on the beach at 5 o'clock this morning."
" Was it even light enough to see the beach that early?" I asked.
" I couldn't sleep," she said. " I kept thinking about my niece's naynee. She dropped it when we were on the beach yesterday."
" You'v got to be careful with those naynees," I said, " they're easy to drop." 
My friend laughed.
" Sorry," she said, " I'm always forgetting  that no one else knows what her naynee is. It's a scuzzy old, blanket. She's had it since she was born and she can't sleep or eat or go anywhere without it. Losing it is like losing part of herself.It's the most precious thing in her whole world.
 So at 5 o'clock this morning I thought I would get up and go and see if I could find it on the beach."
" And did you find it?" I asked, my heart sinking. 
 The tide had already washed  in and out at least once since naynee was lost, even something much heavier would have been swept away. There was almost no chance it could still be there.
" Well," said my friend, ' I ran all the way along the beach and I couldn't see it.
 So I turned back and started checking in all the bins.
 It's so old and tatty,  I thought someone might have thrown it away. 
It's lucky no one saw me, I must have looked like a crazy person rummaging through the bins at dawn. 
Anyway, I was just giving up when I saw this thing that looked like a soggy lump of seaweed, covered in sand and mud lying in the pebbles.
I went over and picked it up. 
And there it was: her naynee.  I found it. Dripping with slime and dirty seawater, but definitely naynee.
 I ran straight home and washed it.
 It still looks a bit the worse for wear, but my niece never did care about that. Can you believe I actually found it?"  

naynee drying out

And it was amazing that she had actually found it on the unending mile of sand..
But what was even more amazing was the amount of time and trouble she had taken to find an old, falling-apart-at-the-seams-blanket. 
But when something is that precious you will do anything to get it back.  

Because what makes it precious is not how much it costs or what it's financially worth, but what it means to us.
The things we truly treasure are rarely our most expensive or valuable possessions.
Usually the  most precious things in life are valuable because of the person who gave them to us or the memories they evoke.




When our children were still very young, Ninesh ( my husband) escaped for a rare  weekend away 
It was our first weekend away since  moving to Chichester.  
Leaving my mum and dad in charge, we were walking through the drizzling rain towards the car when we noticed that all along our road people were putting sandbags in front to their doors.
" What are you doing that for?" asked Ninesh worriedly.
" To stop water getting in," said our neighbour cheerfully, " Chichester floods every year.  Didn't you know that? " 
An expression of panic spread across Ninesh's face..
" It's OK," I said, comfortingly. " I'm sure mum and dad will cope. The kids will be fine."
But Ninesh wasn't listening, he was already sprinting back across the road into the house.
He found my mum in the kitchen making tea.
"If it floods," he was explaining to her, "Save  my records. Take them upstairs, starting from the bottom shelf."
"What about the children?" asked my mum.
" They'll be fine said Ninesh, " they can nearly swim."

Ninesh's record collection has travelled with us wherever we have been living in the world.. 
 Over the years it has grown to 5 shelves worth.

Ever growing record collection

Individually the records are mostly worth very little.  
Most of them are car- boot -sale -finds or unwanted hand-me-downs.
What makes them precious, is what they represent to him. 
" This one was an amazing bargain," he says, pulling one off a shelf and allowing his eyes to linger lovingly on the cover, " I don't think the guy who sold it to me knew what a classic it is."
Or carefully arranging them in genre specific, alphabetical order he will pick one up and say: 
" Remember where I found this?"
" Is it a test?" I ask, I find it hard to keep track of where and when he has uncovered his added to his trove of vinyl treasures. 
He laughs.
" We were at that flea-market in Switzerland. It was a really sunny day and and afterwards we walked all the way along the path by Lake Zurich."
And suddenly I do remember.
 I remember the blue, blue sky and the boats drifting slowly across the sparkling lake.
" And this one," he will say, " I can't believe I've found it after all these years. There it was, just lying on the groundl at the car boot sale. And it's in perfect condition, look."
And carefully he eases the sleek, shiny disc out of its sleeve.
And while I sit eyeing the ever-growing tower of records, wondering where we can build another shelf, he turns up the volume and air-drums  to the intro.
To Ninesh, each one of those records means something. 
Like the naynee, his record collection is a part of him.
It's his passion, priceless, irreplaceable and of no tangible value, but more precious to him than anything else he owns.
" Why does dad like his records so much," asks Joss, our 15 year old son. " Half the time  they're scratched.  He should just download the songs onto his laptop, then they,d always work properly." 
I am, as usual, floored by the force of his logic.
How can I explain that it is not the perfect sound that makes the records special but everything else about them.
When you are young, it's hard to define what makes something precious.
Hard to know what you will treasure when you are independent and free.
Hard to understand that value and cost are not the same thing.
Once comfort blankets and favourite toys have stopped being the most precious things in the world, there's often a superficiality to what we treasure: designer clothes, expensive shoes, the newest phone, the thinnest television.
In this materialistic, consumer-driven world, it's easy to lose sight of what's truly precious or to really value what you already have.

A while ago, I was running a story writing workshop in a school. 
 The children were all 9 and 10 years old and I was trying to get them to start using their no-limits, anything-goes imagination to write a story
So I took out a golden box.

" Inside this box," I said, " is the most precious thing in the whole world. Because it's a magic box,it can change it's shape and size so what's inside can be as big or as small as you want it to be."
I passed the box to one of the boys.
He stared at it hard for a minute and then said:
" I think It's got the newest XBox inside."
Most of the other boys clapped.
" I think it's got the most expensive football boots you can buy inside," said another boy.
" I think it's full of as much money as you will ever need," said one of the girls.
" I think it's a magic wand," said another.
And so the box was passed around the circle until everyone who wanted to had had a turn.
There were a few who were too shy to try.
One of them was a small, thin boy with unbrushed hair and a jumper two sizes too big.
He'd sat the whole time, shoulders hunched, eyes down, staring at the floor. 
Just as I was putting the box away, he held out his hands without looking at me
" Can I have a turn?" he asked quietly.
I handed him the box.
He took  a deep breath and looked up.
But the words seem to stick in his throat. 
I smiled encouragingly, willing his hands to stop shaking.
" So," I said, " what do you think is inside this golden box? What do you think is the most precious thing in the whole world?"
He hesitated for just a moment, clutching the box to him.
" I think," he whispered, "that  inside this box is ..love." 

It's easy to misplace the golden boxes in our lives.
Easy to forget about them and let them lie gathering dust somewhere.
It's easy to replace them with prettier, more expensive versions.
But in the end, they always come back to us, full of the simplicity and beauty of what we truly treasure.

It's a Control Thing

Lately I've been thinking a lot about control- about how losing it is often harder than gaining it. 
Seems to me if people spent less time trying to take, be in and keep control and more time losing control, the world might be a much easier and nicer place to live in.

I was once on a " just girls," weekend to celebrate a friend's birthday.  As I was loading the dishwasher after breakfast, someone said:
 " It's lucky my husband isn't here to see how you've done that."
" Done what?" I asked.
" Loaded the dishwasher," she said, " he'd just take everything out and do it again. He does it to me all the time."
" Mine does that as well," said one of the other girls, " certain plates go in certain places and all the cutlery has to be sorted into individual areas"
" Mine can't stand it if the plates are facing different directions," said another.
Turns out, a lot of partners have a problem with letting go of dishwasher-control.
" Wow," I said, " in our house we're just glad that someone has actually loaded the dishwasher."

But dishwasher control is nothing to the battles for control that go on in the other parts  of our lives.
It comes in many different forms.
There's the overt, public, assertive kind of control: this is how it's going to be done, no discussions, no questions, no arguments
There's the covert, underhand kind of control:   I know she asked you to to do differently but just do it my way because it's better and no one will mind."
There's the passive aggressive, quietly threatening kind of control: I don't want to be a nuisance but I've been up worrying all night because I don't really agree with what you're asking me to do and I know my view isn't important but I will have to seek further advice if you make me do it.
And then there's the worst kind of control, the personal kind where you are too scared to show or admit how you really feel in case someone uses the information to make you look stupid or feel weak. 
That feeling that you need to be in control, and the panicky feeling that you get when you think you 're  not, is so intrinsically part of being human, that most of the time we're not even aware of it.
But it's a constant and emotionally draining battle.
And it begins from the moment we're born.
I sometimes wonder if the reason why the first noise we make as babies make is a cry not because we are taking our first breath,  but because we're really cross that we've  had no control over when we've been born.
Without consulting us, the warm, cosy uterus has expelled us into a cold, hostile world.
Who wouldn't be mad?
Who wouldn't cry and want to shout out " hey, put me back in.  Let me decide when it's time." 

And that battle for control continues for the rest of our lives.
First we need to control our parents and siblings.
Then we need to control our friends and acquaintances.
Then there's our work colleagues and our bosses.
And finally we have to control our lovers and partners and eventually our own children.  
The more we want control, the more exhausting life becomes because there's always someone who wants it more and will fight for it harder.
Yet the thought of giving up control, or if not giving it up, losing it for a little while, can be petrifying. 
" I can't do it mum," says my almost 17 year old daughter, "I can't just let go, The thought of not being in control makes me feel sick." 
And with all the lessons I have learnt in life, with all my irrelevant experience and unlistened to advice, with all the love I feel for her, I can't show her how to do it. 
I can't show her how it can sometimes be alright to make yourself vulnerable.
I cant show her how the freedom that comes with enjoying the moment without worrying.
I can't show her how much fun it can be to drift without knowing where you're going,
Or how important it is to sometimes lose yourself in your dreams and be ruled by your heart.
All I can do is hope that she will one day find someone who she trust enough to help her find it out for herself.

The history of the world has been dominated by fights for control.
One country trying to control another.
One race trying to rule another.
One religion trying to dominate another.
The hardest thing to say is: " let's try it your way."
The hardest thing to swallow is your pride.
But perhaps, if we spent less time battling for control and more time thinking about how to trust and value each other, then maybe the world really would be a  better, less fragile place.
It won't be easy but it might be worth a try.

So the next time you load a dishwasher, go wild.
Let the plates face different directions, the cups be higgledy-piggledy and the knives and forks be muddled together.
It's a first step towards letting go ....even if the dishes don't end up so clean!

Daydream believing

So it has arrived.
My final day of work.
I have collected my last sign in sheet, filled in my last registration form, answered my last phone call and handed over the mantel of responsibility to someone who wants it more and will wear it better.
I have let the doors of the Children's Centre close firmly behind me..... and the Autumn sunshine has never felt so good.
In front of me lies a beckoning ocean awash with long-wished-for dreams and unspoken hopes.
And I'm ready to dive in, head -first.
No more waking up in the middle of the night remembering all the things I have forgotten.
No more filling in forms that are left unread and filed under " filled-in forms."
No more trying to meet impossible targets set by detached, power-hungry bureaucrats.
No more performance management reviews or self-evaluation frameworks.
No more gathering, inputting and analysing data that never measures what its meant to measure nor tells you what you want to know. 
My life has been given back to me, wrapped in shiny, endless possibilities and full of not-for-sharing-chocolate.

" The trouble is," says my dad when I'm round to visit, " once you've got all-the-time-in- the-world, you usually end up filling  it with nothing-at-all."
'Not me," I say pouring myself a third cup of tea, " I'm going to fill every moment with meaningful somethings."
My Dad smiles indulgently and reaches for the TV remote. 
And I turn away because even though I don't want to admit it, I'm just a little worried that he might be right.  
Things tend to take as long to do as the time you have to do them.
If you have two hours to cook dinner and clean the house, then it takes two hours.
If you have all-the-time-in-the-world, it might take forever.
Perhaps it's only by perpetually racing through life that we create enough energy to reach  our goals.  
But I'm really hoping not.
I'm hoping that by standing still I can still achieve just as much.

My first day of freedom was spent wandering around the Chichester Sculpture Park with an old school friend.
She is beautiful, clever, rich and successful.
But none of that comes with a happiness guarantee.
She has been a constant visitor in our home over the years but this was the first time that I could really give her my utter, complete and undivided attention.
I heard every word, not just the gist of what she was saying.
I truly listened.
My mind didn't wander to the untidy pile of papers on my desk or the emails needing replies or the social worker waiting to be phoned back or the leaflets with next term's dates needing to be signed off.
Instead we admired the modern installations, tastefully and incongruously displayed amidst the ancient woodland and sweeping West Sussex views. 
We admired the clever curve of bronze, were confused by a beautifully designed staircase leading nowhere, let our reflections become part of a sculpture of right- angled mirrors

 and admired a Chinese inflatable pig from inside and out. 

" I take a photo of my friend coming out of its rear hole," explained a German tourist, showing us the photo on his phone and pointing at his friend who has just emerged from    the pig's stomach. 

We laughed and wandered on. 
And while we walked, we talked, soothed by the beautifully strange not-quite-reality of the place,
And at the edge of the Park we found: "It Pays to Pray,":  large, bright blue shapes and words flashing across 4 flat screens.

For a refundable 20p you can choose from a list of chocolate bars: Bounty,, Starbar, Flyte, Delight, Wispa, Drifter, Timeout, Picnic, Ripple, Devour, - all the old favourites. But you put your money into the slot and choose, you are not given a chocolate bar, but a prayer. 
My friend made her choice and her prayer flashed up on the screen: 
" Keep me safe, keep me warm, keep me in the lap of luxury."
She smiled sadly.
" I wish," she said.
And I do too.
I hope that, one day, like me, she is given the freedom and the time to find all those things.
While she carried on exploring a while, I sat on a warm, grey stone slab, part of an installation looking like a miniature Grand Canyon. In front of me was a valley of yellow fields, each straw tip bathed gold in the sunlight , birds swooping across the echoing blueness of a cloudless sky..
Lost in the picture- perfect peacefulness, I wondered what prayer I would use to fill my now-shapeless days.
" Let me find my muse. Let me always have orange ink in my pen. Let me constantly day-dream.  Let me sometimes know, when they ask at breakfast-time, what I'm cooking for dinner.."

Some people say that it's only through work that our lives have meaning. That it's our jobs that give our lives meaning and define us.
Perhaps they're right.
 But for as long as I am able , I'm willing to take a gamble that it's more than that;
that being there to catch your children when they fall, being able to truly listen to your friends, having time to watch your flowers grow, is enough.
And then there are the clothes to wash, the meals to cook, the rooms to clean and the masterpiece to write.
And I'll be doing all that... of course.
Just not right now. 
Monday will be soon enough... and I think there might be an episode of "The Mindy Project," that I haven't seen yet.

Family Holidays and the Search for Courage

So we are back from our holiday.
2 weeks, 1200 miles, 2 adults and 2 teenagers ( Mia and Joss ) in a little VW camper van.
And we are all still talking ( mostly ) although Mia and Joss disappeared for their  
 " teenage fix," the moment our feet touched the familiar wooden floorboards of home.
We have wandered the dusty streets of Toulouse,  gazed through the dark at the spectacular fireworks at the San Sebastian festival and floated through the clouds and tumbling geraniums of the Picos mountains.

The best way to end a festival

The strange thing about the journey from the coast of North West France to the Northern edge of Spain, is that I had travelled much of it many times before..
" We used to come this way on our holidays when I was little," I explained to no one in particular.
" Look, that's the mountain dad made us climb even though none of us wanted to.  We all moaned the whole way to the top and when we got there we had missed the last train back so we had to walk all the way back down in the dark. And when we got to the bottom all the shops were closed so we couldn't have any dinner!"
" Why didn't you just say you wouldn't go?" asked Joss, fixing the headphones into his iPad, " That's what I would say."
" Why would grandad make you do something so stupid and boring?" asked Mia, " Can you turn this song up?"
I turned up the music and carried on sharing my memories with the unlistening ears of my family.
" We used to put all our clothes in big bin bags and pile them into the boot of our car,  tie the tent onto the roof- rack and when we got off the ferry at Calais we would just drive and drive and drive.
We didn't stop until we found the sun because otherwise my sister got too grumpy
 When dad or mum got too tired to drive, they would just pull over and sleep slumped over the steering wheel."
" Your family holidays sound horrible," said Ninesh, without taking his eyes off the road.
I stared at him.
" What do you mean, horrible. They were amazing.`'
Ninesh said nothing, just carried on staring straight in front of him.
I sat back, staring out of the window, watching the scenery roll by, as I silently unwrapped my memories.
Like an island surrounded by weeks, our family holidays were one of the most special things about my childhood.
For a few weeks of every year we were on an adventure, with only the road and the weather as our guide.
And for just a few weeks of every year we were a family, sharing a dream, living in a bubble of togetherness that no one else could touch.
But personal memories have little meaning to anyone else.
Although the thread that has connected all the places we have just visited  is the memories of strangers.
One hundred years since the beginning of the First World War and all over Europe, in enormous cities and lost mountain villages, the men and boys who gave up their lives are being  remembered.
Suddenly we would come across a wall of sepia photos, proud young men in smart army uniforms staring out at us.

And next to the pictures names or sometimes scraps of letters.
We are determined not to forget.
We will never stop searching for meaning in the enormity of such a loss.
And next to the pictures of soldiers there are pictures of others. 
Men and women staring with a passion and fury out of a past tinged with sadness. 
They are part of " The Resistance."
Young men and women brave enough to stand up and fight against what they believed was wrong  even when they didn't need to.
In the Spanish Civil War, in the Second World War, today.
They sacrifice their lives saving strangers, sheltering victims, helping refugees.
 Because they cannot stand by and watch evil win.
My grandmother, a part Jewish refugee from Vienna always used to tell me that it is not the bravery of great heroes that should be remembered from war, but the remarkable courage of individuals who risked their lives each day by giving food and shelter to Jews and other victims. 
I have often wondered if it was me, if I would be brave enough.
I hope so but I know it's just a hope.
As a parent, there is nothing I would not do to protect my family. 
The courage of love is unshakeable and knows no depth or limits.
Years ago, when Mia and Joss were little, we visited Dachau, the concentration camp.
Once visited, the horror of such a place never leaves you.
lt seeps into your bones and scars your dreams.
The enormous chimneys, the " shower," rooms, the kennels where some men were forced to live like dogs.
Past and present collide in a nightmare of ghosts and raw emotion.
For a moment Mia  stood and stared.
Slowly she turned to me.
 " If this happened now, " she asked, " would we be living here?"
I looked into the pools of her dark, 7-year-old eyes and my heart broke.
Because as a part-Jewish, part Sri-Lankan family we would have no hope if such horror were ever to visit us again.
And all I could do was stand there silently, clutching her and Joss and Ninesh to me.
And I knew, right then, that with every bone in my body I would fight to keep them safe.
But fighting to keep your family safe is one thing.
It is innate.
It demands the kind of bravery that comes when you have nothing left to lose, when it is all or nothing, when you are fighting for your life.
Fighting to protect other people's families when you could be living safe and unnoticed, that's a different kind of courage.
I hope that I would be brave enough to do it.
I hope that I would not stand by and watch evil triumph.
I hope that I would have the courage to fight for what I know is right and  against what I know is wrong.
But I know it's just a hope.
And what makes it even harder is that today I find it very hard to know what is right and what is wrong.
Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Iraq.
Perhaps it is my ignorance that leaves me so confused and uncertain.
I understand that the people who are fighting believe with a passion in their cause.
But I find it hard to understand how people can fight and kill in the name of religion or country or race
It is as though the world has lost its memory.
And all I feel  is a sense of loss as I look at photos of the young men in army caps who never came home.

More than 40 years after the Second World War, my 70 year old, Viennese grandmother spent her life fighting for good causes. 
Undaunted by age and discomfort, she would camp out at Greenham Common, write letters for Amnesty, stand outside South Africa house campaigning against apartheid.
And often she would chastise me, her teenage granddaughter for being uncaring and disinterested.
" There is injustice all around," she would say loudly in the heavy accent that she never lost, " why aren't you doing anything?"
And she was right.
I was too busy worrying about the injustice of being a teenager to worry about the rest of the world.
But I wasn't uncaring or disinterested, I just didn't understand. 
I didn't have her compass of memories to guide me.
I had none of her experience of the horror and fear and loneliness of war.
Memories take time and time is what war steals from us.

Now, as I have collected the memories of strangers from our 1200 mile journey,  I understand how fragile and precious memories can be.
It is our memories that give us the courage to fight for what we believe in.
And I think, perhaps today the only thing worth believing in is:  peace. 
Peace to be who we want to be.
Peace so that we will never need to walk in the shadow of fear.
Peace so that we can go on family holidays.
And for as long as our children will come with us, I will wrap them in a blanket of warm memories to give them strength and hope and courage....even if they do involve walking down mountains in the dark.

La Rhune, France- easier to walk down in the daylight.

I

Saying goodbye

It's strange leaving somewhere.
I have one more month of work to go.
I am so excited about the new beginning ahead of me, the blank page bursting with potential, that I sometimes forget to be sad about the goodbyes I have started to say.
" I'll  miss you Becky," said one of our volunteers with special needs as I said goodbye to her yesterday, " Will you miss me?"
" Of course I will," I said distractedly.
" And will you buy a duck to sleep in your bed when you leave?" she asked, " I like ducks."

And suddenly I wasn't distracted anymore.
I was really sad.
Because I am truly going to miss her.
And not just her but the multi-coloured patchwork of characters who pass through the doors of our Children's Centre.
Endings are always strange and saying goodbye is never easy.

I remember meeting one of my university friends as were walking into the common room of the German Department.  
She couldn't talk because her mouth was so full of chocolate.
" Are you like me?" she asked, when she had finally swallowed.
I looked at her, tall, blonde, model-like beautiful.
" I don't think so," I said.
 " I mean, are you one of those people who, if you are eating a bar of chocolate and you know you are going into a room with lots of people, you stuff the rest of the bar into your mouth so you don't have to share it. I think the world is divided into 2 types of people," she explained, " chocolate-sharers and chocolate-face-stuffers. Which are you? "
I tried to kid myself that I was a chocolate sharer but I think the truth is, I would just have bought the chocolate a lot earlier so that I had finished it a long time before I had to consider sharing.
But in the same way as the world is divided into chocolate-sharers and chocolate-face-stuffers, I think it is divided into 2 types of goodbye-sayers:
Those who make it take as long as possible, prolonging the final moment, shedding tears. scattering words, turning back for one last wave and those who make it as quick as possible and walk away without a backward glance.
Usually I am a walker-awayer.
Not because I won't be sad or because I won't miss everything I am leaving behind.
But because goodbyes are not really about the moment of parting.
They are about the ending of shared memories, the loss of a passing comment that brings a smile to your lips, the emptiness of the space where your friend should have been.
And that is too big to be captured in just one moment.
Life is a constantly changing book and saying goodbye is just the end of one chapter.
In front of you is the next page.
And if you spend too long saying goodbye, you might get writers block and never move on.
Life is for living, not standing still.
And the time you have spent working in a place with people you care about is a memory to be treasured and polished until is shines, not tarnished with tears.

"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 Giddings," by TS Elliot

So I know that in a few weeks, on my very last day of work, when I walk through those sliding doors for the very last time, it will be without a backward glance.
Not because I don't care but because I care so much.
But I know it's the right thing to do and the right time to do it.
It's time to hand over the Children's Centre that I have helped to create to someone else
with new ideas, new dreams.
Time to let it go and watch it fly.
And I will be walking towards a new future full of hopes and dreams.
And on the way, I will pick up a bar of chocolate.
Because for a while, at least, I won't have to pretend to be a chocolate sharer!

Finding The One

This weekend we were, once again, at a wedding.
It wasn't in an art gallery or a church, but in a barn, nestling in a West Sussex Valley, surrounded by wild flowers.

 And it wasn't full of young dreamers christening their future with layers of white lace.
It was a second-time-around marriage for both bride and groom. 
Full of a sense of calm completeness.
Full of the warmth and happiness of all weddings without the anxious edginess of your wedding having to be better than everyone else's.
This was a very important day for both of them but it wasn't their only important day .
The bride and groom both have families and successful careers, their lives have already been strewn with important days.
Their wedding was simply a celebration of the fact that, through all the chaos that life brings, they had found each other.

Strangely, or maybe not so strangely in these modern times, the groom's ex-wife was there, laughing and chatting and dancing the night away next to her ex-husband and his new wife..
I tried not to stare but a little part of me was desperate to walk over and ask them: 
" Does this not feel a bit weird? Are all of you really fine with this?"
But even by my fourth gin and tonic, I was still feeling too politely English to ask.
And anyway, as I stood watching the newly-weds, catching each other's eye, sharing a smile,  I realised that it didn't matter who else was there.
There was something so serenely complete in the intimacy of that shared smile, that for a moment, even I believed the rest of the world didn't exist.
And so I think maybe they have done it.  
Maybe this time they have found their other half, their perfect partner, the soul mate they have been searching for all their lives.
Maybe this time they have, each of them, found The One.

" Where are you going on honeymoon?" we ask as we catch up with them, standing in the doorway to the dance floor..
" Cycling in the Outer Hebrides," they say in unison.
" Really," I say, trying to work out if they are joking. " For your honeymoon?"
They grin, a " nelwy-married, we-don't-care-what-the-world-thinks," conspiratorial grin.
" It's so beautiful there," says the groom, " cycling will be amazing.  I've been training for ages."
" And how about you?" I ask, turning to the bride, " have you been training too."
" Oh," she says, " I cycled up the road by our house last week, it's quite steep. Anyway,I'll be fine, bought some padded knickers."
And arm- in -arm, the happy couple wander off to chat to other guests.
And perhaps that's why it was such a lovely wedding.
There was no trying to impress.
No trying to pretend this was some kind of whirlwind romance that had swept them both off their feet and knocked them sideways.  
Nothing to prove except that they love each other and want to quietly spend the rest of their lives together, padded knickers and all!

But it set me to thinking, pondering the question that Mia, our 16 year old daughter, often asks me.
" How do you know? How do you know if you've met the right person? How do you know when you've found The One? "
And I never know what to say.
Not really.
Because the truth is, the decision to share your life with someone, to marry them or stay with them for ever,  is always a bit of a gamble.
It's easy to get swept along with the excitement of a moment.
Easy to confuse passion with love and infatuation with the real thing.
Easy to believe that you can never feel this way again.
Easy to dream that you have fallen in love when you have really just fallen out of being alone.
Easy to hope that this is it.
Easy to get it wrong.
We've all been there : 
waiting heart-broken and hopeless for the phone to ring or a familiar footstep on the stair.
Wondering why or how or when it all went wrong.
Clinging onto to the shadow of a feeling that is no longer there because even the shadow of a feeling is better than no shadow at all.
Emotions are fickle and dreams all consuming.
But I don't want to tell my full-of-the-future-16 -year -old daughter, any of that.
I want to wrap her in a blanket of hopes and dreams and keep her warm with love and laughter.
" So?" she demands again, "How do you know when you've found The One?"
I try the simple answer: 
" you just do."
She gives me one of her disparaging looks.
 " That's not really an answer is it mum?" 
I laugh.
" I suppose not," I say, " but I think it's the truth. It's just that sometimes the truth is hidden under so many layers of emotion that it's hard to be sure."
" Great," says Mia, " so I will just have to guess.
Is that what you did, you and dad-guess?
 Did you give up your job and flat and your London life to go and be with him in California because you "guessed," it might be a good idea? "
I sense a note of slightly panicked cynicism creeping into her voice.
I hug her tight and stroke a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. 
" There was no guessing involved," I say comfortingly.
And suddenly I am transported back to LA airport, Ninesh and I sitting side by side on warm, plastic seats, cups of watery coffee in our hands, waiting for the last call for my flight home. 
We had spent just 2 weeks as a couple altogether, one week in England at Christmas and this last week at Easter in California.
And as we sat there, the cloud of separation hovering over us, Ninesh said:
" So I suppose this is it, we might as well get married."
And just then my flight was called and I stood up and spilt coffee all over my jeans and the floor.
And looking up at Ninesh I realised that I wasn't flying home, I was flying away from home.
And I nodded and said:
 " I suppose we might as well."

" I think Mia, "  I say, " that you truly do " just know." But there is a reason for why.
 It's about listening to your heart. 
Not the butterfly fluttering, breath-stopping, million-mile-an-hour beating part of your heart
But the so-far-down-you-hardly-notice-it - part.
The part of your heart that always feels a little bit empty.
Only when you meet the right person, it doesn't feel empty anymore.
It's like you've found the piece of the puzzle that you didn't even know was missing.
And that's how you know you've found The One."
I feel triumphant in my poeticness.
But Mia raises an eyebrow and glances at her phone.
" Puzzles are really boring," she says, " and they take ages to finish. Anyway, can I go to a party on Tuesday?  It'll probably be full of pieces from the wrong puzzle but it might have good music."

And I think of our friends cycling through the first weeks of their marriage.
I think of Mia dancing through the beginning of her search for The One.
I think of Ninesh and me, still fitting together the  pieces of our never-ending puzzle of togetherness.
And I know that whoever The One is and however long it takes you to find them, it will always have been worth the journey.
Even if you do have to buy a pair of padded knickers to get there.