Burns Night

I'm not of Scottish descent, but he's a great poet, so we ate (vegetarian) haggis in his honour. Very tasty!
Here is one of his poems.
Here is another.
And finally another. 


Enjoy!

Throwing out the towel

After saying something earlier this month about starting as I mean to go on regarding swimming, I have not been doing too well ie. I don't think I've been back to the pool till today...
Anyhoo...it was a 6 o'clock start this morning and we plunged back in. Monday is a good day to do it because Schweppes (the drinks company) operate a great Mondays scheme. You buy a bottle of Abbey Well mineral water from any supermarket and save the cap. On Mondays you hand it in at a participating pool and you get a free schwim!! Good eh?!


In the changing room I realised that I hadn't brought a towel. Lucky that my husband is a generous sort and shared his with me. Given the lack of exercise over the past 6 weeks, I was pleased with my performance - 1K in 32 minutes.

Happy endings

Two 'Hilda' posts in one week!

When I was about nine and my sister seven, our uncle gave us poetry books for Christmas. Mine was 'Hilda Boswell's Treasury of Poetry'

My sister's was 'A Child's Garden of Verses' by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by HB.

The fanciful pictures captured my imagination and brought the poems to life.

When we left home the books went their separate ways with us both. Mine was a firm favourite with my children, their dad read the poems with funny voices - The Mermaid by Alfred Lord Tennyson in a posh falsetto, 'The Spider and the Fly' with an enticing, chocolatey  voice for the spider and a squeaky, anxious voice for the poor fly. A second lease of life for the poems.

When our eldest girl went on her travels I photocopied 'The Jumblies' for her, because it reassures: travelling can be frightening but exciting, makes the traveller grow. 

She was in Australia when it was her birthday and I found the book on ebay, from a seller in Melbourne. I was lucky enough to win it for a fantastic bid. The seller was a lovely woman - she put in a birthday card and dispatched it to my daughter in Brisbane. So of course, I had to get another copy for our other daughter. This time I had to pay four times as much to win the auction! I will acquire one for our son in due course.

Last Sunday in an idle moment, I checked ebay to see if my sister's book was available. It was! £3.99, 0 bids and 54 minutes till the auction was over. Happy ending - the book is on its way to me! After all these years, my book will soon be joined by a copy of its old companion.  

Winter Dreaming

In the depths of winter, people sit by the fire, browsing the holiday brochures and dreaming of summer. I've spent a cosy evening trawling the internet,  tracking down swim socks - now I'm all set for when the chance of a lake swim next presents itself

- I'll be toasty! And in the warm glow of anticipation, we've decided to enter for the Great East Swim. So the fun will start in June and build to a grand finale with the Great North in September. Bring it on!

In The Words Of Hilda Ogden.....

.....the world is my lobster! The essay has gone (met the deadline!) and I'll hear its fate within four weeks.  All being well, it's good enough. Now every word for 2010 can be in stories and poems!

Hurrah!

Digging My Way Out

I am snowed in, so to speak, writing a 6,000 word essay which must be completed and handed in by 4.30 on Monday. There is nothing else for it but to dig, dig, dig until my work is done.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

Go With The Snow

Snow

Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth

I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill

and did not know where I was going except to the top of it.

In those days we went out like that.

Even children went out like that.

Someone was crying hard at home again,

raging blizzard of sobs.

I dragged the sled by its rope,

which we normally did not do

when snow was coming down so hard,

pulling my brother whom I called by our secret name

as if we could be other people under the skin.

The snow bit into my face, prickling the rim

of the head where the hair starts coming out.

And it was a big one. It would come down and down

for days. People would dig their cars out like potatoes.

How are you doing back there? I shouted,

and he said Fine, I’m doing fine,

in the sunniest voice he could muster

and I think I should love him more today

for having used it.

At the top we turned and he slid down,

steering himself with the rope gripped in

his mittened hands. I stumbled behind

sinking deeply, shouting Ho! Look at him go!

as if we were having a good time.

Alone on the hill. That was the deepest

I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it

when I stare at paper or into silences

between human beings. The drifting

accumulation. A father goes months

without speaking to his son.

How there can be a place

so cold any movement saves you.

Ho! You bang your hands together,

stomp your feet.  The father could die!

The son! Before the weather changes.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from ‘Fuel’

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis MacNeice

January - Swimming Forwards, Glancing Back

Back in the swim - start as you mean to go on! - one mile this morning at the Aquatic Centre - wahey! Not my fastest time - 54 minutes - but reasonable, considering I've not had a serious swim for some time. And well over half was front crawl, so my benchmark is set for this year!
Then my kids laughed at me for sending photos from phone to laptop, when all I need to do is plug in the lead and import them! Duh! Hooray for the young folk!! So here's a montage of some photos I like from 2009.

Great North Swim

Victoria Baths

In Windermere

On the beach

Loughrigg Tarn

Saltburn

 Tynemouth Beach

Windermere from Low Wood 

Tynemouth outdoor pool

Knitted poem

On the road to Great Swim

Last Post (2009)

This afternoon we came back home to Manchester, but not until we'd had our last walk for the year/decade on Tynemouth beach. The tide was rolling in, the sea wild again. Today a solitary surfer had decided to try his luck but didn't look as if his heart was in it. 

We visited a favourite haunt - Tynemouth outdoor pool. 

Built in the 1920's, it fell into disuse/was condemned and filled with sand and rocks during the 90's. When the tide is high the waves crash around it in a spectacular fashion. There are thrills and spills dodging the waves as they threaten from over the railings.

Old swimming pools fascinate me, I love the architectural features -

- but the thought of encountering this inlet while swimming underwater both thrills and terrifies me! 

I've seen Youtube footage of people having fun in the pool during its heyday. It's a shame that it's been pensioned off

as I'm sure there are outdoor swimmers aplenty in the North East who'd happily make full use of this facility and build up their resistance to the cold by swimming here!

I've enjoyed taking photos with my phone recently, but the cost of sending them to my blog has started to tot up. I'm going to get a decent camera in 2010 and improve the picture quality and keep costs down.

I want to give the final word for this year to Seamus Heaney. This poem is one of my absolute favourites. I take permission from it to ignore the impulse to reach for the camera sometimes, and  just enjoy the moment!

Happy New Year!!

Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Seamus Heaney
from ‘The Spirit Level’.

St Mary's Island

Another bitterly cold day at Whitley Bay. On the seafront, no beach to be seen, just white horses hurling themselves against the promenade wall. We drive to St Mary's Island to see the lighthouse, now retired from active service, but a well-loved landmark. The causeway is submerged under a boisterous sea. I take some photos which turn out better than I'd thought possible in the spray. I ponder how long a swimmer could survive these conditions. Grace Darling, lighthouse-keeper's daughter and local heroine from Bamburgh, just a few miles up the coast, rowed a boat out in seas like these to save desperate passengers from ships wrecked on the rocky coast. They must have been thrilled to see her! A wild wave crashes against the railings and soaks us, so we save our skins and race to the shelter of the car.  

We make our way down the coast to Tynemouth to check if the surfers are mad enough to brave these elements. It turns out they are not mad after all. Although the sea is less ferocious than at the lighthouse, it's still scary and no surfers are chancing it today. Thank goodness!

A very large ferry is easing out of the Tyne into the open sea and huge waves buffer the front of the ship. If I were the pilot, I'd turn back at this point but s/he is obviously made of sterner stuff than me!

Our final  port of call before heading for home is Spanish Battery, where the Tyne flows into the North Sea. Here's another view of the lighthouses that I wrote about earlier in the week. The sea looks deceptively tame.

Two Lighthouses

From the beach we could see the lighthouses at the mouth of the Tyne, flashing clearly in the background. This picture doesn't do them justice, I just managed to catch one. Seeing them made me remember this poem - I think that these are the actual lighthouses which inspired Julia Darling

Two Lighthouses

I would like us to live like two lighthouses
at the mouth of a river, each with her own lamp.

We could see each other across the water,
which would be dangerous, and uncrossable.

I could watch your shape, your warm shadow,
moving in the upper rooms. We would have jokes.

Jokes that were only ours, signs and secrets,
flares on birthdays, a rocket at Christmas.

Clouds would be cities, we would look for omens,
and learn the impossible language of birds.

We would meet, of course, in cinemas, cafes,
but then, we would return to our towers,

knowing the other was the light on the water,
a beam of alignment. It would never be broken.

Julia Darling
from ‘Apology for Absence’

Surf's Up

We're up in the  North East for a few days. Tynemouth beach was a popular spot when we went down for a late afternoon walk. The air was brisk, the sand crunchy with frost underfoot, but there was a big swell, so those fearless surfers were out there making the most of the choppy sea. I didn't bring the wetsuits up here with us on purpose - I didn't want to torture myself with the question of whether I should or shouldn't swim. My thumbs stung with cold just from taking these photos. I enjoyed simply walking and watching as the sky grew darker and the moon cast a picturebook light off the rolling waves. It made me think of sea illustrations by the artist Hilda Boswell - I loved her books when I was a child.

The beach was dark within half an hour so we retreated to the welcoming lights of Crusoe's Cafe for a hot chocolate.

Christmas Present

Tonight it's raining, the air temperature is rising and the snow will soon be gone if it doesn't freeze over again during the night. So maybe I will go for a lake swim on New Year's Day after all. Cold water doesn't seem as daunting if the air temperature is kinder. 

Here are my lovely swim-related Christmas presents (thank you - thank you!)

I'm looking forward to reading this full history of the Victoria Baths. 

And another treat - an analysis of my swimming style - including a video recording from four different angles - at Tri Central in Manchester. A coach will critique my stroke and offer tips for improvement. Perhaps I will be swimming with the elites in 2010!!

Midwinter Blues

Winter

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When Blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
William Shakespeare

I'll write about swimming again soon, but it's just too cold at the moment.