Away Day

I've been meaning to go on retreat but haven't had the means. Yesterday dawned bright and sunny so I made my first visit of the year to the local lido, which is set amongst high green hills. The air smelt as fresh as if it had never been breathed before. It was a delicious day, made all the better by the realisation that I'd forgotten my phone. I relaxed into a true retreat. In the Present.

I begin my day with a lot of breath-holding so that I can gaze at the pattern of shining ripples on the bottom of the pool. The shallow end is home to tiny children being encouraged to practise leaping into the unknown - yet always landing in the nurturing arms of their mothers.

After an hour of blissful (and Factor 30- protected) sun-bathed swimming, I make my way to the grass by the side of the pool and enjoy watching people splash and just Be. We are a small community of escapees from the Rat-race.

I leave and go on to Castleton, a favourite of mine. A ruined castle sits high on a hill above the entrances to caves, a sparkling river, numerous sheep and ducks, and a picturesque village with plenty of provision for the hungry tourist.

Sitting at a table on the pavement I watch as women lead tiny horses along, teachers lead slightly bigger children along, and walkers amble happily towards their lunch. I fall into a conversation with an elderly woman whom I'll call Mary; I don't ask her name, it would break the spell of her lilting Devon accent and the rhythm of her tales of life. The gist of what she says is, "Find out who you are, go and be that person, and be happy!" She sounds to have had a hard life but has skipped happily into widowhood and now travels the world - wherever takes her fancy. Lithuania, Russia, China, "And one of those Vampire Castles!" She regrets having taken forty years to realise she has a brain, but is now getting on with using it.

A lively crocodile of ten year olds makes its way past, a teacher rather ominously holding an enormous number of wooden swords. Are they going to re-enact some battle by the river? Or has he had to confiscate them? In calm and weary, well-rehearsed words he says, "Yer in't'middle o't'ROAD Mason - yer doing wrong." I am impressed at the delivery of such judgement. So is Mason, for he quietly finds his place on the pavement. The children and their noise disappear around the corner, and the day closes around them as though they had never been there.

The sun continues to bake the village. A woman emerges from a car in a long-sleeved, leopardskin mini dress. She must be roasting, despite her long bare legs, which draw the gaze of every man in sight. A group of Germans discuss first where the Men have gone, then where the Women have gone. Those who are presumably neither find a table and resignedly sip coffee as they wait.

After lunch I'm not sure what to do, so I sit on a wall and write. Write this, in fact, as well as jotting down snippets which will some day germinate and grow into poetry.

I think about Mary. Was she some kind of messenger? I'm thinking hard at the moment about the role of ambivalence in my life. I hope to meet someone else who might shed a little more light. Mary advocates the single life and lots of travel. I know for sure... I do know... that I don't want to work behind closed doors for the rest of my life. Is it possible to find some other way? A compromise perhaps, where I work part time for other people, and make the time to write during the rest of the week?

I decide to find some water - I love to sit and contemplate its noise, its movement, the light-play on the surface... A small stream runs by the car park; I stand and gaze at the unthinking beauty of the scene, and a tree leans across to hold my hand, its leaves brushing my fingers.

I think about how my father would have loved it here, and feel the familiar pang of regret that I simply don't know what my mother would have thought of it. My love of such places is surely the fusion of their lives and psyches? Perhaps not. I have no idea whether I brought a new 'me' to my experience of the world, or if I tread the traces of others. It troubles me, this easy connection with my father and not my mother. I feel the need to carry something of her forward into the world, even though I'm aware that the traits I ascribe to her may be pure projection.

I walk on, and come to a burial ground - a place of real peace and solitude. I read the gravestones, weep at one, and ponder our frailty as I often do. Why should I waste my life doing work I don't believe in? The answer - for me - has to be that I shouldn't.

As I walk back through the village a strange synchronicity occurs. Yesterday I went with a friend to a place many miles from where we live, and met a woman known to both of us, a former teacher. We shared a coffee and many memories and I asked after her cousin, whom I'd also known. I hadn't seen either of them for about 5 years. "Oh, she's happily retired and globe-trotting!" came the reply.

So it is with some surprise that as I walk along to find a tea room, in this place also some miles from where I live, the cousin herself greets me with a joyful cry of recognition. It is quite a coincidence, and as such I search for meaning after she has gone.

I buy an ice cream instead of a cup of tea, wanting to sit in the warm sun. I find a bench and two sisters come to sit next to me. They tell me how they left Holland in the war and moved to Australia. The one who lives nearby still has a strong Aussie twang, the other (who lives a 14 hour flight away back in Australia) has a heavy Dutch accent. They, too, have just travelled all around Europe and highly recommend it. They, too, are man-free and happy. Like me, they are eating ice creams and enjoying the sun.

I ponder it all as I drive home. Have I just been given a glimpse of how happy I shall be in retirement, or is there some more urgent message for me here? I have met people who are relieved to be out of their former jobs and who are happy travelling and Being. Is that something I dare aim for at this stage in my life, or must I wait it out?

I recall the startling words of one of the Dutch sisters, as she suddenly leaned across and smiled at me with her piercing eyes on mine: "This place is calling you!"

And so it is - ah, but WHICH place? The geographical one, or the metaphysical?

Strait-jacket for the soul

I have had a break from blogging - quite deliberately. I was off work last week, and took some time to sit and think, write poetry, sip coffee in cafes... all those things we do when we have Spare Time.

When I was younger, I was aware of the vast amount of thoughts going through my head (at such speed, too!) and it used to drive me to the brink of insanity. Why couldn't I stop thinking? Would I ever be able to stop the ideas from coursing through my brain for long enough to relax?

I managed it, in the end. I learnt to Be Still and Know, to enjoy silence, to watch the flame of a candle and lose myself in the ever-changing shapes, to sit by the sea and become one with its rhythms... I even stopped and smelt every rose I passed as I walked along.

More problems began when I started work. Motherhood, whilst frantic, I found provided endless opportunities for Being - not always just when I wanted, but every day there was a sense of treasuring what I had, of this being a never-repeatable phase of my life. The silences were rare, candles a little dangerous with toddlers around, but there was the joy of teaching people new to the planet the art of Doing Little and Enjoying Much. I was blessed with daughters who very early on appreciated the hush of a church, or the sun on the sea. Together we experienced the everyday wonders which enrich our lives.

But then I started work. It felt - feels at times - like a strait-jacket around my soul. I'm not complaining about having to earn a living - not at all. I feel privileged to be able to do so, especially in these turbulent times. I have to confess, though, that I have a particularly bad case of the 'Rather-be-elsewhere-blues' at times.

Most of the time I knuckle down and get on with earning my crust. But occasionally I allow myself the luxury of wondering how and why I ever got drawn into the rat race. It was never what I wanted. And yet I was inexorably sucked in, just like everybody else. I admire those who make a break for it, dash for the wall and scale it in one leap... in my heart I'd love to follow them, but then I lose my nerve...

How have we reached this place? A place where everyone buys into the same lie - that money is worth more than the right to take a day to lie in the grass watching clouds, or paddle in the sea and listen to the eternal rhythm of the tides? Why is it such a disaster that money has finally been shown up as the false god it has always been? Why are we so surprised that a system built on greed and keeping up appearances, where time with our children is valued less than time at our desk, is finally collapsing before our eyes?

Why do so many think it is perfectly okay to 'earn' bonuses of over half a million pounds, whilst others see their homes repossessed? To focus in, as someone who has struggled with the fact that my monthly deductions total more than my friend's gross income, how can we die of food whilst others die without it? For every morbidly fat person fitted with a gastric band, there is probably a whole village starving to death.

When did all this become acceptable? How did our values change?

And please God, will this recession turn us around at last and let us see once more the things which truly matter in life?