Jantien's sculptures

For three very special days, this (above) was the view from my kitchen window.


This was thanks to Jantien (above - the link is to her website), a remarkable, talented and generally lovely-to-know young woman sculptor( 'she's splendid,' said my sister, 'like a sun-face.') who drove all the way from Amsterdam in Yip the Yellow Van with six pieces of her work (and a seventh which we were buying from her, more on that anon) simply to enhance our lives immeasurably by putting them in our garden. This was one of the reasons Tom was getting a move on with the terrace this summer. We had worked and worried quite hard about this, but I really did not expect the lurch of excitement I felt when she began to unpack them.



Above was the view going up the steps to the house (which nobody fell down).

There were five sculptures on the terrace itself: above is 'The Queen of the Sea', in serpentine with a chalkstone base,

next to which was 'Blackbird Flight'(above), also chalkstone (I think),



on the other side was 'Iris' in serpentine(above), I had seen this one in the making the first time I met Jantien, she told me how it was inspired partly by her baby niece of the same name, with elements of the flower and the eye;

in the centre was 'Leaves'

and in front of that the chalkstone swan. Jantien is big on swans. Then there was one more in the apse at the end of the lawn ( both 'apse' and 'lawn' are somewhat grandiose words in the context, but the only ones available),




which was the marble swan (above).


Though they are glorious forms seen as a whole, they also need to be experienced more intimately and, naturally, touched.






Yet 'The Queen of the Sea' I found very photogenic,




And 'Iris', who is, of course, also the rainbow, contains a wealth of colour and pattern.

One of my great pleasures was to walk among them early in the morning,


and see them in the rosy first sunlight, when they were beaded with dew.

***

It all started with the alabaster swan. This was Tom's birthday present ( partly from me, partly from 'ourselves'). It was suggested that he wait until the day of the party to unwrap it, but neither he nor Jantien could be doing with such deferred gratification, and he fell to unwrapping it with much excitement.


It was the time of the afternoon when the sunlight slants through the dining room window, and it lit up the sepia veining in the alabaster in an almost unearthly way.

For the first time, I think, I had an inkling how people can become obsessed almost to madness with a beautiful object.

Compasses 36 to 40...

...are there.

They've a feeling of melancholy return which seems to go with the season;

"...and if you managed to convey half
Of what you believe happened, you may
Have helped history."

"On est bien chez-soi..."

I am intending to write about the trip to Finistere (which I have been mis-spelling all the while), and indeed about the sculptures, and I have the pictures for 'Compasses' nos. 36 to 40 all sorted and ready to go, and very importantly I'm eager to start 'doing the rounds' and catching up with everyone else's blogs, but I have become aware that at this very moment the most important, immediate, pertinent thing is being home.



I was enjoying the thought of wine in a proper glass, not a Duralex tumbler or mustard glass, the feel and sight of the chipped olive-painted plates, the knowledge of the cleanliness or otherwise of my own floor ( my own dirt) cool under my bare feet. I'd made a phone call, checked the mail, set the washing machine going. I went upstairs with the suitcase to empty the rest of it. A fly phuttered at the Velux, so I opened it, and heard the sound of a whetstone on a scythe. It is a sound so familiar I almost let it pass me by, almost forgot to notice how the very familiarity of it breathes peace into my soul. Sounds corny, trite, the pastoral idyll, the antique charm, the towny foreigner lapping up the bucolic banality. But it's real, and it's the last chance to know it.

Victor is scything, what? Clover, perhaps, or lucerne, probably for the rabbits. The scythe is larger in length and breadth than he is. The whetstone is held in an old hollow cow's horn filled with sour cider, hooked, probably by an old slate hook, to the hip pocket of his overalls. Every dozen or so strokes he sharpens the scythe on the stone. He has done this since he was a small boy, cutting hay or oats or buckwheat, sometimes wheat, for fodder, or bracken for bedding. His vegetable plot, framed by the chestnuts he won't cut down, under a nimbus of russet maize heads, looks good: leeks, carrots, cabbages the tomatoes are picked, some chard or leaf beet, better than it was in the year or two before his wife died.

His Light Sussex hen and noisy big red cockerel watch and chunter at him, he speaks a word to them. When he, and perhaps old Marcel, both in their mid-eighties, are gone, I doubt we'll hear the sound of whetstone on scythe again. We inherited one indirectly from the old man who lived here previously; another neighbour gave us the whetstone and an old cow horn for the vinegar, and for a while we used it, but the blade was as thin as a new moon with working and whetting, the handle worm-eaten; the blade went first. We bought a new scythe, but we can't get it to that fine, balanced, slicing fineness, and we've little call for it, and anyway, we feel like frauds.

I watch, fold my legs under me on the wide window sill. When he looks up and across, I'll speak to him, but he doesn't, people seldom look at an upstairs window. Should I just observe, like this, or should I involve myself? Which is truer? (the photos were taken afterwards). I take in the sounds, the scything, the chickens, the clockwork churring of starlings, the woodpigeons' monotone, a bark of a dog, a sparrow scritches and peers at me along th gutter.

Down the road a way, Marie is saying goodbye to her daughter and son-in-law, suddenly blossomed into aging hippies in their retirement. There is a tug of pathos, of guilt and sadness in the situation which distracts me, adds a complex other note to the scene. They drive away, Marie's big old dog follows her companionably back up the garden path, settles outside the porch door.

Another sound, Josette and Claude start calling cats. Claude looks anything but elegant in long black shorts, ankle socks and mules, a purple cardigan that might well have belonged to his wife. He mooches down the road, directly under my eyes, rattling a tin of cat biscuits. He is so close, I can see the design of a neo-classical temple on a red background on the biscuit tin. He must see me, but he doesn't. At the corner he turns, Marie sees him, calls after him 'Is it the black one you're looking for?'. Which else, I think, probably murdering wildlife and terrorising gentler cats in our back garden. In the maize, they conclude, not far off, but not inclined to come, embêtant. As he passes underneath, I can remain invisible no longer. 'He's not hungry enough, Claude.' I call. He starts, then laughs. 'Good holiday?' he asks.

Good indeed, but good to be home.

" ' Love is enough'...

"... well there's a lie, though 'twas I that told it. Love and work, that is enough."

( William Morris. I read a section from 'Love is enough' at our wedding, nearly fourteen years ago.)

'How did life get to be so good?' I asked.

'Through love.' replied my sister.

'Through work,' replied Tom ' through not sitting on your arse and complaining about what's wrong with it.'

It has to be said that both of them are believers in and exemplars of both schools.

('Leaves', chalkstone, by Jantien Kahn)

There was a time, and a long one, when I didn't believe that the rich or multifarious satisfaction of human love was something I had much right to or gift for. Community was a fine word but only a reality for other people. The people who mattered to me I kept in boxes, I tried not to let them count too much with me, and certainly believed I generally counted little with them, or occasionally knew I counted oppressively too much.

Now, amazingly, I see they move in circles, mobile, intersecting forms, and I belong to all of them, from my immediate and nearest, Tom and Molly, through my oldest and sometimes furthest, blood family, a few way-back friends, still there in my life, thank God; my village neighbours, who took us in so kindly, now worn and fragile with age in places, rare and fine and cherished, like old silk; kindred spirits and likeable others who speak my mother tongue, and those they have brought with them; my students and their families, all added on and joining up. And now this marvellous translucency of friendships made here, which have, I sometimes feel, added the catalyst of trust and shared creativity which has breathed life into the rest, made me see the life I have as a 'wild and precious' gift, added a dimension of mindfulness and awareness that wasn't quite there before.

Over the last days and weeks, these circles have interleaved quite magically. I am still overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder, not only for the open-handed, hard-working generosity people have shown and shared with us, but also at the sheer, generous open-heartedness, not only directly towards us, but towards each other.

( Flowers from Marcelle Caro's garden; the bees kept on coming to them.)

Some snapshots:

The food put out, far from the disdainful contempt I expected from my French guests (about 50% ), they homed in alarmingly fast; the beef I'd thought must be too red drawing them like bees to the michaelmas daisies. No forks! While we rushed to find them, the quiet and elegant Claude...

showed an organisational talent for the first of several times, and cracked and peeled quails' eggs for the crowd.

(never could resist a gratuitous foody picture)
'We're off to look at baby clothes!' Isobel takes time off from having The-Bump-That-Will-Be-Ilan patted and admired by all the old ladies of the village, and is escorted upstairs by the ever-competent Fi to be guided through several boxes and binbags of infant paraphernalia, collated and donated by friends and friends of friends.

Girly chatter emanates from the bedroom. Later, ' I'd never dream of going into a label shop myself... there's even a Moses basket; I don't really need it but it's so pretty!' It nestles in the back of her car, the pearly cotton crochet blankets folded into neat squares.
Iso's mum Pippa, (far left in the picture above) comes up the garden arm in arm with Blind Old Helene. They have been down at the pond, where Pippa has learned three new French words, including 'nenuphar'.
Our old friend Jacquie is giggling at Jean le F., the very best neighbour that ever was, until he move to Ploeuc to form an informal retirement community based around the local Champion supermarket, and to collect waterbutts. 'Translate for me exactly what she has said!' he demands. Jack-the-Lad, hmm... my French fails me.

( showing his appreciation of English style sausages on sticks)

'I went down to the bottom of the garden,' my brother says, ' there were two small boys under a hedge, giggling a lot. I don't know what they were up to.' French Sebastien and English Oscar, playing cache-cache. Later they have to be chased off the compost heap, from which they were leaping nearly into a patch of nettles.

Jean's and Old Helene's sister Marcelle ( left in the picture below) spills a glass of red wine down her straight neat olive green skirt. She picks up a bottle of mineral water and pours it all over the skirt.

(Marie smiles on.)

Our rather quiet and understated clever brother is absorbed in conversation with our rather quiet and understated clever German doctor friend Brigitta.

My brother is not really a dog person.

Claude's rotund dynamo of a wife, Josette,


stops my hippy niece


in her tracks. She has to talk to her she says, because she had the chair de poule as they brushed against each other. This was a druid village, she informs her, le Houx, (our village's name ),the holly, in the Ogham script, was the letter for teaching and instruction, she is drawn to tell her. My niece says she dreamed of druids the previous night. The rest of us raise our eyebrows sceptically. Later, Josette is to be found knowledgeably discussing the properties of stone with Jantien the sculptor. New Age mysticism and connaissance of stones is not something I would have imagined in her.
My sister-in-law and our old friend Doug, both half-killed by chemotherapy in the last year, compare and commiserate (unnecessarily, in my view) their new curly hair.


In all, and I was too busy chasing my tail to take it all in, more amusing and touching and surprising vignettes than I can cope with.
Later, and later still, we are tired, all tired,


and my sister takes the weight off her feet.



Any flies in the ointment, spectres at the feast, inevitable flaws in the intricate human tapestry?
How not? But not worthy of mention.

And, of course, you were right, all right, with your support and your prophesies. It was fine on the day, all right on the night, a great adventure, the sun shone, I had fun, and when the week began Robin's words brought the smile to my face and, by and large it stayed there. Bee, your mother was priceless beyond rubies in the delegation stakes; we couldn't have done it without her. The exhibition was more exciting than I ever imagined, a truly fabulous gift, but more on that, including Tom and his alabaster swan, anon. There are scores of photos of the sculptures which I need to sort out, and to take a bit of time to do them justice.
We're off to the abers tomorrow ( rias on the sout coast, abers on the north, the Spanish and Celtic influence respectively), and off-line again. Not blogging for a week or two is neither here nor there, but not reading other people's seems very remiss... I'll get on to it when I get back. I'll take camera and computer ( to sort through photos), and I'll prepare a new set of 'Compasses', but there'll be no internet.

Thanks again for the wonderful support, birthday greetings, and more besides.

'Live on for love liveth, and the world will be shaken,

By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning
When the dead and their deeds which die not will awaken
And the world's tale will sound in his trumpets of warning
And the sun smite the banner called scorn of the scorning
Dead pain you shall trample, dead fruitless desire
As you wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.'

Dormant...

... and missing blogging and all of you.

But the countdown has now well and truly begun for Tom's birthday party, combined with Jantien's sculpture exhibition, next week, which in a blithe triumph of hope over experience, we believe will take place in our garden. At one time the prospect of catering for and receiving such a relatively paltry number of people would not have troubled me at all, but now I am less panicking than paralysed. I foresee torrential rain, the sculptures will get broken, the food will be inadequate or inedible, the French and the English will not talk to each other, Old Blind Helene will probably fall down the steps and Isobel will probably go into labour, in which case let's hope they happen at the same time so we can save on an emergency call.

Fortunately I have caring friends and relatives who will doubtless lick me into shape and somehow or other it will all happen and this time next week I will be heaving a sigh of relief and looking forward to going away to Finisterre the following day. If I've time I'll put something up then. Until then best to go into abeyance I think and try to focus. Regrets for not getting round and reading yours, please try not to have any traumas or epiphanies in my absence that I might miss out on! See you soon.

"...to have such things about us."

Compasses 31 to 35

The Handbook spirals on its wondrous way.