Category Archives: Daily pages

The blue striped sunshade rests against the tree, with what we hope are the last drips of today’s rain falling gently from its edges. It was sunny this morning and the sunshade was about to fulfil its purpose when the neighbour pointed out the dark brooding skies heading in our direction. You could see the rain falling from miles away, I could feel the wind in my face and knew that before long the sun which had long since been replaced by a white cloud was about to be obscured by yet darker cloud and one of those downpours that can occur at any time in the summer of south-west France. Last night had been one of storms, we ate our moules frites in the local marketplace constantly aware of the occasional spots of rain and even the odd flurry that maybe lasted a minute and went away before finally coming to stay late in the evening and soaking everything within minutes. The marketplace abandoned, the stallholders rushing frantically to cover their wares and stop the rain doing irretrievable damage to their stock. We drove home surrounded by thunder and lightning with rain falling so heavily it slowed us down. But when we got home we opened the doors and sat watching the storm as it played its way across the sky; bright sheets illuminating the whole of the sky, even brighter streaks of lightning flashing from cloud to cloud or crashing from cloud to earth. Each new illumination followed by thunderous rumbles and yet another downpour. The storms are spectacular, especially so if one is dry under cover watching the forces of nature play out across the skies until they finally drift away to excite someone else’s evening, leaving ours adrip from the trees and wet underfoot. A wet that will disappear in hours leaving you wondering if it really had been raining that hard.

So today’s rain has been presaged by something much more primal and would no doubt followed sometime by yet another of those storms that roll around the hillsides leaving our blue striped sunshade wondering whether it is in sunshade are an umbrella. Nothing is what it seems, everything is what we claim it to be.

We both saw them at about the same time, great rafts of straw and twigs topped the pylons. Each with its own furry hat. Then the storks, massive bird seemingly precariously balanced atop their organic thrones. I have seen them, and more amazingly heard them, flying over south-west France. The spring and autumn skies awash with flying Vs disrupted by the upper currents, the voices merging into a cacophonous roar as they flew hundreds of metres overhead. And here they are in their summer residences soaking up the baking sun of the deepest south of Spain.

We are on a brief road trip – a couple of hours from our borrowed apartment at the less touristy end of the Costa Del Sol. A well-named area if ever there was, day after day the yellow sun sits in a sky blue arc overhead. It brings a profusion, even a confusion, of life. Garden flowers grown to giants, occasional bloomers in the UK covered here with a profusion of blossom, green everywhere. That was a surprise. The green. The trees, the shrubbery and the maquis (I wonder what the Spanish equivalent of that word is?) green despite the relentless drying sun. Vegetation on the edge of the continent but far from the edge of survival. We rode through the tree line to a wide expanse of high veldt, or was it the Peruvian uplands, where the storks chose to nest each bringing their own mystery as their arrival presaged summer.

A flash of purple in the mottled green morning light. The sun filtering through the freshly clothed trees, warming earth and sea ready to greet the future hordes. But for the moment, quiet. The only sounds the rustle of those new leaves, the gentle tinkle of the bells around the necks of the sheep/goats slowly munching the herbage along the roadside the wizened yet brightly smiling old resident of Çokertme patiently waiting before whisking them off for milk then cheese then breakfast.

The shock of the purple is extreme – its’ velvety texture, the strong leathery spike emerging from the centre; an Anglican Bishop amongst the Orthodoxy of the islands. More exotic than anything in my garden, more mysterious than the local language, this beautiful flower is known as a Death or Voodoo Lily. How strange for something so beautiful to be associated with death, or perhaps that is just my Western, atheistic, sensibilities linking a finality when others see death as a glorious release or path to heaven and life everafter. In a way this wonderful plant has that life everafter – the seeds that will follow the glory of the bloom ensure the survival of the gene line.

I am reminded of that wonderful piece by Jenny Joseph “When I am an old woman, I will wear purple”

WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Well done that plant!

Home is no longer here, West Yorkshire calls louder by the minute. The cockerel crowing his ownership of his clan to be replaced by muddy fields, straw bedding and uncomplaining horses. We fly around, taking planes like the buses of our youth, seeking the frisson and the challenge of new places and ones we know well. Every trip is a new trip to new destination, some of which happen to  hold old friends in their welcoming arms. There is still romance in travel, in watching the houses and people shrink, as if taking Alice’s potion, as the silver bird powers her way skyward. The occasional glimpse of the ground not touched as the clouds part temporarily, the vastness of the desert, mountain or seascape as we pass by observing but not touching. Does our presence in eyes only make a difference to those below? Perhaps not, yet it changes me. The dots of the boats with their comet tails transporting who knows what to who knows where. Reminiscent of dhows on a Dubai Creek front, loading their Chinese tyres, Brazilian deck chairs, Pakistani spices…  Delights from the vastness of the globe gathered here at dockside waiting for their final sea journey to a welcoming new home. Innocent and ignorant of their origin of their fate yet stacked proudly and brightly in the unremitting sunlight. They move from home to home, as do I.