#One Week - Summer '14 - A New Rhythm

I did it. I gave Little A the best summer ever. Probably my greatest achievement this year, I think. We grew courgettes and tomatoes and sweetcorn. We even grew butterflies - bright red admirals - setting them free in the garden. One crawled up her arm, stretching its orange wings before it disappeared among the branches of the silver birch. A magical moment. And there was the festival, the holiday, and numerous play dates, and a brand new trampoline. But then, for me, there was also the tooth extraction. Not the tooth which had become infected back in June (and which I still haven't done anything about). No, not that one. The tooth directly above it. After a week of tender gums, the dentist declared that the crack in the tooth (what crack!?) was so bad, my poor tooth was beyond repair. So out it came, in pieces. I didn't feel a thing, only tugging; not unlike having a c-section. 'Do you want to keep your tooth?' she asked. 'Er, no,' I replied. Little A was subjected to the entire medieval procedure, but she found it fascinating, and afterwards incessantly requested view after view of the bloodied gap in my mouth. Nice. 'Wow,' she gasped, 'it's huge!' This has categorically not been a good summer for my dentures.

And I did it (again). I had a wonderful two month break away from blogging and most of social media. What a breath of fresh air. When I had the chance, I worked on my novel and read a good book (or two). The most relaxed I've felt in a long while. And happy. I saw my life from a different perspective, reevaluated my priorities, and I made a promise to myself; that upon my return in September I was going to spend a lot less time on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, and blogging. Oh I will still continue to write posts, just not as often as before, or just when the urge really takes me. I need to focus on my other writing aims (or I'll never get them finished), and there just aren't enough hours in the day....

Still, it's great to be back.

This is the final day of my One Week series. Due to the amount of work involved, I've decided not to run this series as a linky anymore, but please feel free to join in if you want to... Thank you for reading!

#One Week - Summer '14 - South Then North

First there was The South.

Figs in honey. Bresola and salami. Green olives and nutty bread. Pain au chocolat every morning on the sunlit terrace. Ah, The Provence. The bright waxing moon shone silver tongues on lapping waters, cast shadows through palm leaves overhead. My girl in the swimming pool, with arm bands, then without. So many of her family there; mummy, daddy, granny, aunts and uncles. Took it by turns to play pirates in the deep end, or holding her hand, jumping off the edge, making huge frothy splashes. What a joy to watch her confidence in the pool. And I rediscovered diving, swam fifty lengths every other day. Even the yoga mat was subjected to an occasional downward dog in the late afternoon heat. Simple postures, focused on the breath. And evenings spent listening to the cicadas in the trees, their incessant buzzing an electric circuit, jamming the air with their currents. Insect bites, large and swollen, on ankles and calves. The little one late to bed with a smile and satisfied sigh...  

A feast of mussels in white wine sauce. A string of mustard lights hanging slack between two boughs like a clown's smile. A hammock made for a long read. On days the air stood still, the surface of the swimming pool was as still as glass, the bottom paved in mosaic tiles, sloping deeper and deeper below. I laid the dinner table in taupe coloured clothes, added little glasses with flowers hand picked from the garden. Each night a different couple cooked a sumptuously simple dish. A fresh fish or a hunk of steak.

To my dismay, I'd forgotten verbs and nouns and tenses. Now I dearly wished to speak the language again, get by at the very least. Le singe est dans l'arbre... Fresh bread with a slice of tangy comte or a mild sheep's cheese. A flute of delicate rose. The never ending Sunshine. We didn't want to leave...

And then there was The North.  

A road trip. Just me and her. To visit grandma in a little market town on the North Yorkshire border. And how lovely to revisit home turf, it had been an age after all. The sweeping hills and pale Yorkshire stone. Grandma laid on some special comforts; chocolate rice crispy cakes, meat loaf and strawberry crumble. This the first time my girl acquainted herself with the new(ish) additions; two rag doll cats, one called Macho, the other Maisy. Both very, very fluffy. Macho was so amenable, so easy, the floppy thing. He didn't mind a four year old's constant attention; being picked up under his front legs, dragged from room to room like a marionette. Meanwhile, Maisy, wholly terrified, scarpered underneath every available chair.

We took a trip to adventure park. Found ourselves lost in the maze, retracing our steps, a hapless sense of direction. 'Come on,' she said. 'It's this way, I know it is, follow me.' And she was right. Clever girl. Then a walk avoiding determined rain drops in the enchanted forest. A tree with chiming notes. A damsel in distress. A witch's empty cauldron. And the following day we spent a delightful afternoon in the company of my God mother. Plates piled high with smoked salmon sandwiches, homemade malt bread, moist elder flower sponge, raspberry brownies and strawberries coated in chocolate. And of course, a proper pot of Yorkshire brew. What a delicious treat.

We shared a double bed in grandma's spare room, my girl and I. I think my fondest memory of the entire summer was climbing under the duvet, turning on the bedside light, and her arm curling around my stomach as I read the final chapters of The Goldfinch. A sleepy voice half-whispered, I love you Mummy...        

This is the second day of my One Week series. Due to the amount of work involved, I've decided not to run this series as a linky anymore, but please feel free to join in if you want to...

#One Week - Summer '14 - Outdoors.

One lone portaloo. Bright blue among nature's greenest. The only amenity in a field of rough, overgrown grass and dense nettles; tall thickets that sprang with the sudden jolt of whooshing geysers. And the loo was barely a beacon of hygiene; an anti-tardis of function, an-almost-merger of sink and lavatory, and a roll with the thinnest stretch of muddied paper. I began to cry. I want to go home. I don't like this. T'was also a certain time of the month. Not the ideal context for a night in rural Buckinghamshire. We need to do this, Younger Dad urged, this is the tent test for two weeks time. Oh God.

In the adjacent field was a cricket pitch with a small white pavilion on the farthest side, and tucked behind the ageing shack was an ever-so-slightly-more-refined toilet. The paper was damp. A tap didn't work. The mirror was cracked and broken. And curiously, a neon pink loom band lay unused and forgotten under the browning sink on the broken tiles of the floor. I closed my eyes, brushed my teeth, determinedly focused on the sweet, sweet aroma of falling dew beyond the gaps in the flaking door. I am fine. I can do this. It'll be fun!  

The fire wood was too damp. All smoke, no flame. So Younger Dad gave up fanning the tentative sparks, and the bag of marshmallows remained unopened. She was too excited to sleep. She clutched my hand at every strange nocturnal sound. A bat's high-pitched cry. Wind rasping through the branches. A fire works display beyond the hills in Henley. Boom. Boom. Boom. But as it went, I slept so soundly and when I took those first fresh breaths the following morning I decided that camping wasn't so bad after all.

...and fourteen days later we arrived at the festival. I wrapped bunting around the tent, hung solar lanterns above the entrance; a canny reference point for our temporary home. Around us there were bell tents and tee pees and palatial domes and flags and fairy lights and children tearing around in face paint, chasing the tails of escaping balloons and the path of tipsy butterflies. And in the family field where we'd pitched, to my delight, a yoga tent, and, and... flushing toilets and hot comforting showers (even though the queue was longer than a blue whale). The air smelt good and clean and delicious, of bubbles popping and BBQ's sizzling.

Over those three days of music, literature and laughter something reawakened. Was it the sunshine on my brow or the way it warmed the nape of my neck - the touch of a small downy feather - as an author read from her novel? Was it the tug of war of bass, my auditory canals spoilt for choice - which stage was it going to be? Daryl Hall singing I can't go for that... (the saxophone solo that felt like rippling silk, and tasted of butter-soaked crumpets and melted chocolate)? Trying to decipher the words of Kate Tempest, so in awe of her boundless spirit and passion? Was it watching my girl fly down the helta-skelter, her face lighting up at The Cat in The Hat, the way she created a fairy wand from stickers, twisting and moulding it until she found the correct shape? Or how the wind whipped up before the storm? The lightning colouring the sky in flashes of burnt orange and the deepest purple, the rain beating heavy rhythms on the nylon canvas and bouncing off the grass? Or was it the simple observation that at a festival the English stop being so very English; no one minds the changeable weather or claggy mud - we stop frowning, and finally start smiling....

.... it was all of the above, all rolled into one sweet wrapper of experience. I laughed over my hysteria with the lone portaloo, realising how easy it all was, and how enjoyable; why had I flustered so much? I'd caught a sense of wonder and adventure I'd not experienced since before Little had arrived, when I'd cycled everywhere and spun records at parties in the mountainous foothills of southern France. Life. This was what it was all about. Spontaneity. Creativity. Freedom. The big, big outdoors.... the stuff of childhood I want her to remember, to always be enchanted by....

This is the first day of my One Week series. Due to the amount of work involved, I've decided not to run this series as a linky anymore, but please feel free to join in if you want to...