Birthday Brilliance! Party Perfection! The Glorious Ninth!

Oh, but I had such a brilliant and beautiful and heart-warming birthday! Despite having been pretty conclusively bitten by the barn-weasel – and feeling as rough as an elephant’s scrotum – I am still aglow from last night (and early this morning!). Let it never be said that the sixty year old Browning female is backwards in coming forward when it comes to a damn good rave-up!

So, to set the scene: I woke to rain – and all thoughts of festive gazebos, fire bowls, nude cavorting in the garden and the like were washed down the drain of the typical bloody English climate – which, as we all know, is up and down like a whore’s drawers.

Up I got and, a lovely present-opening session with the Lad later, I girded up my loins and got down to the serious business of chopping the vegetables (and no, this is not a euphemism for one of Dear Booby’s more repellent habits!) for a leek and potato soup.

Soon, a large orange le creuset cauldron was bubbling and simmering merrily away on the hob (with me cackling away in the background, as you do) – and, having released the Rabbit of War, I was ready to slice up the Fridge Roll. Note to the uninitiated: Fridge Roll is a chocolate number I make. Shaped like a phallus while it stiffens in the freezer (Bugger off, Booby, you lascivious old tart!), it comes out hard and can then be sliced thinly. There may well be a metaphor in there somewhere…

I won’t bore you with the minutiae of my other domestic tasks (as I wish to keep my friends!) – but, let us hop, skip and jump forward a few hours. Darkness had fallen. The aforesaid Leporine of Minor Skirmishes had been pent, once more, in her hutch. The rain, to be fair, had died down a trifle – but the bog (er, garden) was, I felt, a little too lethal for playing in.

I was really nervous. Shaking and quaking like a woman-shaped jelly, in fact. Why? Because it was such a long time since I had had a party and I was scared that no one would turn up (or that it would be such a damp squib of an evening that my guests would leave in droves after ten minutes!)…

Everything was ready. Appetising smells from the soup mingled with the sharper chocolate scent of the now-kit-form Fridge Roll. Son had been elevated to Guardian of the Portal status (or, to put it more mundanely, he opened the door to the visitors while his mother had a fit of the vapours in the background)…

…when, suddenly, DING DONG!

The first visitor had arrived, followed speedily by the second.

In they came, in twos and threes. Gifts and cards they gave me, and hugs and happy birthday wishes and laughter and, in some cases, wore wonderful costumes, and it was all as merry as merry could be. Each new arrival was greeted and then ushered into the Troughing Palace (er, kitchen) and handed a bowl of soup (or, after the first few drinks had gone to my head, a ladle and incoherent instructions to get stuck in!) and seated.

Very soon, the ice was magnificently broken (not that there was much anyway: The great thing about my friends is that we can skip all that tedious social chitchat bollocks and get straight down to proper talking!) by a combination of noshing and jesting. Euphemisms flew. Double entendre fought for space with mordant wit. Frank vulgarity produced many a belly laugh.

The music started spontaneously (as it should, in my opinion). I grabbed a recorder (descant, for those who want to know) and trilled a snatch of ‘The Irish Washerwoman’. Ross (who is a bit handy on the old violin) plugged the electric fiddle into the amp and, tethered by one of the shortest leads it has ever been my misfortune to own, joined me. James added another musical layer on guitar, while Aelph contributed the rhythm section and Sally sang (I think: I was a bit rat-arsed by then).

Soon we had a fabulous vibe going: Musicians jammed in the Living Room; others talked and ate and drew in the kitchen; still others lurked in the garden and smoked.

We had a wonderful half hour or so in which Son collected Pippa from outside and brought her in to do Lap Duty for one of the Under Twenty Brigade. She sat on a cushion and was petted, admired and stroked for ages. It was so sweet and lovely.

Then – the drink having flowed in as inhibition drained out – I nipped upstairs and donned my Booby Fellatio garb. I need to be somewhat lubricated to put the damn thing on because it leaves pretty much nothing to the imagination on the mammary front and, being a snug fit(shall we say?), has to be hoicked most inelegantly up when, going against the Laws of Gravity, bits of it try to head North!

This was the cue we Witches of Widdershins Hill needed to get up and dance frenziedly to The Stranglers, Patti Smith and other classics of our misspent youth. Mind you, after the amount I had already put away (which included some fine Mead and my first-ever Tequila – which tasted vile, but reached the parts even Helga would hesitate to approach), I was up for anything by that point!

Hilarious! Liberating! Wondrous! By Goddess, we gave it some serious attitude! My view is that, if I can’t attempt some mad Pogo-ing and head-banging at sixty, when the hell can I?

Janetta had made a splendid chocolate cake with a green 60 on it and I was filmed tripping drunkenly across the carpet with said luxury held aloft, while the others sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and I wittered on inebriatedly.

Booby gets her hands round a big one, darling!

It got to the finely-balanced point of ripped-off-the-tittedness in which the drink-addled get all emotional and touchy-feely (the Mass Hug Bit), but before one reaches the Strategic Chunder (or even Spontaneous Vomit) part – which, as we all know, is the station just before embarrassing personal revelation, unconsciousness, vicious argument and, in worst case scenario, getting up close and personal with the stomach pump!

Lovely jubbly!

Various people, less pie-eyed than I was, were still able to hold a phone steady and film bits of the proceedings – and, throughout the day, I have been sent photos and little videos by my lovely friends.

Gradually, as the night wore on and the bottles were drained to the dregs, people began to leave. And yet we partied on! Midnight passed. I was still raring to go.

Eventually, at around 1.30, the final few left. The whole house throbbed with the pulsing party heart-beat’s echo. My red fish-net tights were in tatters and bunched most unattractively underneath each foot so that it looked as if I had stepped on a brace of red mullet! Stunning (NOT!)…

I stayed up till gone 2 am because I was still as high as a kite, as drunk as a skunk and all the other post-binge similes! Sleep proved elusive – happiness, mead, over-excitement, the buzz of delightful friends, the echoes of laughter and music and thumping feet on pink carpet all conspiring to keep the Land of Nod at a far distance!

What a great way to start my sixties, eh?!

Music-making: High expression!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/express/

How do I express myself?

Not always diplomatically, kindly or patiently. Not always flatteringly or ego-boostingly. Not always wisely, temperately or thoughtfully. Sometimes, my need to express runs away with me, and collateral damage is caused by those verbal stallions galloping away out of control. Sometimes, my expression causes howls of laughter. Other times, it can provoke tears.

What I would say about myself is this: I try, where possible, to express myself honestly and directly.

I am every bit as brutal, critical and blunt with, and about, myself as I am in my dealings with others. My journal is full of the minutiae of my faults, character defects and mistakes in life. I am no kinder to myself in this way than anyone else; probably less tolerant if truth be known!

Again: How do I express myself?

Through writing, singing, playing musical instruments, acting, dancing…

At my best, I believe my expression  – as a creative writer, a musician, an actor, a friend, a mother and so forth – is honest and true, at times transcendent, self-aware, caring, warm and very human.

Expression is enormously important to me. Truthful expression even more so.

But, in terms of healing, inspiration and happiness, nothing beats creative expression – and I think I express myself most lyrically and, perhaps, truly, when writing descriptive or atmospheric pieces, or when singing/playing a musical instrument.

Last night was a wonderful example of this. I spent a lovely evening with three close friends – Aelph, Sally and James – and we played music together for hours. What we expressed through the notes and the shapes of our various instruments, however, was far bigger than our egos, routine thoughts, worries and pre-occupations. It was as if we moved up a notch and entered the realm which holds the Mother’s heartbeat and the songs of the stars; as if we were, briefly, able to lose ourselves and become one multi-faceted instrument of strings, keys, voice, wood and metal, one vast composite that brought together all influences and transcended the lot!

Ah! The highest reaches, and profoundest joys, of human expression, methinks!

How do I express myself?

With humanity, with truth, with light (and its shadow side too!), with the absolute knowledge that I am mortal and my time finite…

Glastonbury Morris Dancing/Crow Morris’ New Recruit!

Secretly – Oh, so secretly and furtively! – I have always been fascinated by, and loved to watch, Morris Dancing. Why only last August, a good friend and I spent a thoroughly enjoyable day at the Towersey Festival near Thame – and, wherever we wandered severally, I could usually be found holed-up in a tent full of Morris Dancers!

But, let’s face it, Morris has – for those who consider themselves hip and where it’s at – the same kind of appeal as Baroque Music (which, of course, I also love!), that is to say, none at all. So those of us with the Morrisophage gene coursing thwackingly through our DNA learn to pretend!

A lucky trio of events led me to my first ever practice session with Glastonbury’s very own wielders of stick and drum, the wonderful Glastonbury Morris Dancers/Crow Morris. 

In brief: Last Beltane, I saw the aforesaid troupe perform in the Abbey and was much taken with them; at Sunny and Ed Davidson’s lovely King Arthur pub gig (see my earlier post on this), I got up and danced frenetically and, at last Wednesday’s Pagan Moot, I met up with the leader of the Morris fraternity in Avalon, Daniel De La Bedoyere.

Invited to come along I must confess I ummed and awed a trifle. I was, let me be plain, extremely tempted – but, my lifelong lack of confidence in myself as a dancer came up for a shriek and a doom-ridden warning session, which can be summarised thusly: ‘Since you have all the grace of a rutting hippoptamus and, at nearly sixty, ought to know better than to foist your lack of balletic ability on the poor old public, do not go there!’

But, to put it bluntly, I have a tendency to ignore this Inner Nostradamus. The bugger often speaks in incomprehensible riddles anyway and its predictions are usually about as accurate as my parallel parking!

So, at seven of the clock, or thereabouts, I sauntered up my part of Widdershins Hill and found myself at the hall which held the dancing. I was a little – okay, a big! – nervous and unsure, had it in my mind, I guess, that I would be issued with hordes of incomprehensible instruction which, like Maths and Geography all those years ago, I would signally fail to understand; I also had the very real horror, given my inability to play hockey safely (or, indeed, at all), about the potential hazard of an Alienora and a stick!

But, Oh my goodness, it was a revelation of the best and most inspiring kind – and I absolutely loved every moment! Mark Silver showed me the moves and, to my delight, I was able – albeit somewhat shakily – to align with the rhythm, and, since the stick-work did not appear to need any kind of delicacy, I managed to clack away, mostly in time with my partner, without – and this is important – braining anyone present or knocking out the lights!

In short – which this post is not! – I had a wonderful time: Laughed and learned, bonded and bounced, stepped out to take photos and then joined in again for the Crow Morris – and, I have to say, was all aglow (or sweating like a carthorse, as it is also known) by the time the session finished.

Once back home again, and wildly awake and thoroughly enthused, I stayed up till half past arsehole watching innumerable videos of Morris Dancing troupes performing all over the land. Huge fun!

Many thanks to everyone there last night for making me feel so welcome! I loved it!

And so Ali finds yet another new passion three months before hitting sixty! Just goes to show that there’s life in the old B**** yet!

Crow Morris gets my vote!

Aelph’s Soaring Moment!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/coincidence/

Last Friday, my friend, Aelph Edgewood (http://aelph.weebly.com/), and I went down to the King Arthur pub to see Earth Reggae/Conscious Roots band, Sunny and Ed Davidson (SunnyandEdDavidson.com), play.

They were great, really brilliant to dance to – and a most personable pair of lads too. Helen, their fiddle-player, was magnificent, as was their drummer (whose name I stupidly failed to ask).

The vibe was excellent and several of us got up on the small space between technical equipment and stage and boogied frenetically: very good fun.

But, for me – and, I suspect, for most of the assembled music-lovers – the best bit came at the end, when Sunny and Ed asked if anyone wanted to come and sing with them for their final number.

Aelph, who is a superb musician and composer, was up there in two shakes of a marmoset’s tail – and, microphone in hand, launched into a wonderful and spontaneous accompaniment to the song. It was really powerful and primal: Forceful female energy expressed in lionesque sounds; haunting notes crooned; deep jungle rhythms reminiscent of the beat of the Earth Mother’s heart – and all perfectly matched to the tune sung by the band.

I attempted to video this tour de force – but, unfortunately, my abilities in this direction match those associated with Mathematics and Geography (bottom of the class job, in other words) – and, though my heart was in the right place, my finger on the Blackberry most certainly was not!

But it was fantastic to see a close friend shine in this way; to see her abundant talent displayed in front of others and, quite rightly, appreciated hugely. It was also lovely to see her proudly wearing one of her own beautiful designs (made into leggings among many other things).

Coincidence? No! I feel that Aelph’s moment on stage was meant to happen!

Friends: Eight months on…

Eight months and eleven days ago – not that I’m an anal retentive or anything! – I moved to Widdershins Hill in Glastonbury. Best thing I’ve done in years!

During those days, months and seasons (only Autumn to go and I’ve collected the Avalonian set!), I have become involved in drama (Shadow of the Tor, and the inevitable emotional theatre of my own life!), book-reading, social events, music – and, most importantly of all, wonderful friendships.

Sally and James and Morgana I knew, and very much liked, already – and the bonds with all of them have deepened. All three were instrumental in my meeting new friends: Morgie by introducing me to some of Widdershins Hill’s Witches (as I call them); Sally and James by suggesting I went along to a Shadow of the Tor rehearsal back in early March.

My first real friends were Monika, Ayla and Jo, all met within a month of arriving. Jo is as avid a reader as I, and a fine poet to boot. She has been an incredible, supportive and inspiring influence in my life. We trade books we have read; we talk about words and writing; she has introduced me to many other lovely people – and we have a great deal in  common, a well as being roughly the same vintage!

David Greenway, Glastonbury’s Town Crier and a lovely man, has also become a firm friend, and we have shared several cups of tea and much laughter together.

Sally and James, with whom I have shared meals and vast laughter, as well as more serious and reflective moments, remain a bedrock of my life here. Why, five years ago, we – along with three others – were laughing hysterically in Hawthorns (way before any of us moved to Glastonbury) on December 21st, as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse signally failed to put in an appearance (despite prophecies promising us their presence!): not so much as a hoof!

Through them, I met the wonderful, diverse and life-enhancing loosely-knit tribe that is Shadow of the Tor, and have been lucky enough to make some fast and fabulous friends here too: Lovely Aelph (a near neighbour and hugely talented lady),Brad, Davy and Karen, Barry, Francis, Ross, Jon, Ronan, Krissy, Sandra and Stephen, Maureen, Steve, Sol, Lys and Arya, Kaiden and Pixie – and many more.

I have been in a play with some of them, a film with others and am now sharing rehearsals of The Scottish Play with a sizeable chunk of the above pool of talent, enthusiasm and, in the main, youth!

Allow me, for the purpose of this post, to define ‘youth’! I, at rising sixty, am the oldest regular member of the troupe; most of the others are in their late teens to late thirties, and have all the freshness, inspiration, energy and optimism which are so important when it comes to getting a new venture off the ground successfully (which Brad and Francis have done!).

We have our off moments (as do all such groups). our grouches and insecurities and niggles and narks; but, there is a huge cauldron of support and care and laughter and shared ideas and love. Rehearsals in my garden on Sundays are, for me, a joy and often include times of falling-about hilarity, and those held in other venues are equally great in a very different way.

We are an inclusive gallimaufry – and, within the band of brethren and sistren, there are writers, musicians, artists, technical experts, stuntmen, editing genii, film-makers, zombie aficionados, dancers, poets and priests/priestesses!

The band of ladies roughly my age – Jo, Alyson, Janetta and Aelph – who live close and whom I see most often outside Shadow, are sisters in all but name, and much loved.

I feel honoured to have met such amazing people in eight short months. I am constantly touched by their friendship and warmth and support and shared laughter. They have made my world a far better place.

Craving ‘difficult’ people to fill the abyss of feeling substandard…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/substandard/

This forms a part of the destructive cycle of Coercive Control – and is, unfortunately, both wide-spread and difficult to avoid/get away from.

Much of human craving – be it for people or for substances – revolves around a central premise: that we are substandard, and we therefore search desperately for something, or someone, that will make us oblivious to such a feeling, albeit temporarily.

There is, without a doubt, something exciting, thrilling, addictive, about danger – something illicit and, dare I say it, sexually arousing about travelling in a speeding car, dallying with a bad boy or girl, watching a horror movie late at night.

Somehow, rebels (with or without a cause) seem more alive, more enticing, more likely to shock the parents than the nice boy/girl-next-door – or, as we get older, the sensible and hardworking person earning good money in a steady job.

There is a frisson (which we do not want to admit to even in the safety of our own minds) about those who treat us with disdain; those who play hard to get; those who neglect, and play games with, us. Quite why we see them as a worthier prize than those who are kind, sensitive and accommodating, I am not sure – but, in the annals (both literary and real life) of our species, erotic preference for the dark, the forbidden, the edgy wins out more often than not.

The problem here is twofold: Firstly, these people are NOT good for us; they inflict damage both physical and emotional; secondly, the inability to gain true love and satisfaction from them causes too many of us to chase that elusive grail from an endless line of similar types!

We come to crave that whisper of naughty nastiness; we come to see their abusive side as somehow Gothic, almost romantic, something that puts us on our mettle and purifies us with its exquisite pain; we delude ourselves that we become better people, that our souls are needfully seared, through our endless search for tainted love and selfish friendship.

Most concerning, and saddest of all, we come to see simple and loving hands held out to us as boring, shallow, unsexy and not worth bothering with.

A worrying side-effect is this: our emotional wasteland, and our inner uncertainty – that distinctive odour of one who is under coercive control – attracts bottomless pits of selfishness who are used to hoovering up any stray uncertainty and using it to their own, often nefarious, ends.

That is to say, many already under the thumb of one controlling individual will find that several other friendships in their lives conform to the same basic pattern – and this gruesome cycle will go on until the coerced person is able to see the pattern of attraction, of craving, and to question it.

The coerced become so inured to obedience that they do not always notice when new entrants into their lives expect, even demand, it. They expect unequal bonds, and can actually feel very uneasy, almost unworthy, when faced with true equality. Even when their chains have gone, they still have a tendency to huddle in the corner of non-existent cells and enchain themselves by forming new toxic bonds with ‘difficult’ people.

Our bodies respond very strongly to arousal – and do not differentiate between positive and negative aspects of it in the chemical sense. It becomes an addiction for us, a roller-coaster of terror followed by delight followed by more terror. We know, at some level, that these people we crave cause – or at least contribute to – panic attacks and terrible insecurity; but, oh my God, when we are on the upswing of their attention and ‘love’, how great and amazing and stimulating is that, eh?!

These people have a glamour about them. They seem so much more vivid, alive, inspiring than anyone else. But it is a law of diminishing returns, very like that seen in drug-taking: we need more and more to achieve that all-important high, and the exultant moments on the roller-coaster are ever-fewer and ever-further-apart.

Giving them up is a form of cold turkey. It hurts, horribly. We feel empty, achy, shaky, sick with fear. It can be a long-drawn-out process and, like quitting cigarettes or booze or heroin, we may fail a few times before we, finally, give up the habit for good. We may have occasional set-backs – an illicit and guilty liaison with our drug of choice – but, with time, it will get easier.

I have got to believe this because I am very much at the beginning of this excruciating journey and have many, many miles to travel before I can claim I am anywhere near quitting for good.

My friend choices have been significantly different in Glastonbury, however, in that I am no longer looking for that adrenaline hit and am more concerned with a mutual bond of kindness, shared interests and honesty.

But I know I am still vulnerable, still prey to the craving.

Harmony

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/harmonize/

There is a saying about harmony with which I very much agree: that you do not get it when everyone is singing the same note. It seems obvious when you think about music, but much harder to assimilate into the rich and varied emotional carpet we weave out of our relationships.

In many ways, this week has been about profound, distressing and enervating disharmony, in that I have had to take a very firm line with several people I know – and, in so doing, have run the real risk of the relationship crumbling.

But, by a sublime irony, my inner harmony has returned as a result, in part at least because I finally recognised that most of these people were requiring me to sing the note they specified rather than working towards harmony between us.

Beautiful harmony flourished between a group I am a part of last night. Moving and heartening, it worked because we all knew our parts in the metaphorical choir – and it was about harmonising rather than fighting for prima donna status!

Harmony takes co-operation.

Need I say more?

Jangle: Discordant People!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/jangle/

Vibrations come from the Music of the Spheres. We pick them up from the world, from its flora and fauna – and from one another.

Some people’s vibes are like a tuneless and irritating jangle, though often such individuals claim that they are channelling Bach or Biber.

It is common to come away from such vibrational discordance feeling ill-at-ease (or just ill!), ratty, drained or low in spirits.

We regularly make the mistake of listening to a Jangler’s words rather than his or her puzzling lack of harmony. We put our unease down to a form of musical snobbery, telling ourselves that we really should try something more recent than the Baroque period.

What it can take us a long time to realise is this: We have a right to object to discordant sound, and jangling human beings. Not only that, we are perfectly entitled to switch them off and throw away the metaphorical CD if we do not like the cut of their musical jib.

Vibrations enhance our aliveness. Music, when to our liking, is harmonious and healing. The jangling sound is, for many of us, an interruption which, at times, borders on the intrusive; it is a noise that makes no sense, although all its notes may be played in tune. It mimics the true soul of music without understanding what it lacks.

Jangling people have very little true sense of vibration. They are not tuned in, and so their interactions with others tend to be one bum note after another, or a horribly false noise which causes the toes to curl and the bottom to ache.

But, the OFF switch is always within our reach and governed by our will, our power, our choice.

We do not have to listen to these tone-deaf adders massacring a Bach Partita, or committing Grievous Bodily Harm upon a harmless Haydn Trumpet Concerto.

We have countless genuine CDs and Vinyl records at our disposal. We can choose, every time, to listen to that which soothes, comforts and sustains us, rather than forcing ourselves – through misplaced guilt or a wish to prove how open-minded we are! – to shatter our nerves, set our teeth on edge and bugger up our digestion listening to the cacophonous caterwauling of life’s jarring janglers!

Creation: The Scampering In-between States

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/scamper/

‘Scamper‘ is, I think, a good word for my gait as a creative writer, a novelist: I tread lightly and eagerly, with excitement, trying not to press too hard upon the grass of story, letting it tell itself between the unspoken moves. I am not, in the strict sense of things, a narrative writer – and, yes, I scamper all around plot!

I’m not a great one for talking, me, never have been. In fact, I would say that, as a race, we are over-dependent upon the sound of the human voice and the words that trickle and flood from its facial orifices.

As a writer, I have always been more interested in what lies between, and beneath, the words that pour from people in such abundance – because it is my contention (and this is hardly a new thought) that we communicate a whole world of atmosphere as well as the stream of story: That what we give off is just as clear as that we give out in the verbal sense.

In ‘Heneghan’, and without going into any extraneous details, I attempt to pin down and explore the world of hesitant or reluctant speakers; people for whom emotional damage – often deeply buried – or natural inclination casts clouds of thunderous power and intensity over gatherings. But not only that: I am working, as a writer in this novel, with those more comfortable in the realm of virtual silence; those who express themselves through land or paint or metal or pen and ink; those whose very creative impulse comes from the thrumming of the in-between states.

I write of people whose mere presence booms and blasts, who create waves (not always in the positive sense but always, ultimately, in the cathartic) and bring their own brooding atmospheric pressure with them: Those, in a fine irony, who cannot be pinned down by words (no matter how apt they may be) – but need to be read, like our weather system, in isobars and trends and connection with the earth, sky, sea. It is not enough to say/write that someone is scary, intense, light of spirit or whatever; words need, somehow, to penetrate to the centre of the vibrations behind and to express that menace in a verbal, yet non-speaking, way: To touch the essence and translate it into something closer to painting or music than writing.

That is the challenge I have set myself. That is the struggle I – as someone who is, many ways, a non-native speaker – have engaged with from the earliest age. How do we transmit the ineffable using the twenty-six letters our alphabet gives us? My answer: We use something of the wordless immediacy of other art forms to help us, to add richness and depth: We dip into the emotional effect of music upon the soul and give our written language rhythm or cadence or timbre. We use the infinite palette of colour to sketch and dot impressionist scenes. We sculpt figures out of the marble or stone of the personality, hacking away the words and leaving the shape of the human being below.

We adopt and adapt our materials in order to let words rinse and wring the ear – as Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed it so beautifully – so that all of nature can be heard trilling and chirping, thundering and crackling, brooding and boiling, and the mountains attain a life force fully equal to that possessed by the chatty little chimps at the centre (or so they believe) of it all!

Not at ease with the spoken work, I sing and doodle and talk and hew out through writing – with the in-between states at the centre of my philosophy as an artist!

Cretan Heat: Rethymno Old Town at Night

I was last on Crete in Summer 2015. Here, taken straight from my 2014 journal, is a description of a late night in Rethymno. I have removed only those parts which refer directly to family and friends.

Giant sun giving way to a tracing of thinnest gold through mid-evening sky, a wedding band from Day to Night – hand-fasting of the twenty-four hours; down into Rethymno, along the sea front, huge concrete jacks ready to tumble onto the harbour’s checker-board; young people, two to a motor-bike, shirt sleeves, no helmets, happy, relaxed; the air-scented strongly, in snatches, of thyme, Crete’s olfactory signature tune; neon eyes winking purple, blue, green, red, gold; my body stiff with over-heated irritation – temperature twenty-eight at nine in the evening, down from thirty-eight during the day; striding ahead, in long green-patterned Indian dress, caught between youth and middle-age, I wanted to run and cry and scream and laugh and have fun, be spontaneous – Oh, the weight of adulthood upon my reluctant bones and wild spirit.

Lowest tide: Dinosaur-like bones of rock straddling the sea’s bed, yawning their way into the brash night-light of the twenty-first century; the Fortezza arrow-slitting us back into the unvasions of the oceanic imagination we all inherit and ignore at our peril; modern-day Pirate Ship Jack-Sparrowing its way across the bay, tilting its cutlass at the fragrance of herb-release under Cretan sun.

Later, at Goran’s taverna, food shared, whilst the beggars came a’calling with their tacky wares and stegosaurus hides: A tall young woman, sack full of glitter-strewn Disney monstrosities, and her little sister, garish in green and ghastly upon the accordion – metaphorical leprosy’s anaesthetised, nerve-damaged touch upon music’s transcendent keys. All ignored.

Serbian delicacies – Alvar, the delectable red pepper dip; the richness of tiny meatballs; octopus; jazzed-up potatoes; organic red wine – and, amidst this wonder of taste, the faulty stop-start of conversation’s damaged exhaust pipe.

And then, suddenly, a rough diamond in the great jeweller’s shop of artifice, there he was: A tiny boy, seven or so, dark of complexion and hair, trying to coax ‘Never on a Sunday’ out of the recalcitrant crimson and cream keys of the accordion he had slung round his neck. But he voice, when he sang, was deep and true – mesmerising for this irritating wee scrap of humanity who, waif-like, insinuated himself closer and closer to the people at each table, singing little snippets of song and crying, quite blatantly, ‘Money! Money!’

A member of staff, using his arms as a gentle broom, tried to brush this little urchin away – but he would not go. Our laughter revitalised him, and he mugged for the invisible camera, until he was shooed inside and told to find the kitchen and the warm goodies therein.

Off he went then, down Cat Alley, still singing, still cheeky and insouciant and somehow brave and rather sweet: Such spirit and determination, such boldness; I couldn’t help warming to him!

We wandered back, seeing a young lady, pliant as a pipe-cleaner, clad in Harem Pants and scanty top, juggling two torches; we stopped for ice cream – and, oh, the succulent softness of the flavours on offer left me entranced, englamoured almost; I wanted all of them – the smooth mauve, the tempting toffee, laid-back coffee, rich and deep chocolate!

How to decide?! Ah! Chocolate won in the end. Cone clutched in left hand, I licked and luxuriated and, in the twenty-five degree heat of midnight, allowed great splashes of melt to bleed onto hands and chin and dress – and so walked on until, back on the long promenade, I wandered, gazing at the darkness of sea and the lights of all the tavernas and shops still open.