Winter Walks: Knettishall Heath

I began writing this with the phone sandwiched in between my cheek and shoulder, listening to the incessant ring on the other line and the occasional dead pan recorded voice telling me to 'please hold' while they searched for an available member of customer service for Great Western Railway. I think someone should preserve that noise and keep it for posterity as one of the most frustrating noises created by humankind. After about 30 minutes (and necessarily listening to Gabrielle Aplin's The Night Bus to keep my sanity) the call was picked up, and I found out from the customer service officer that yes I could send in a letter to refund my ticket, but it would incur a £10 administration charge - for a ticket that cost £12. And that no, I couldn't get a refund for the £20 ticket I had to buy instead of it. I had to mentally remind myself that the poor guy on the other line was not responsible for the ridiculous and unhelpful policies of his company. He is just someone working a not particularly pleasant job for money. And so I sighed and said thank you, and 'that's that I guess', and put down the phone. And turned to memories of a happier day.

On the 27th, we took a drive out to Knettishall Heath for a mid-afternoon walk. The sky had those downward plume clouds that reminded me of when I would sit in my first year room, staring out at the airplane cloud-tails that sliced a diagonal between the corner of my window and the tree that I used to mark the changing of the seasons.

Mum and Auntie Sarah walked together, swinging their arms furiously for more exercise, and Hannah and I walked behind them, laughing at their exaggerated movements. Sisters and sisters.



 At one point, Auntie Sarah trailed behind to talk to a couple she knew from piano-lessons, and after making our way through a wooded area we turned back and couldn't see her at all. Hannah thought we should go ahead, and that she'd find her way to us, but Mum was visibly worried and called for her through the echoe-y trees 'Sarah!' and whistled our family whistle, but there was no reply. (Often in Singapore, when you whistle it, a bird answers with the same notes and you have to distinguish between the bird whistle and answering family whistle. But that bird must be tropical, because I've never heard it call in England.)

Mum was just about to walk back to find her when we saw her in the distance, briskly walking through the trees to catch up with us. Hannah, Mum and I had fallen behind Uncle John, Auntie Mandy, Connie and Ivy as a result of waiting for Auntie Sarah, so Mum and I ran on ahead so we wouldn't lose sight of them, while Hannah waited for Auntie Sarah to reach her. I was so glad to see that Mum, who has had problems with her bones (particularly her knees) relating to osteoporosis for a long time, could run. She's said that her bones seem to be improving and so now a slow jog is a possibility.

 After crossing a few more heaths and turning more corners, we came across wild ponies in the distance. The last time I'd seen them it was in Summer 2015 under brumous clouds, but this wintry day the sky was clear, and two of the ponies were chasing each other and fighting!

Auntie Sarah told us the hilarious story of how, just before the first day of primary school, her family had gone on a walk like this one with another family. The son of the other family owned a tricycle, and Auntie Sarah, just four years old, was convinced that if that boy could ride a trike, well, then so could she. And so she pestered and pleaded to have a go on the trike, and finally was sat on it. To give her a little help with setting off, they pushed her down a slope, and the trike picked up speed, and Auntie Sarah peddled as quickly as her little legs could move. And she was going so fast that she couldn't stop, not even as a wooden gate loomed a the bottom of the slope - crash! She cycled straight into it and her head got wedged right between two of the gate's wooden slats. A hubbub around her, concerning her bleeding forehead and chin, but she didn't start shrieking and wailing until the word hospital was uttered. And that was how Auntie Sarah arrived at her primary school the next day, for her first day at a new school, with her head so covered in bandages that it looked like a dumpling.

We got back to the car as the sun was setting, but there was just enough light on the drive back to spot a herd of deer on a farmer's field. Wild ponies and wild deer in one day!

30/12/2016 - An unfortunate conversation

Mum, Hannah and I drove into Bury today, after first scraping all the frost off the car and then driving through fields of fog.

After some shopping, we found ourselves in Marks and Spencers looking for baby clothes for Hannah's friend, who is due at the end of January/early February. Baby clothes shopping is both so calming (everything is pastel, and it feels so much like choosing clothes for a doll. I can't believe a little human would fit into those little dresses!) and also exacting. Mum was in full mum-mode, thinking about how quickly a baby grows in the first few months ('if we buy that she'll just grow out of it'), when a baby starts eating and dribbling, how old the baby would be in summer or winter, whether a dress would impede crawling... We settled on a pair of light turquoise dungarees with a long sleeved flower top to go underneath, and a set of baby bibs, for the dribbles.

I needed to head to the bathroom after that, but upon opening the door to the waiting space outside the male and female bathrooms I realised there was a long queue inside and so I apologised and said I'd wait outside first.

'Good,' a lady inside said, which I thought was a little weird, but maybe she just has word-farts like me sometimes.

When the queue had shortened so there was just that one lady left, I went inside to wait there. I stood on her right, since those who had entered the toilets had been on her left so I assumed the queue was going that way.

'The queue start here,' she said, and so I apologised again and moved over to her left.

Then she said, 'This being England, we queue.'

I didn't know whether to find her rudeness offensive or ironically funny, since in Singapore queue-ing is a constant sight. We queue for our favourite hawker stores, for the opening of new flagship stores, for Hello Kitty Toys, for Krispy Kreme Donuts, for the train, to remember people who built our nation. We queue in rain and in shine (and that's thirty degree centigrade sun + humidity for you) and through the night. That being Singapore, we queue.

The toilet door opened and she went in, so soon after what she said I had no time to say anything to her in response, so instead I leant the back of my head against the wall and asked God why people still judged others by where-they-might-look-like-they-weren't-from.

Winter Walks: Micklemere

'This is what I miss,' Mum said, 'Walks in the crisp winter air.'

Just a little way from Grandma's house is Micklemere, a small lake in marshland that I always wonder about when we drive past. Always placid, glistening in sunlight and usually with birds everywhere, it is a little ocean of quiet beside the highway.

Speaking of highways, I called it a 'big road' and Mum reminded me that I am a Cambridge undergraduate and not a three year old.

We weren't prepared for bird watching, and entered the bird watchers hut beside the mere with no binoculars or bird book which the two people inside the hut had, as they discussed 'merlins' and 'falcons' and probably wondered why on earth we were there at all. So we left them and walked to the Watermill instead so different in winter, but with thick wellies on I still stepped in for my customary paddle. Beside the water were two hippopotamuses and two crocodiles - cleverly cut topiary.

We came across an apple tree on the walk back - the same tree I got the apples for the Christmas Spiced Apple Cake from. We picked as many as our pockets would allow, I got temporarily stuck on some brambles, Hannah found an apple that looked like a butt, and tossed the apples she picked to me with about a fifty percent catch rate (it is difficult to catch when one hand is engaged with holding a camera, and both hands are gloved!) and the sunshine and the apples and the pure joy reminded me of scrumping apples last October.

Over the farmers fields to get home, the fields that I run in in the summer which are too muddy to run in now, but winter wellie boots make squelching through them possible. Shards of ice cover shallow puddles, and other late afternoon walkers say 'Hello, beautiful day, isn't it?' as we pass.

And as we near the end of the fields I look back and the sun is setting, very gently into that good night.

A Tale of Three Cities: Munich

Three Cities - Munich, Lyon, Paris. A plane, a train, a bus. Warm brown, cool blue, cloudy grey. One friend leaving a place she has come to know as home, one in a limbo between leaving and staying, and one who has made her new city her home.

Munich 

Leaving England began with a plane ride that took me over a sea so smooth it looked like glass. With the reflection of the clouds upon its surface, at times I was unsure if the plane was upside down, the sea sky and the sky, sea. It made the sensation of flight all the more surreal, reality's ties cut loose from gravity and movement and time, and now orientation too made malleable with the glint of sunlight against the stillness of moving water.

Arriving in Munich began with relief at seeing Natascha and a drive back to her apartment under the light of a sun so orange and large it looked like it came straight from the Serengeti. Again, the feeling of Erholung when I stepped into her home, entirely neat except for the funny white patch on the blue wall that we've laughed over so many times.

We took the U-bahn to Theresienwiese for the Winter Tollwood Festival, where ecological and environmental awareness is expressed through art, culture, food and the festive atmosphere. Surrounded by a constant stream of tent, food, light, smells, stars. In one of the tents, we could make a home in a jar, and we put in banana bread, a forest, a girl in yellow clothes, and lots of liebe. 

On the train back, Nat managed to slip through the doors while I was caught outside, and after the split second panic after the doors snapped shut she mouthed to me 'Next stop!' I got onto the next train, and in the short interim between that stop and the next, I imagined what it would be like if I truly was in Munich alone, taking a train alone. I was glad when the doors opened and Nat was there.

In the morning, we made cold breakfasts, took the U-Bahn again to Stachus from a platform bathed in sun. As we came out of Stachus a man approached us, first speaking to me in rapid German and then, registering the lack of comprehension in my eyes, turned to Nat to explain his new healthy food delivery company. I still said 'tchuss' when we left him, clinging to the pretense that I can speak German. 

We skated that morning, fingers knotting the laces tight - friction somehow hurts more in the cold - and then taking first wobbly glides onto the cold blue ice. First shaky, then false confidence where you move fast but you feel like your feet can't leave the ice, and then abandoned fun, where we jumped and danced. 

And then we ducked into a warm restaurant for lunch, walked a little more for dessert, walking a little faster in an area where Nat saw a group of young people who didn't seem too safe. Everything after dessert became so German - Christmas markets, wooden tree decorations, little nativity figurines, gluhwein everywhere. The soundtrack to a German market is a rustle of coats brushing coats as people walk past each other, the rumble of conversation, and in Weihnachtsmark, a woman singing to a happy crowd, where two girls whirled around and a man in the crowd sang along. We ducked into the corridor of a residence for a 'warm-break' as the sun begun setting and emerged to more Christmas Markets, now dark but lighted by congregations of pin prick fairy lights.

The next day we took the train, chugging our way to the 'surprise' that Nat had prepared me for. 'I'll give you a hint, it is on our bucket list!' she told me on the first day in the car, coming back from the airport and in my mind it was one of two places: Schloss Neuschwanstein, or hiking in Liechtenstein, which, considering the distance, would be rather unlikely. The train out of Munich sliced through the fog of the morning, which cleared to crispness when we got out at Füssen. A bus ride, and then a hike from the snow scattered base of the hill to the castle - Schloss Neuschwanstein.

Two women told us the path to Marienbrücke was closed, and we looked at each other not really knowing what to do with quite some time before our tour, when they told us we could walk down and hike up another trail to get to it. Which we did, in about half the time it was supposed to take, despite feet slipping on loose rocks and the steep uphill climb. On the way, we passed an upside down rainbow, despite there being no rain that day. It was probably a "circumhorizontal arc, which forms when sunlight refracts through plate-shaped ice crystals in thin, cirrus clouds" which only very rarely occurs outside the arctic circle.

Schloss Neuschwanstein was built by Ludwig II, who I'd heard about in the Munich Tour in Summer. All I remembered from that was his affinity for fairy tale castes, and his mysterious death when, after being deposed from his monarchy under the charge of insanity, he went for a walk from Starnbergsee with his psychiatrist, and neither returned. Both bodies were found floating in the lake the next day, the doctors face scratched and bruised and his fingernails broken. They were officially said to have drowned, but conspiracy theories following the revelation of diary entries of a fisherman in the search party that discovered them suggests that they were murdered, or that one murdered the other, among other variations. But if the official reason is true, I can imagine why Ludwig II would have wanted to commit suicide, having been confined to a castle near Starnbergsee with bars on the windows and doors, after the fairy tale world he had created for himself in Neuschwanstein. The Neuschwanstein castle is inspired by medieval folklore and Wagner's Operas, like the Venus grotto, an artificial stalactite cave based on the legend of Tannhauser.

We came out of the castle and into the golden hour, and all was soft and romantic, as if Ludwig II had spun some sort of magic and anything emerging from his castle kept some measure of the fairy tale magic that had inspired it. On the bus back, I was lulled to sleep on the train but woke up mid way to see the sky ablaze with colour, and I woke Nat up to look at its majesty. 

26/12/2016

It is boxing day and I woke up with salmon pink clouds streaked outside my window across a blue sky. Waking up in Winter brings one of two sights - either it is dark outside (as it usually is since I typically wake up at 7am) or it is a fragile, cautious entering of dawn into day.

Yesterday I woke up and padded up the stairs to my Mum's room, opened her door to see her awake too

'Merry Christmas,'

and climbed into bed with her, into the warmth beneath the duvet.

Hannah joined us after a while, and we all lay there, when Mum asked, 'Did Father Christmas come?'

'No,' I said, since I hadn't seen anything at the end of my bed like last year.

'Yes, he did,' Hannah corrected me, 'It's right outside your room!'

Getting to those presents was a process. Hannah was too attached to the under cover warmth and wouldn't budge, so I tried to roll over her to no avail, and then Mum tried to roll over both of us, which did get us out of bed, down the stairs, to little folded newspaper bags of Father Christmas presents. I got a bar of vegan milk chocolate, funky socks, a nakd bar, some soap and a little bag of the sweetest mini pegs and string to hang photos up in my college room. But the best present had to be - the batik scrunchies Luk Ching had given me for my birthday in July! Apparently Mum had found them around the house and thought they belonged to no one, and had then decided they might make a good Father Christmas present!

After that was breakfast, and then lots of chopping, peeling, seasoning and roasting as we prepared for the special Christmas lunch. 'This house smells like vegetables!'



Lunch was round at Auntie Sarah's house, and after the triumphant arrival of Grandma from the nursing home, we opened presents and passed around cards, and then settled down for lunch. 'Let's name every vegetable on our plate and the countries they come from,' said Grandma, but none of us were quite clever enough to do that.

Oh our menu! As Rudyard Kipling would say, the table was replete with superior comestibles.

For the meal we had:

Roast Parsnips
Roast Potatoes
Roast Brussel Sprouts with Lemon and Thyme
Mashed Sweet Potato with a lemon tahini dressing
Roast Red Peppers
Sage and Onion Stuffing
Roast Chicken/Pigs in blankets (for the Carnivores)
Ginger and Garlic Stir Fried Broccoli (specially for Grandma)
Linda McCartney Red Onion and Rosemary Sausages

And because Uncle John doesn't like dairy products either, everything was roasted in olive oil or rapeseed oil instead of butter - perfect!

And for dessert:

A slice or four of Vegan Spiced Apple Cake (recipe from hotforfood) - I can't recommend this recipe enough. It is so so simple, but utterly delicious, and it makes the house smell incredible while baking. Swedish Glace vanilla soy ice cream
Fruit Compote
Strawberries
Raspberry Strudel and Chocolate Log Cake (not vegan unfortunately)
And a plate of unknown Portuguese Desserts from the neighbours that nestle in between Grandma and Auntie Sarah's houses.



And then, the best part of the day - games. Auntie Sarah was so tired she fell asleep in our game of 'Who am I?' but everyone was awake when it came to ring-on-a-string, which involved much risk-taking, belly-laughter and sleight of hand. We played wink murder next - Grandma: "You mean I've been sitting next to a murderer this whole time!"

Also, upon being slyly accused of being the murderer by the actual murderer himself, Grandma said (very innocently), "Do you mean that if the little bit of paper was blank, then I am the murderer?"

Grandma also told us about a rather scandalous game she played when she was younger, called Squeak Piggy Squeak which involved sitting on boys' laps while blindfolded, trying to guess who they were from the 'squeak' they are meant to say. We were in hysterics - she'd never told us about this game before - and she said, rather cheekily, "Of course, you could always get it wrong on purpose." So that the game wouldn't end, the players would shuffle round, and you would sit on another boy's lap!



Hannah was tired by the end of categories, and even I was beginning to get a little droopy-eyed, and Grandma needed to go back for her 9pm curfew. But before she left, she managed to walk up the stairs, one foot first and then the other joining it, slowly slowly, then across the path, into her house and down the stairs to see the Nativity Renny made with (minimal) help from Hannah and I. 'Oh, isn't it lovely!'

This Christmas felt more like family, an answer to prayer.

One day, a travelling art dealer arrived at the front door of my grandma and grandad's home, selling cheap art to make a quick penny. Grandad looked through his selection, and to help him out, bought a painting called Masts at Sunset by Charles Bartlett for a small amount of money.

That painting still hangs in my Grandma's lounge, and one day, wanting to know more about it, I tried looking it up on google. Turns out Charles Bartlett is a known artist, whose obituary appeared in the guardian, and Masts at Sunset is now worth close to five hundred pounds. Who knew?

Two thousand and sixteen years ago, a woman arrived at an inn in Bethlehem, with her husband and unborn child, and that night the saviour of the world was born. Who knew?

hand in hand

“I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits.” 
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

A friend sent me a poem he wrote, and in it were these lines:

Though I come empty-handed
It is only so your hands may find solace in mine

Which were so beautiful (the whole poem was rather beautiful, although some lines were a little verbose) and reminded me of the last scene in Alcott's Good Wives when Jo slips her hands into Bhaer's.

'But I have nothing to give you, my hands are empty.'

'Not empty now.'

I've always not known what to do with my hands. Sometimes I put them in my pockets to hide them, other times I dance them along the tops of fences and walls so they have some sort of anchor in reality and are not left to their own devices. Maybe love is when anxious hands find their homes in other hands.

iAnimal

On my first night in Bath, my ‘strange eating habits’ came up at the dinner table as they are wont to do. Uncle Peter asked me about milk and how I get my protein, and how people who ate no meat could possibly be strong, and I answered as best I could. And then he tried to tell me that the killing of animals in England couldn’t possibly be inhumane, because there are standards here, and regulations. And so I tried to tell him what I had seen when I volunteered with iAnimal.

"iAnimal is a virtual reality project that creates a 360 degree, immersive experience in which the viewer is transported inside factory farms and slaughterhouses.

The animals we eat suffer from the time they are born to the time they reach our plates. iAnimal allows the viewer to access the day-to-day abuses that are hidden from the public by the agricultural industry.

This project includes footage obtained over the last 18 months during our investigations into factory farms and slaughterhouses in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany, Spain, and Italy."

It was near the end of term, and Will had asked if I'd like to help out with iAnimal which i agreed to do. I watched a virtual reality film through a pair of goggles, which was very much like some other recordings I'd seen before which expose the cruel practices of modern day factory farming. Then I helped other people use the goggles, and talked to them afterwards about what they'd seen. All in a days activism.

Since I'd seen factory farming practices before (a similar video was what initially brought me to really understanding the ethical motivation behind vegetarianism) I expected I would be able to watch it with some sort of emotional removal, and use it as a platform to engage in conversation with people who might not have seen something like that before. And initially I could handle it.

But when I was trying to explain what I'd seen to Uncle Peter, I found myself trying to stem a rising tide of tears, to no avail, and I became a weepy mess at the dinner table. And now when people talk about factory farms, or when I see trucks on the highway filled with sheep, or ducks, presumably on their way to the slaughterhouse, the heaviness is so much greater than it was before.

So what did I see?

I watched as piglets were taken away from their mothers, castrated without anything to staunch their pain, kept in cages so small they were driven mad and bit their brothers.

I watched as they were stunned, or worse, half stunned, and then their legs chained to a conveyor belt which hoisted them into the air to the knife that cut their throats.

One pig, screaming as its life blood streamed out of it, broke the chains and fell to the ground. Unable to stand, its leg broken by being hung on that conveyor belt and weakened from blood loss, it thrashed about in the blood and muck from countless murders. It was stunned again and hung again, again again again again this happens to animals everywhere and is called ‘legal’ and ‘humane’.

If this is what it is to be ‘humane’ then I renounce my humanity and call myself an animal, for the beast is kinder than Man. At least they feel pain, while humans deaden the guilt and soul-ripping sorrow of killing another living creature as we pick up Styrofoam trays of flesh in the supermarket, with labels showing a pig grazing peaceably in a field slapped on to hide the barbarity of the slaughterhouse, words like ‘pork’ and ‘shank’ and ‘sirloin’ euphemizing the truth that we are sinking our teeth in to the blood and muck and filth of that floor.

It hurts me so much, that people haven't made the connection that this is murder. Massacre. Genocide. On the most insidious and normalised level. 

Typing this is so unsatisfactory, and somewhere in my belly is the tearing feeling of frustration because I just want a universal enlightenment, for people to realise that this is not a matter of convenience, appetite, or taste, but a matter of life and death.

Please, please, don't do nothing. Don't stay silent and let the animals scream. Be a voice for the voiceless and live with kindness.

4/12/2016

I've just finished packing, tomorrow I get an 8.50am train, a 12.30pm flight and then - and then!

I lay in bed for the most part of the morning, even eating porridge in bed, and not getting up till 10.30am. In Cambridge after a particularly rough week I remember sleeping in till 8am (which was an extra hour/hour and a half from my usual waking time) and proudly telling Alex I'd had a lie-in. Hilarity ensued when she discovered my idea of a lie-in was waking up at 8am. Perhaps 10.30am is a proper lie-in.

Auntie Sarah and I went to Bardwell for church, the preacher didn't turn up so instead the congregation (of about 5) prayed and sang. I ran back, stopping when I got to Grandma's house, and after a brief think I decided to run some more because it was a beautiful clear blue sky day and the fields were calling me. I ran with the song 'Ashira l'adonai' from the Prince of Egypt in my heart, heart bursting with sunshine and the glory of God all around me.

I will sing to the Lord 
For He has triumphed gloriously 
Who is like You O Lord among the gods 
Who is like You glorious in holiness 
You in Your mercy have led forth 
The people whom You have redeemed 

I spent 5 hours with Grandma, just talking, watching the birds, and having a nap on her bed. Then packing, packing, packing - and then, and then!

The supermoon

The sea is calm tonight. 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

On 14 November, the moon outdid herself and gave us a perigee full moon, or supermoon. I got the day wrong, and thought that the supermoon was on Sunday night, and so after a curry dinner party (with probably the best chapatti to be found in England) with Alex and the cast of Anthony and Cleopatra, I headed back to my room to work on my dissertation and watch the moon.

I realised after a while that it was the wrong moon, but staring at the moon on any day can't be a bad thing. It was cloudy on the actual night of the supermoon, and the moon, though particularly bright, didn't seem to my untrained eye any bigger. But Dad sent me photos he took where you could see the crevices and mountains of the moon and in Australia they saw this incredible sight:

The earth is full of miracles.

2/12/2016

Perhaps starting with yesterday would be a place, a time, less gone.

I made a list of things I needed to do (I run my life of lists - listless - listen - enlist - cellist - evangelist) and didn't get the first one done (fix camera - the camera shop man didn't know what was wrong with it and would take up to 10 days to get a diagnosis) but did buy some euro: 3 days. (now 2) When I was pulling off the road and on to the pavement on my bicycle I had to move to avoid someone pulling off the pavement onto the road, and in doing so I blocked a woman in a wheelchair who was crossing the road and her accompanying male (husband? brother? son? friend?) angrily said 'Oi!', but she tried to shush him.

I got into Downing late-but-early, and helped Tim set out the chairs, and when the others had come we sang together and then decided to pray in pairs. I told Tim (again) how I've been struggling to feel the presence of God, although I know and feel His love. Love without closeness, a long distance relationship. Tim took out his Bible, flipped to a page in John and put his hand on my shoulder and spoke:

'My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.

[...]

If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. [...] I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.'

Eyes closed, I had an imagining. (I don't want to say a vision, because it wasn't) I remembered the Tales of Karensa I had read as a child, and how Petroc, when he was about to be executed, saw Salvis (the allegorical Jesus figure off the tales) kneeling beside him, always with him. I could feel Tim's hand on my right shoulder, but I imagined Jesus on my left, His hand on my other shoulder, His eyes loving-kind.

During the actual meeting, we talked about what JustLove has done (it was so encouraging to look over all the stuff from this term: Unashamed/Tending the Garden/Embrace Cambridge/Romsey Mill/CICCU connections/Prayer/Just Lunches...) and hopes to do, but more importantly we thought about how to proclaim Jesus in everything we do, how our work is a form of evangelism in showing people the saving grace of Jesus in the most practical ways (like providing sleeping bags to the homeless), and how in the relationships we build with others through our work we can keep creating relationships centred on the love of Jesus.

We broke banana bread and ate it. And it was so very good.

On the cycle back, a brass band was playing Christmas Carols, I bought some new panties to replace my 'aged 10-12' raggedy ones, and I sat in my room, overwhelmed by love for Cambridge - this city, its people, the God that watches over it, the people I love not in this city with me but always always in my heart and the God who I don't always feel but is always, always within me and beside me.

Back in my grandma's bed

And so my second Michaelmas ends.

This morning I packed to a frenzy of 'Oh Wonder' songs, stepped out of Buck House to print my tickets to Munich. I lay on the empty floor for a while, how strange to see bare walls again after 8 weeks - they were furnished in a frenzy when I felt like I had too much noise in my head. Then I decided to go for a last run to west cambridge, a route I don't usually go to.

I remembered why I avoid it halfway through running in the fields, when I realised that my shoes were caked in mud, the sort that sticks and forms another layer, like clay. I snapped off some of that brittle grass that grows in the hedgerows to poke some of the mud out, accidentally poking a splinter into my finger at the same time. It came out smoothly, a small pink dot was all that was left of that part of the world that had somehow found its way under my skin.

(Writing that sentence made my heart lurch strangely, and I don't want to think why)

I also thought perhaps the strange clay-like mud might be manure ('Horse poo is - out of the different sorts of poo you can get - some of the cleanest,' says Alex) and in that strange field-upon-field place, where I could see the cars in the distance but not hear them, not hear anything but the wind and my skin, I said loudly to no one, to the wind, to my skin 'This might be horse poo.'

I met Alex in the kitchen, where I tried to finish up my scraps, she finished her curry and I thought of how we'd attacked each other with the water gun from the christmas cracker we shared last night. We agreed on a walk after lunch, which ended up on castle mound.

Emily wrote in the book she gave me that she hoped I would find a quiet place for myself, and in first year castle mound was that quiet place, discovered during a hiatus from running when my feet were sore, a place I could be removed and yet I-the-world's-eye watch Cambridge from above, picking out King's Chapel, St John's Chapel, Jesus Green, the Library. This time Alex came too, and I stood with the wind whipping my hair out of its tucked-in place in my jumper as she walked around me, and said this was one of those unremarkable moments that somehow never becomes forgotten.

My new quiet space is the snaking paths behind the playing field in Girton village, the leaf meal covered forest paths that go between silver birches and apple trees and then emerge onto the wide open field from which the sky always seems more vast.

Back in college, I moved the boxes and cases nearer my door but not quite out yet, and then leaned there talking to Alex. She took a picture of me on her film camera and then I brought everything down just as Uncle John arrived, and we drove back to Ixworth.

I looked up at the moon and it was just a sliver of a crescent - so far from the supermoon I threw open my bedroom window to look at weeks ago.

My writing shall go somewhat backwards and un-chronologically from here, an ebb here and a flow there, information and stories told and retold and so some of their edges will be roughened or softened, scratched smooth by time.

“Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next. ” 
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

How do you describe cold?

How do you describe the cold?

It's dropped to between 0-3 degrees in Cambridge, which means that when I go running the pavement is edged with frost and my breath comes up in great clouds. I stopped and picked up a leaf encased in frost and it was thick and velvety and it folded without breaking.

But I cant figure out how to describe cold - it's blue, it's gut-clenching, it's also hot in some strange way.

I thought of how in The Giver, Jonas receives the knowledge of what hot and cold and starving and pain through memory, because words (as much as I adore them) don't really properly replicate those feelings. (Which also makes for an interesting pondering over what the function of words is - if it is the replication of reality then failure is inevitable, if it is to serve an aesthetic purpose in its own right I don't see how it can fail, but still, there is something more, beyond communication, beyond sound -)

I'm meaning to write out what this term was like, the days have slipped by and I realised that apart from memory I have little other record of my time. But this term was like cold, and I'm struggling to find the words.

Patience

Patience and thought.

4 things about bread

1. Megan is staying with me at the moment and - she doesn't like bread. As a result, at formal tonight I got to have her bread, which reminded me of the pure joy Nat and I had when we got extra bread on the aeroplane, much to the consternation of the man sitting beside me.

2. I have just discovered coconut and peanut butter and it makes breakfast so absolutely delicious.

3. How to save stale bread

4. Apparently, in Scandinavian tradition, if a boy and girl eat from the same loaf, they will most certainly fall in love.

17/11/16 Bike problems

Shaun fell of his bicycle and couldn't lead morning prayer this morning, so I filled in, after a 1.30pm essay hand-in the night before. So tired, so very very tired. But I still saw clouds with pink under-bellies as I streamed down the hill, gloves forgotten and fingers waxy yellow cold.

After prayer, I imagined myself doing dissertation reading and perhaps a grocery shop but what happened instead was after waving goodbye to Naomi and Beth, I stood for half an hour trying to unlock my bicycle. The lock was so stiff it wouldn't turn, no matter how much force, key jiggling, or fervent whispers of 'come on' I used.

And maybe it was the bicycle, or the tiredness, or the knowledge that I hadn't written a very good essay, or the feeling of time slipping away, or homelessness, or cold, or ...or... but I felt shaken and forsaken, and I walked away.

But I refused to believe that I could be defeated by a bicycle, and I walked back all the while feeling as if I was walking to definite sadness. I called Mum (because what else can one do?) and when I heard her warm, known voice I started crying.

And so I stood in tears, trying the lock, which wouldn't budge, listening to Mum tell me he wished she could give me a hug and a rub on the back. My sweet Mum - I wished she could too. After that I quietened a little, and decided to call Nat since I was still out there with the lock. I thought I'd finished but I ended up crying again, but thankfully Nat is the sort of friend who I don't feel embarrassed crying in front of, and also the kind of friend who is full of love and comfort when I do.

God has given me such angels behind and before me, and on my walk back to college (I left my bicycle where it was) I had the chance to slow down, earn some charity miles walking, and I got into my halls just as the first drops of rain started.

4 calming things

 “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”…He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.  You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.  A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you…For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways…“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him…”

Psalm 91:1-16

1. These manatees have your back

2. Emergency compliments for when you feel like you need to be encouraged (tip: although I know all of you are lovely, polite, people, just keeping pressing 'meh' instead of 'thanks' to get another compliment!

3. The sound of rain.

4. Hugs from strangers.

... And if all else fails - this button makes things okay!

Seeing Grandma again

Whenever I see Grandma, the night inevitably ends with Auntie Sarah and I giving her a foot rub to warm up her cold feet. I went to see Grandma last week, when the temperature plummeted unexpectedly and so I spent the first half hour in Bury trailing the charity shops for a warm coat. (today I found a pair of warm, waterproof boots in Oxfam so no more ice block toes!)

After a trip back to Ixworth to pick up a couple of books and warm clothes, I headed back to Pinford End. Auntie Sarah and I stepped out to a sky covered in silver stars, and then headed into Grandma's warm room.

She had a fall recently, and winced when Auntie Sarah put the cold cream to sooth her back- although there was no visible bruising I could tell it hurt her, and the papery skin on her back seemed so fragile.

We talked about her favourite birthday: 'I think 1937, that was pre-war, so there was food in the shops. In the war years we had ration books, so it was very hard to provide a birthday tea in those years [...] That was when I was seven [...] Mummy would have gone shopping and put things aside for when it was someone's birthday. Daddy said, 'Your mother's a good manager.''

Choices

I was reading 'The Mind of Modernism' today when I came across this sentence 'Impressionism [...] suggest[s] a withdrawal from the world of stable objects and a new preoccupation with the perceiving subject, a subject in crisis, absorbed by its own dissolution, fascinated and sometimes bewitched by the flux of sensations flooding in from without'.

Isn't that such a gorgeous sentence, unexpectedly stumbled upon in the middle of a critical text? So much assonance.

There's probably not much I'd love more than working in academia and research all my life - books and criticism are intoxicating and interesting, and are a world in their own right. But when I think of the state of our rworld and the crying need of so many different people groups, and our planet, and our politics, I can't justify sitting surrounded by books like that, not remembering that outside wars rage and hurricanes rain down. I'd become preoccupied by perceiving, absorbed in information while crisis and dissolution surrounded me.

That is privilege used for myself, but I want it to be my privilege to serve others.

George Bernard Shaw put it so well:

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Right now I have obligations to fulfill - my degree and my bond, but after that - I want to pour my life into something that lifts others. Lord, lead me where my trust is without borders.

Unpoetic things

Last week I dropped my pot of rice all over the floor.

When running, I saw the clouds folded, and, looking for a simile, I tried to liken it to the ripple on a pond. But the truthful part of my mind told me that it actually looks more like the dappled cellulite on my thighs.

Today while running I saw a pile of fresh horse poo on the road - so fresh it was steaming in the cold morning air. I saw the horses hoof prints in the mud track later on, but no horse. I scraped the mud out of the grooves in my shoes into the toilet.

The benches in the lecture theatre here have backrests that end halfway down, so there's a space between that and the seat. Today, the person behind me shifted his foot slightly, and accidentally nudged my butt, and I (who'd been almost asleep) jerked at the shock.

I've discovered that my toothpaste has glycerin (aka animal fat) in it, and my washing up liquid has whey in it. Why. My washing up liquid doesn't need to bulk. My teeth don't need tallow on them. What a world.

When I said hello to the Jubilee centre people a few weeks ago, in reply to their 'Have a good week! See you!' I blurted out 'See you too!'

9/11/2016

I woke up this morning and thought ' Oh my God, America might have a new president by now'. I looked up the guardian app, and my heart sunk - Trump was leading 244 votes to Clinton's 215. I lay in bed, knowing I had an essay due but also feeling as if refreshing the guardian page every few minutes might somehow help Clinton's numbers to go up and Trump's to go down.

Halfway through breakfast I checked again. 'Donald Trump declared president after stunning victory defies polls'.

Stunning as in hit on the head with a large and pointed rock. Not stunning as in the adjective used to describe the glory of a huge waterfall, unless of course the implication is that likewise, America is hurtling, shooting, crashing downwards.

It was raining outside and I couldn't help but think pathetic fallacy.

But those were my immediate reactions. I spent the rest of the day in a daze - essay writing, lecture, blood test, Just Lunch, essay, mindless songs, essay, thinking about heretic burning/tyranny in the 15th century and now.

As I lay in bed after handing in my latest essay yet (but also the one I am most proud of) I thought to God, 'I'm falling asleep to a very different world than I woke up to, and tomorrow I will awake to yet a different world.' 

Then I realised, that every day I fall asleep to one world and wake up to another. Countless things change in the night, and yet in my sleep state I still trust the sun will rise in the morning. 

Hilary Clinton said, “The worst thing that can happen in a democracy — as well as in an individual’s life, is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.”

I will trust in the Lord of today and tonight and tomorrow morning.

'When You don’t move the mountains I’m needing You to move

When You don’t part the waters I wish I could walk through

When You don’t give the answers as I cry out to You

I will trust in You!

Truth is, You know what tomorrow brings

There’s not a day ahead You have not seen

So, in all things be my life and breath

I want what You want Lord and nothing less

You are my strength and comfort

You are my steady hand

You are my firm foundation; the rock on which I stand

Your ways are always higher

Your plans are always good

There’s not a place where I’ll go, You’ve not already stood'

Comfort and Crunchy chocolate cookies

Lucy and Mr Tumnus on the set of Narnia

Usually on Sunday's I go for long runs, starting off slow with Becky and then continuing when she stops. I end up sprawled on my dorm room floor, awash with endorphins, sweat, happiness and achievement. But there are other ways to release endorphins and happiness - and one of them is chocolate cookies. So today I decided to stop with Becky, headed back to my room and put a tray of cookie mix into the oven. They came out crisp and sweet, just how I like my cookies (can't deny me a good crunch!)

(That reminds me - once I was talking to Nat about how I like crunchy cookies, and she suggested I start my own crunchy cookie ice cream sandwich shop to rival Cookie and Scream in London, and name my stall Crunch and Scream, which I said sounded like a zombie movie!!!)

The recipe is from Malin from goodeatings.com, whose recipes are all beautifulyl presented and sounds incredibly delicious. This one was easy to make and so satisfying:

Ingredients:

1/3 cup apple sauce

1 tbsp milled flax seed

1/2 cup coconut sugar

2 tbsp maple syrup

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

1 cup spelt flour (Malin used brown rice flour, but spelt works fine!)

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa or cacao

1 tsp baking powder

Malin also included vanilla powder, but since I don't have any I omitted it, although I'm sure it would be a fantastic addition.

Method:

Preheat oven to 175 degrees celsius.

Combine apple sauce and milled flaxseeds and let gel together for roughly 10-15 min.

Stir coconut sugar, melted coconut oil and maple syrup together until combined.

Sift flour, cacao, baking powder and vanilla powder together in a separate bowl.

Add flax and apple gel into wet sugar and oil mixture and combine well before adding dry ingredients in three stages mixing well in between.

(Confession: After combining the flax and apple sauce I just chucked everything else into a bowl together and trust me, it works fine!)

Let cookie dough set in fridge until mouldable and then roll into 16 equal balls.

(I tried rolling it without letting it set, and it is possible, although it certainly is easier after it has chilled for a while!)

Flatten the balls into roughly 1/2 cm thick rounds on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Bake in the oven for 15 min before letting them cool completely.

Malin also includes a recipe for coconut-banana ice cream to go with the cookies, which I've tried separately and it is bomb - the full recipe for both the cookies and ice cream are on her website here.

4 apps I adore

1. Run, by fitness22 - since starting half marathon training, I've started wanting to know my distance, time and pace. This app wasn't very reliable initially (on the same route once it said it was 8km, another time it said 12km!) but has since stabilised and become so useful in knowing what a comfortable pace is for me (and how I can push it on days I feel up for a challenge!), and how far I've run each route and each week. There's a very american voice that pipes in every time I run another kilometre 'thrrree kil-o-mi-ters' but I just turn the sound off so I don't hear her!

2. Charity Miles - I turn this on as well as the fitness22 app when I run. For every mile run, charity miles donates an amount (via various sponsors) to a charity which you can choose before your run. And it doesn't only work for running - walking/cycling also counts! It's such an easy way for perform a small act of kindness!

3. Forest - this app plants a tree when you don't touch your phone, and you can set a timer for how long the tree takes to grow. It's so useful for when I do my essay readings, and I hear my phone buzz and am tempted to look at it but then I remember I'm growing a little tree and I should let it be.

4. The Guardian app - It's easy to lose track of what's happening in the world when you have 3 essays due in a week, but a 2 second scan of a headline that pops up is so useful to remind you that the American election is happening, or that there was another earthquake in Italy, or that brexit cannot happen without a parliament vote, so that if they come up in conversations (which in Cambridge, they often do) you aren't entirely clueless. Sometimes there are also long reads that I enjoy, like the coverage on the Nauru files, a piece about living well in the age of plenty (such a good one!) or an in depth piece on the catastrophe of the Great Barrier Reef.