Slowly Does It in the Spring Garden

With the first warm, sunny day of the year the garden comes alive. Under the bare copper beech, crocus flowers open up to such an extent that bumblebees are able to crawl around in them. Dusted liberally with golden pollen, their big, hairy, black and orange bodies are ready to act as natures’ cupids.

Scents of loveliness only insects can detect have reached the beehive. The honey bees come out in force, eager to start collecting for their pantry. They have until September to produce the goods. By then, a double storey dwelling should be able to produce 50 jars of liquid amber, Food of the Gods.

But if we are to have other produce, veg beds need to be turned over and fertilized, greenhouses cleaned, tubers chitted and seedlings started on windowsills. And if the garden is to burgeon and bloom, roses, vines, trees and shrubs must be pruned, climbers tied and perennials cut down.

And this is only a small part of what should be happening in the garden. In many gardens it is underway. In this one, we’re still in planning mode: I’ll throw away all those pots; you must have a bonfire; we should buy our salad seeds before they sell out. This summer we’ll keep the garden tidy: we’ll cut the grass more often, dead-head the roses more frequently. Blast, is it too late to cut down the lavender?

My laissez-faire attitude to putting the garden to bed does mean that the place doesn’t look too tidy at this time of year. I leave all the perennials and seed heads for the birds to feed on in the winter months. I leave shrubs and herbaceous alone to give shelter to small mammals and insects. I even leave windfalls – a very messy habit.

This all in the name of ecological awareness, habitat protection - green-ness. It is an ideology that suits the lazy gardener. We have a symbiotic relationship in winter, my garden and me – I leave it alone, it leaves me alone. Then with the first signs of Spring I start planning what I will do. Planning mind - let’s not run before we can walk – planning, not doing.

And then, I’m a slow starter in Spring. The first sunny day - what can be more pleasant than a leisurely walk around the place to admire the brightness of the aconites and sophisticated simplicity of snowdrops. To seek out shy iris, smile at bright narcissus, smugly congratulate myself on the elegant hellebores. I must linger by the fragrant primrose honeysuckle and blush pink viburnum. I want to find that wonderful scent that reveals itself as modest sarcoccoca.

It’s a time to asses, to imagine, to decide….I shall fill that space with a tall perennial, move this shrub to the other side, cut down that bush and plant some more grasses. And that bench must be scrubbed, the summer house cleared out, a new hinge is needed on the gate. My goodness, look at that ash tree - how did it get there – and how come I never noticed it last year. It has to come out. Right away.

Well, soon anyway. Plenty of time before Spring really begins.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Ghosting - A Double Life by Jenny Erdal

Funny business, ghost writing. Okay, there are some people who have a story to tell but can’t put it into reasonable English. A ghost writer does it for them. They either take the credit or come clean and admit that they didn’t actually write it themselves.

But what do you think of a celebrity who has no story to tell but gets someone else to make up a story and write a novel for them? And what do you make of a writer who is employed by the celebrity to write the novel in secret but finally spills the beans?

Read Ghosting by Jenny Erdal and you will find out. Erdal can write, no doubt about it. Her English is good, her style fine, her little bon mots amusing. She explains in graphic detail her relationship with Naim Attallah – whom she calls Tiger to minimize the likelihood of libel I suspect – who was a Quartet Books publisher of enormous celebrity for many years.


The descriptions of him – a larger than life, highly colourful Asian character – have him down to a T. He brooked no disagreement from his staff, surrounded himself with a bevy of beautiful society girls, ate and spoiled himself to excess and was generally a demanding, uneducated but amusing and charismatic chap. Erdal, on the other hand, describes herself as almost the exact opposite.

She was from an emotionally restrained, working class Scottish family. She disliked her parents, her husband left her, she was clever but unable to succeed at what she wanted. She gives the impression that life held little pleasure for her bar her children and working for Tiger. She asked for little and got it.

In fact she was attractive, bright, went to university where she read languages, was married with three beautiful children. This all sounds pretty good. But I suspect it was the working for Tiger that did for her: he was demanding as an employer but it was an interesting job. Then her husband left her. Tiger was supportive. She had to keep working. She was sucked into a seductive world of glamour, excitement, luxury, intrigue and power.

Unfortunately a great deal of the book concentrates either on how clever she is – she peppers her prose with quotations and examples of her learning but I suspect she’s trying to compensate for being a ghost writer – or how mean everyone else is. For example she paints her parents as unkind and narrow minded.

Any writer who wishes can describe their relationship with their parents and show the reader that they were unkind and narrow minded. But what I would hope to be shown is how that experience has moulded the writer. And I should like the writer to show me, the reader, how the parents may have come to be that way. I like some understanding and illumination to shine through. Not to do so makes the writer look as bitter as the parents she despises.

So I guess that is my first beef with the book. My second is that, if she hated writing for Tiger then why did she go on doing it? And why did she volunteer the smut she purports to disdain. By this stage in her life she no longer needed the employment - her children had grown, she had remarried and husband number two wanted her to stop. But still she went on. And then when Tiger finally fell from the heights, when he could no longer pay her, only then did she leave. And write her expose.

Erdal was not manipulated by her employer, Tiger, as she tries to suggest. It seems to me that it was a symbiotic relationship. Each used the other: Tiger got a willing accomplice, someone who could write far better than he could, someone who could be bought; Erdal got paid, annual holidays in the south of France, luxurious hotel rooms and wonderful meals, frisson and power.

Ghosting is a very well written book, one that shows us the seamier side of ghost writing, but it was not, in the end, a very satisfying read for me.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Winter weather

Arriving back in the UK from the sunny clime of South Africa it was a surprise – although it is February - to land on snowy tarmac in Surrey. It’s Middlesex actually but art is all. No, really, sorry about the alliteration: naff, I know, but somehow it just slips out. I mean, one mention of the word sun, and the words sand, sea etc just trip off the tongue. This time it was sunny, South and, well there it was, snow, just asking to be part of it.

Well, you may wonder, what was she up to in said sunny clime? It was part research (all will be revealed in time), part R&R. Weather? Well, OK, whilst we’re on the subject…..the Midlands of Kwazulu-Natal were misty and damp. Not quite what I had envisaged. No wonder the Drakenbergs are so green and beautiful.

Durban was tropical (humid) and the Zulu battlefield sites were hot in the day, nippy at night. But St Lucia Lake was just right: not too hot and not too cold, neither windy nor wet. Then Cape Town, sunny and bright as is usual at this time of year. All in all, a welcome break from the weather at this time of year at home.

Kent is usually wet and frostily cold in February: the days are short, the evening long. Christmas festivities have faded and Spring seems a long way off. Snowdrops have surfaced and look as pretty as ever, but colourful crocuses and cheery daffodils are only little green shoots. Not even a promise of joys to come.

In fact the only excitement weather wise is the romantic thought that we might have a little snow. You know the sort: sprinklings of it on rooftops, thick white powdery stuff on the grass, butch little snowmen. Snowball fights, sledge rides, hot chocolate and muffins by the fire.

In actual fact, when we have snow its more like: slushy piles on doorsteps, solid frozen stuff on the paths, big butch gritters. Cars are snowed in, buses don’t run and bread sells out in the shops. Hey - we are warned - don’t go out unless you have to. Avoid the roads, take care not to slip, stay warm. But still we think fondly of snow.

Up North, of course, they’re a hardy lot, used to the snow and ice and digging their way out of trouble. Down South we’re wimps: we only have snow that lasts for more than a day or two every decade or two so it’s hardly surprising that we’re not geared up for it. This year there was simply much more of the stuff than usual.

This is an event, an unusual and not very serious one at that. But what do we get: newspaper headlines of blame, panic and sensationalism. Schools are closed! People cannot get to work! Shops lose takings! Councils have run out of salt and grit! Oh, come on, please, the country hardly ground to a halt. Telephones rang, orders were placed, many were able to work at home and kids had the time of their life.

We cannot store huge quantities of salt for an event that only takes place every decade at most. And I’m not sure we want to use salt on every road. On motorways, yes, it’s effective and quick. But the run-off on rural roads causes terrible damage to the ecology. Grit is what’s needed, and that should be used often in winter when ice is a more frequent danger.

The worst of our damp weather is not actually the snow itself: it’s the crazy gang who drive too fast and the kids who have never learnt that ice on ponds is too dangerous to walk on. And the biggest danger of all is the aftermath of snow which, in Britain, is often flooding. Our resources should be spent of measures to alleviate that.

I think that every child should have the memory – the day we couldn’t get to school because of the snow – of chucking snowballs and sledging on tea-trays. Admittedly, once an adult the whole process can be a bit of a pain but many a parent is only too happy to join the kids. So, enjoy what there is to enjoy about snow ....before it all turns to slush.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
LucyAnnWhite@googlemail.com

The Anglo-Zulu Wars

130 years ago last week, over 24,000 Zulu warriors attacked a British Invasion Force as it encamped on the slopes of Isandlwana, Zululand. Both sides fought with amazing bravery, both sides suffered severe loss.

It was a terrible defeat for the British Army. Of the 1300 plus troops only a handful survived but over 3000 Zulus also died. On the same day the British troops at Rorke’s Drift, a few miles away, were also attacked but after many hours of fierce and furious battle the British troops repulsed the Zulu warriors.

Rob Gerrard (the resident historian at the stunning Isandlwana Lodge overlooking the site) guides tourists through every angle and nuance of the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. He brings the events to life – so to speak – in the most vivid detail. The experience is guaranteed to move even the most unemotional of men.

What is less than impressive is the arrogance and ineptitude that was shown by commander of the British forces, Major General Lord Chelmsford. Men such as he rose to positions of power, due less to ability and more to connections, and their lack of professionalism had disastrous results. What is even more shocking is that many a similar thing continued to happen, later, in the First World War.

As in any war, it is not just the lives of soldiers that are lost, it is the lives of their families that are blighted. Every man who died on the 22nd January 1879 was a son; many a father, some a brother. Most would have been a breadwinner, others a potential one. British and Zulu families would feel the consequences for generations to come.

If I were to consider the Anglo-Zulu Wars on a totally uninvolved level, I should find the amount of interest that they exert for military historians - amateur and professional alike - surprising. The wars were condensed into a very short period, over a very small area. Could it be the complexity of them, the tactics, the reasons for them or the results of them that are so gripping? Or perhaps it’s the astounding bravery that was displayed: five VC’s were awarded at Rorke’s Drift alone.

But, in actual fact, I’m involved on a very personal level: my great-grandfather died at the Battle of Isandlwana. His name, Charles White, is on the memorial at Isandlwana. Somewhere, under one of the cairns – a pile of white stones – or scattered on the battlefield lie his remains. He left behind a family and dependents in Natal: seven children and a pregnant wife. Mr Kipling was wrong; there is very little glory in war.

Lucy
lucyannwhite@googlemail.com

Mark Rothko

Tate Modern is the perfect place for the Mark Rothko exhibition that's on at the moment: it's awesome, large, dark red with strong lines. Just like most of Rothko’s later paintings. For years his murals have hung in the Tate but for the first time his late series of paintings are on show.

In 1958 Rothko was commissioned to paint some murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in Mies van der Rohe’s (of 'less is more' fame) stunning Seagram skyscraper in New York. But the paintings Rothko produced were not the colourful pieces of his previous works: they were dark. Layer upon layer of red, of black and, finally, brown and grey. Nothing is flat, varying tones and intensities give the finished works a luminosity and depth you wouldn’t think possible in such dark canvases.

Rothko never completed the commission. The story is that he felt they were works that should be seen by the ordinary man, not simply rich diners: that the space in the restaurant was too cramped for his vision of their hanging. This may well be true but I think these abstract works also show us a man who was not happy. He killed himself in 1970 as the first of his works arrived at the Tate.

Rothko’s death brought his works back to the attention of the art world: a whole new interest in his latest works grew. Rothko had wanted his works to create a sense of place. And hanging together as they do in the central room of the exhibition they certainly do. They are brooding, magnificent, deep and, well, kind of melancholy.

He had felt that the works should be looked at close up – as close as 18 inches from the surface – and I tried it. I’m sure other visitors – who quite sensibly stood well back as one would expect to be in order to see the whole canvas – thought I was short sighted, mad or both. But it gave me the feeling that I was really entering the painting. Like a dark cave. A doorway. That close you can see the built up layers of colour and feel that there is something more there. Something to ponder.

Rothko’s earlier paintings had used glorious exuberant colour. Specialists have researched the materials he has used for these Seagram murals by putting ultra-violet light behind them. The results show the layering of colours that have made up the finished canvas. The back-lit examples are absolutely stunning in their vibrant colour, wonderful shading and clarity. It’s difficult to believe that these are the basis for the Seagram murals.

I used to see Rothko’s paintings as landscapes (I suppose that’s an occupational hazard). But many of these later works are very similar, the only difference a change in the level of the horizon. And that change in level alters ones perception. Just as the subtle changes in colour do. Now, I think, the paintings are to make the spectator do just that: think.

There’s a great photo of Rothko sitting in his chair just contemplating his canvas. Is he thinking ‘What do I need to do: to add, to detract” or is he just sitting there meditating, monk-like, wondering what is in there. In that deep fathomless, bottomless, colour and shape. I suspect that he is: he’s thinking about life, the world, the universe and everything.

And I guess if his murals make us stop, and think deeply about these imponderables too, then that has to be a good thing in this too-busy-to-stop, no-time-to-do-it, running-late world we all inhabit.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Simone de Beauvoir and Rachida Dati : a co-incidental pair.

Co-incidence is a funny old thing: when it happens we think it is magical but I suppose – if you are a mathematician – it is only a matter of odds. For example, here’s my latest little co-incidence. Years after struggling with Simone de Beauvoir’s dense book, The Second Sex, I found a slim volume of hers on my bookshelf that I had never read (put off, no doubt, by the earlier struggle).

Well, I picked up A Very Easy Death – possibly had the subject on my mind as the anniversary of my father’s death is about to be - and a very easy read it turned out to be. Quite unassuming and virtually without incident – if you don’t count the death of her mother– it raised subtle questions about relationships with ones parents that gave me pause for thought.

Then blow me down, only a few pages off finishing it I hear a Radio 4 programme all about Simone de Beauvoir: 2009 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex. The gist of the message enshrined in its pages is that women are not simply adjuncts to men.

Now, this might be assumed as quite obviously the case today, but SdB (somehow it’s inconceivable to call her Simone) was from a bourgeois Catholic background, living in a period – in France – when a woman’s place was definitely in the home and her time fully for the benefit of her husband.


She was against obligatory motherhood, advised women not to live solely as a housewife and, in the book, described women’s sexuality: her views caused, as you might expect, quite a stir. SdB had enrolled herself at the Sorbonne and studied philosophy: here she met Jean-Paul Sartre and their passionate partnership – and intellectual harmony - lasted for decades. SdB, like Sartre, espoused personal freedom and this included their sexual life.

She was at the time - and has been since – labelled a feminist by some, not a true feminist by others. On the one hand she felt strongly that “one is not born a woman, one becomes one” (a winner with the feminist and nurture-not-nature view). On the other, she was a victim of all those emotions (jealousy being one) that women fall prey to whatever their views: she was hurt by Sarte’s sexual affairs. Nevertheless, in spite occasional forays into other men’s beds, she was always ‘his woman’. Not a winner with the full-on feminists.

But SdB’s feminism was always – in its simplest form - towards gender equality. Now, here’s another co-incidence: 60 years on. In the press this week we were treated to the headline news that Rachida Dati, the unmarried French Justice Minister, has returned to work only five days after giving birth to her daughter.

She has since been alternatively praised and pilloried: the feminists argue that she is just acting like any one of her bread-winning, ambitious male colleagues and why not. The opposite camp argue that she has not done any favours for her gender: that her decision is not only an unnatural action but one that puts at risk their hard fought-for maternity leave.

Now, I’ll come clean: from choice I stopped work to have my children and did not consider the role to be second-class. Indeed, I considered myself lucky to be able to make that choice, not least because I had a husband to pay the mortgage. Unlike the unmarried, un-partnered, Ms Dati. Surely, she is just a very modern Simone de Beauvoir: gender equality is her aim and personal freedom her choice.

Lucy
lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

PS Having enjoyed A Very Easy Death I have now dug out (you can see how old the books are by the covers!)the two volumes of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography. The titles are challenging in themselves.

Jack Frost

Only a week ago I was collecting holly to deck my boughs, humming a cheerful carol - “The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown,” – and thinking how lovely everything looked in the sunshine.

And now I’m freezing! Too smug, we’ve been punished by the spirits with a toe numbing blast of cold weather. Just in time to see the old year out, or the new one in, depending on your perspective. But there is up side to the frost: everything in the garden looks so magical - chillingly beautiful.

I pull the bedroom curtains and there below me is an alien vision – every single element is frosted white: the trees, the shrubs, grass, plants and climbers. The deciduous trees are the most eye catching at first glance, bare branches silhouetted and dramatic.

The garden is – not to sound too corny – a winter wonderland. I can see where those Hollywood visions of winter landscapes come from now. They always look confected to me but now, as I look outside, I can see that they are based on fact. The garden is straight out of a fairytale.


Later, on closer inspection, every element has been transformed. Ivy leaves have silvery glass edging like sugar frosting. Each leaf stands out in relief, no longer one of many but each a tiny work of art. Their veins – hardly noticed when glossy green was the over-riding effect – appear more pronounced, a fine filigree.

And the bright green that was the Arbutus tree of last week now has what appears to be tiny glass bead decoration. The ‘green’ of the garden has been transformed by Jack Frost, the winter painter and decorator.

A corkscrew hazel – always an interesting outline – is even more charming than usual. The leafless branches stand out against the sky and the catkins that hang from them remind me of twinkling Christmas fairy lights.

The old stone ball – long ago toppled from some grand entrance pillar – looks like it’s been given the designer treatment. The moss that grows on the crumbly parts of it is more defined, more textured. It’s taken on the aspect of crusted moonscape and is eerily attractive.

And look, on an old pane of glass (that has no right to be propped up against the garden room wall) has had the Jack Frost treatment. Fern-like outlines and curling, curving shapes make a most beautiful decoration on it – there is little that can improve on nature.

I look, I admire, but then – the veritable wimp – I slink inside for a nice hot cup of tea. Beauty can give a frosty reception and be a cold companion. And so from the comfort of the fireside I appreciate Jack Frost but hope that he’s off to cast his spell elsewhere tomorrow.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com