Fantastic colours at this time of year.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Disobedient objects
What a fabulous exhibition at the Victoria and Albert in London – disobedient objects
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/
Objects related to protests and struggles since the 1970s. A car with the death mask of a man sentenced to death in the USA ( will it ever stop? )
Greenham Common anti nuclear weapons – I remember being there!
Trade unions, campaigns in Latin America, Syria and so many others.
And finally these few words that say it all
A moving reminder of the power of voices against injustices.
Weekly photo challenge: summer lovin’
Daily prompt: from the top
In this daily prompt/ writing challenge you can write anything you like but must repeat the opening line at least twice.
“I never expected it would turn out like this”, she thought as she took off her wedding ring. What to do with it now? Would her tears ever stop? She looked at her hand tanned from years in the Australian sun and the white band left on her ring finger. The mark of their failure.
“I never expected it would turn out like this” he mused as he snuggled into the arms of his new young partner. No more hiding now. Everyone knew yet few approved. He’d never felt so alone. Their condemnation had winded him. Here it was, the moment she had talked about, just the two of them, a moment he had never really wanted to come, if truth be told. But here it was.
“I never expected it would turn out like this” she said as she walked along the Southbank one sunny evening in June with Sandra, her friend of twenty something years as she shared the dilemmas of dating again in her fifties. What to wear? What if he was nothing like his online picture and the witty kindly man he’d seemed to be in his emails. What if he was disappointed and that disappointment showed? What if he he did seem to fancy her? Did people even talk of fancying people any more? She was so out of touch and just never imagined she’d be here doing this, dating again.
“I never expected it would turn out like this” she thought as she got ready for their fifth evening out. She hadn’t reckoned on the anticipating, the fluttering excitement, the eagerly awaited passionate kiss on greeting, the sense of having come home, the joy of a new love. She looked down at her hand, the Australian tan now well and truly gone after years back under the grey skies of London. She briefly recalled the white band of failure. So long ago now. No time to waste. The doorbell rang. A last check in the mirror. “I never expected it would turn out like this” she reminded herself as she headed for the door. “Lucky me”.
Weekly photo challenge: containers
Couldn’t resist these “containers” spotted in Greece
Heat wave warnings
It’s hot. So it should be, even in England. It’s July and nearer the end than the start. Warnings are out about heat waves and taking care. 30 degrees would be not much to make mention of in Australia. And while I soak in sun wherever I can, hear the forecasts with joy and feel my spirits lift with the temperature, around me are voices of complaint. “Isn’t it awful” said a large overdressed woman to me yesterday in a way that assumed I’d agree. “I love it” wasn’t the response she hoped for and our brief relationship ended there. I’d flouted the rule that talk of weather is in part intended as a bonding experience here in England. I had forgotten when overseas for so many years the whole talking about weather thing and was amused by how much there seemed to say about it, especially when it seemed to be simply shades of grey and rain. What is there to say about that? Six years back now and I can confidently hold my own in such matters, when I choose to.
Anyway….
So here I am on a train heading south of London to spend the evening with family. Warm tired looking commuters all around me. A glimpse into the life of people who make this trip every day, squeezed into every nook of the busy train. A few have heads nodding already . Many like me attached to their iPhone communicating with people that aren’t here. It’s quiet. No chatting here. So many in a world of their own, perhaps going over the day or the week, perhaps already thinking about the evening and weekend ahead or are they fantasising about a fellow passenger or more likely from some of the expressions maybe thinking of nothing much at all.
“Hot isn’t it” an older lady with a well travelled case said as she sat down opposite me, her face flushed and hand flapping to create some kind of breeze. “Indeed it is” I responded, surprised to find myself simultaneously shaking my head as if dismayed. She returned my smile. A satisfied smile. The interaction had gone as she’d hoped. We’d bonded.
Weekly photo challenge: relic
A taste of a life gone by.
My grandmother and a friend drove in this across part of Africa! A real adventure…
A birthday remembered
You would have been 88 today.
Never really liked a fuss at any age but would have been disappointed not to have a birthday remembered.
The cards would be arranged on the table in the corner by the window overlooking the harbour – gathered around a vase of flowers in colours you loved. Your favourite French hand creams, silk scarfs, art books, chocolate gingers. Some of the things you enjoyed.
10 weeks tomorrow since your last day. 11 weeks today since I last kissed you goodbye and told you I loved you and thanked you for being my mum. A visit full of tenderness. Your hand in mine. I will always remember your touch.
So happy birthday mum. You are in my thoughts and heart today especially.
WordPress daily prompt: an odd trio
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/an-odd-trio/
This challenge is to write something that includes these three things:
A cat, a bowl of soup and a beach towel
So here goes:
Like a cat she licked the bowl of soup clean when no-one was looking – not that she cared either way. Too hot really for fish soup but over the past week she’d exhausted all the other non meat options in the places to eat in Halki’s harbour. Five tavernas, all pretty much selling the same dishes, more or less expertly cooked. She longed for other tastes so much a feature of her London life – Thai, Indian, Italian, French, Japanese. Two more weeks and she’d be home, no doubt looking back longingly at the days and weeks spent in this little town where she could just be.
She had come to forget and instead in the long quiet days with so few of the usual distractions, TV, laptop, SMS, friends popping round, she had found herself in an endless loop of memories of their last days together. He’d have loved this place. They would have laughed at the same little everyday things, the priest watching the world cup final, the preposterous fat English guy in large baggy yellow shorts holding forth on subjects he really didn’t understand, her ice-cream falling out of the cone on to her new holiday sandals. She had wished she had chosen vanilla.
Yes he would have loved it here.
But he wasn’t here and she’d come to forget, not to remember his smile and the way he looked as he slept.
She grabbed her beach towel and set off back to the little studio.
Acres of time…
I love that feeling of acres of time ahead at the start of a holiday. Even now with our 10 days in Greece nearly done there is a spaciousness still. So much time to simply sit and be.
My favourite time, the early mornings as the low sun slowly rises, before the full heat of the day. A wander through the quiet alley ways of this tiny Greek island town, stopping to note the colours, a doorway here, a view over far away island there. And as I wander imagining all those people tucked up in their beds – some snorers, an arm round a loved one, some curled up like a ball, old and young, sleeping soundly still. There’s a peacefulness about that imagining of a town still mostly asleep.
Then down to the harbour for a cappuccino and hot freshly baked bread bought from the bakery and back to my still sleeping partner. A swim and a muse in the sun on loves and losses, on good intentions for my life back in London soon. And then finally he wakes and these precious solitary moments are done … Til tomorrow,
Susi Matters 