Home grown - Day 54

Day 54 (Tuesday 23rd January 2018)

54 years ago, on 23rd January 1964, Louis Horst - a pioneer of modern dance died in
America. He started working in the world of dance when he agreed to a 2 week role as
conductor for the Denishawn company in 1915 (he stayed with them for a decade. Whilst
there, in 1916 he played the piano for Martha Graham's 1st dance lesson. A decade later
he accompanied her for her solo debut in New York and a dance and music partnership
was born - he remained her Musical Director until 1948.
Photo: Martha Graham performing to Louis Horst's music in Frontier

Today is my youngest son's birthday, it is also the final day of the Advent Blog series, and what a series it has been. We have read posts about love, hate, birth, death, success, personal awareness, family history, contentment, despair, change, learning, growth, laughter, perceptions, assumptions, tears and determination. I am always amazed at the sense of community and fellowship. It has been a joy acting as curator (I'm the lucky one, I get to read the posts first). Contributors have come from across the globe and their readers have been supportive and genuinely interested in what others have had to say. There have been some extraordinarily open and candid disclosures, about mental health, family deaths, and times of anguish and desperation - I know that these posts have helped others who are struggling, but who have not known how to or wished to speak out themselves. People have sent me messages asking me to thank contributors or simply to state that what they have read has made a difference. Thank you, each of you, for helping to ease the pain and confusion of others or simply for taking the time to create something that so many people have enjoyed reading. 

Today's final post is by Gavan Burden, the founder and owner of Burden Dare. It's great to end on a post that, rather like the Series, is uplifting in parts, touches on some challenging subjects, will make you think, might make you smile and which offers hope for the year to come. Gavan is a lovely man and he is doing his bit to try and make the world a better place. As you will read below, Gavan is actively involved with a central-London charity that assists the homeless and those less fortunate than us. He is an effective and supportive mentor. If you want to know more, you can reach him on Twitter via @burdendare. Gavan lives in Sevenoaks and is a passionate supporter of the local cricket team, Sevenoaks Vine CC, where he chairs the Management Committee and, when asked, still plays for the Old Vines (the Club's over 40's team). 

I hope you have enjoyed this year's series as much as I have. Thank you for being here with me! I hope 2018 proves exceptional for you (in a good way) - I look forward to hearing about it.

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Dawn, we see it as the awakening; a new day, with true blue skies, and a new beginning – and, most importantly, it always happens; always has, every day for billions of years.

Lavender Fields at Dawn by Antony Spencer

Did you know there are three types of dawn (four if you include false!) and broadly speaking they are defined by the amount of sunlight in the sky, so what you can see to do in it really. It’s interesting stuff this, it’s so normal isn’t it?

In science the three dawns are when the sun is 18o, 12o and 6o below the horizon, and from darkest to brightest they are: Astronomical (that’s a technical definition, it’s still darkness); Nautical (sailors can see the horizon); and Civil (deemed safe for us people to be out and about, doing things).

Before that there is complete Darkness; it is black, colder and frequently bleak when the sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon, and that’s when the foxes come out to play. Have you heard them screech?

As I saunter towards the twilight of my own working life and the dawn of retirement (whilst being very grateful for the entrepreneurial opportunities life seems to have constantly offered me – GOYA as the trainers in Lloyds Bank of old said {Get Off Your Donkey}), I have carried out that age-old analysis of sorting out what “my time” will mean.

Last year I wrote about phase 1, the mentoring role I have with a charity working to reduce the cycle of homelessness by helping people into sustainable employment (update later), and this year I thought I’d write about how those foxes have clashed with phase 2, growing my own fruit and veg - except that really wasn’t very interesting.

Surprise surprise. The veg grew and tasted really lovely – far better than anything in a supermarket. Chillies, peppers, peas, marrows; beans were running riot; onions-a-plenty; spuds-u-like; strawberries – my word I will never buy any more from a supermarket; “That’s Life” carrots, and as for the tomato sauces and soups, well they were quite extraordinary and still come out of the freezer today. The only surprising thing was that I was surprised it all worked! (editor's comment - Gavan has shared photographic evidence at the end of the post)

Then I got a call.

What if you don’t ever see a dawn?

What if every night is just darkness followed by a befuddled fog?

What if prescribed meds combine with an innocent, but poisonous, cocktail of self-administered supplements to remove every thought from your mind, every hour from your day so that dark becomes light, yet light no longer exists?

This picture of drink and drugs used on the street was taken on 21st January 2018

What if you accidentally use the one treasured possession you have, a mobile phone, as a weapon?

What if you blow all your money, and some, without knowing you are doing it?

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the chaos, and the conflict in your mind, of how far you have slipped down from the top of the well you thought you had reached?

Welcome to Christmas for some people who have nothing.

I can’t help being astonished at the gulf that now exists between our parallel worlds; and so a New Year’s work begins to try to bring our normal to the world of those who feel, and seem, excluded.

The good news is that I know it can be fixed, given time and thought. And people, people like you and me.

Meanwhile Tom, my mentee from last year, has become a minor celerity: everything he touched turned to “gold”; a poster boy for the charity; he is a hit with his coffee customers; he has hobnobbed with Jeremy Corbyn in Borough Market; he has his picture on a packet of Old Spike coffee on sale in Sainsbury;

he has been on the 6 O’clock news (BBC) and in the Times (twice). He’s on his way now, he reckons he’s now at a Civil dawn; sunrise may well happen this year and then we will have a bright new star.

This never ends, does it?

( a few piccies of my veg)

                              

Drawn to the Dark - Day 26 (Boxing Day)

Day 26 (Tuesday 26th December 2017 - Boxing Day)

26 December is known as Wren Day instead of Boxing Day in Ireland, the Isle of Man and parts of
the United Kingdom, Spain and France. As Christian mythology would have it,
God wanted to know who was King of the Birds and hence set a challenge
to see which could fly highest - the eagle nearly won, but at the last minute the wren,
which had been hiding on the eagle's back, flew up and hence was higher and so
became King. Because of this supposed treachery, mummers, known as Wren Boys,
dressed in concealing costumes used to hunt down a wren, tie it to a pole
and dance from house to house demanding money from townsfolk as a ransom
to save the wren's life or to provide luck in exchange for a feather -
the money raised would pay for a party (a Wren Ball). It is probable that the tradition
originated in pagan times when there were animal sacrifices to encourage the spring to return.
The mummers would sing a variations of "The wren the wren the king of all birds/ St Stephen's Day
was caught in the furze/ Her clothes were all torn- her shoes were all worn/
Up with the kettle and down with the pan/ Give us a penny to bury the "wran"/ If you haven't a penny a halfpenny will do/
If you haven't a halfpenny/ God bless you!".These days a toy wren, as opposed to a live bird, is used.

It's Boxing Day. How are you feeling? I think perhaps I should not have eaten so much yesterday.

Today's warm and perspicacious post is written by my very good friend, Simon Heath. I first met Simon via Twitter (his handle is @SimonHeath1) and I am delighted and proud to have been one of his first clients, when he took the plunge and founded his business after a long and successful career in corporate life. Simon is an artist. he is perceptive and, having worked in the conventional world of work, he understands the issues in the workplace - commercial drivers, silo mentality, the importance of communication and leadership. He is a good listener and can catch the essence of a point in a pithy illustration that is the perfect aide memoire. My company has won 3 major awards this year for our ability to engage people who work with us and to effect positive change, it is no exaggeration to say that Simon has been a significant influence in our transformation. He has created some masterful animations that helped us share our vision and celebrate success and I have used many of his excellent illustrations to stress a particular point or to remind people of what we need to do.

Outside the work environment (actually in and out the work environment) Simon is a delight to spend time with. He is a deep thinker and determined to do his bit to make the world a better place. Some of my best moments over the past few years have involved sitting, sipping a decent single malt, and chatting with Simon. He is a devoted father (with two talented children) and a loving husband and family man. This of us who know him are very fortunate.

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Perhaps it's a peculiarity of having been born in England, heir to English weather, that a brilliantly sunny, brash, shouty and suddenly insistent dawn leaves me cold. I've much preferred my dawns creepier. Not breaking, but slithering smudgily over the horizon. I don't want some Riviera daybreak hammering impatiently at the shutters demanding a croissant and espresso, pronto. The house lights thrown abruptly up, breaking the spell of the cinematography. There are very few things more infuriating than being awoken by some well meaning soul flinging open the curtains with a cry of "Up and at 'em!". Better by far to gradually awaken as the gloaming begins to glisten with a silvery hue, shadows drawing cautiously closer in to their owners. And this time of the year is delicious in this respect. The days are fleeting. The dawns drawn out. And the descent back into darkness starts sooner.

Autumn brings the advent of the dark days. Days of galoshes and mackintoshes. The night expanding stealthily to fill the daylight saving hours. A sense of anticipation as, before a movie, the lights dim to let the dreaming begin and December beckons in the company of the ghosts of Christmas past. When I first heard the theme for this year's Advent Blog series, so thoughtfully and generously curated by my wonderful friend, Kate, I thought I'd struggle with darkness. My life is not touched by it to the degree that so many others are. My cares are more workaday and mundane. But then another friend, the kindly and wise Michael Carty, reminded me that darkness needn't be negative. And how right he is. So, I'll take this opportunity to share with you some reasons to be cheerful after dark. Things that, for this Englishman at least, simply wouldn't be the same under the mad dog midday sun.

A blanket-built fort in the desert illuminated by explorers' torches

The magnesium magic of children drawing dreams with sparklers 

The "Oo!" and "Aah!" of Bonfire Night

The peaty perfume of a single malt

The exuberant pop of the celebratory cork

The cool side of the pillow

Stars as far as the eye can see (those billions of light years)

Our patient lunar companion

Motes of dust dancing in the projector's beam

The acid luminosity of be-glowsticked revelry

The reassuring warmth of familiarity of the sleeper beside you

The laser trails of tail lights

A doner kebab

Walking up the path to a house full of people who'll be delighted to see you

The sense of anticipation you get from that walk

The liquid joy of the carnival lights reflected in her eyes

The unseen crisp smack of a bat catching its prey

The bedtime story

Closeness

My life is not a hard one. The grumble and grouse of the normal run-of-the-mill life. But like so many George Baileys, it is often only by standing in the darkness, looking in at the window of our life, at the warmth and joy within, that we get a true sense of our good fortune. And that's how I'll close. By wishing you all good fortune.

Darkness is not to be feared - Day 23

Day 23 (Saturday 23rd December 2017)

23 December is the busiest day for travel over the festive period and is often the busiest day
for the whole year, with queues at airports and ports, overcrowded trains and heavy congestion
on roads. In the UK alone there will be over 12 million drivers travelling at least 20 miles (source the AA)

We had a wonderful family meal last night, but today I need to brave the seasonal traffic and get back to London to sort out Christmas for my immediate family at home. I have a lot of things to prepare and wrap.  

Today's post is by my good friend Michael Carty. Michael is a popular voice in HR circles and on social media. He has acted as a focal point for a wide global community for many years (his handle is @MJCarty, and you can read his excellent blog on Tumblr). He is a delightful man, consistently respectful and polite - mindful of the views and feelings of others. Michael works as an editor for XpertHR and is a benchmarking specialist. When not analysing data and making complex matters simple for us lesser mortals, Michael shares his impressions of the world and is a gifted artist who appreciates what he finds around him. He is very well read (from comics to biographies), loves film (especially Star Wars) and is a music aficionado. He is also a loving husband and a loyal, entertaining and much-valued friend.

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Black and white, yin and yang, dark and dawn. An intertwining as old as time, as old as life, as old as human lives and hearts.

The miracle of written communication would not exist without this beautiful contrast of dark and light. Pen glides across paper, typewriter hammer leaves its impression, keystroke begets pixel, each enabling the words in our mind to be seen, understood and felt by others.

I believe I have seen every dawn this year. My body clock hates me. The older I get, the worse my ability to remain asleep past the laughably early hours becomes. These are the times of day most people only imagine. My brain has decided, with age, to be wide awake in these unimaginable times. John Updike wrote in his autobiography Self-Consciousness that he loved to sleep late, to let the world get started without him. You have no idea how much I envy him this.

I have had to learn to love both the darkness of the end of the night and the light of dawn. I have had to make the most of this enforced wakefulness. I truly love these times now. I would not trade them for anything.

Weekend early mornings are perhaps my favourite times. The dark and light of strong coffee in a white cup. Immersive, hypnotic music playing (perhaps aptly for the theme our endlessly generous hostess Kate has chosen, the Dawn of Midi’s album Dysnomia is on this minute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH4lkK-vSco).

The unfolding black and white of letters as I stumble to form words for my blog (or, in this case, for Kate’s). My mind feels peace and wakefulness, the week’s pent-up conscious and unconscious musings allowed free as night’s darkness slowly gives way to dawn.

Filtered by the smog

I have had two horrible, worrying bouts of illness this year. The second bout of illness knocked me out for most of last month. Shingles, I learned, is no joke, despite what its innocuous, almost friendly name might suggest. "It will make you feel pretty grotty," said the doctor who diagnosed my ailment. He was onto something. A lot of feeling rotten and a lot of rest was in order.

At times like these, the words you need to hear will find you. My recovery was aided by the most wonderful book, The Rise, The Fall and The Rise by Brix Smart Smith. The extraordinary story of an extraordinary life, told in the most extraordinarily vivid language. Good times, bad times, Brix has had her share. "Nothing is better than something that's bad," her biological father told her. We can and should learn the lessons of our darkest times, so that we can fully appreciate the light when it returns.

I blogged recently about this wonderful book (to read it follow this link), so I will not repeat myself here. I am stunned and humbled that Brix actually read my blog post, and tweeted some kind words about it.

I drew a picture of Brix to accompany the post.

Halfway through drawing this picture, I realised the subconsciously apt colour choices I had made, given that one of many highpoints of Brix’s time with The Fall was the collaboration with dancer Michael Clark (I imagine his name will be known to Kate) which resulted in the album I Am Kurious Oranj. I was subsequently amazed to read that Brix found the picture evocative of dawn and early morning in the California of her youth:

"Quite kurious..... it looks like the colour of the hazy early morning sunshine light of my 1960s L.A. upbringing. Dappled through the sycamore trees and filtered by the smog."

A different view of darkness

My first bout of illness this year, back in the Spring, gave me a different view of darkness. I had a very allergic reaction to an insect or spider bite (the precise cause remains undiagnosed) on my left hand. The toxin started to track rapidly up the veins of my left forearm, plotting a worrisome trajectory towards my heart. The poison’s progress was obvious, the vein and the area around it becoming inflamed. A visit to A&E resulted in a prescription of very strong antibiotics.

The effect of the first dose of antibiotics was overpowering. Back home from A&E, I lay in bed feeling a profound, all-encompassing darkness engulfing my vision and my mind from the edges. At first my mind tried to fight against it, to remain alert and awake. But I realised there was no messing with this medication. I had no choice but to surrender to the darkness, to trust that it wanted to heal me. The alert reader who spots that I am alive to write these words will perhaps already have twigged that, thankfully, the antibiotics did their trick. As much as I wanted to resist this enveloping darkness, it was not to be feared.

The best decision of my life

I got married in June this year. Just as my lovely friend Laurie Ruettimann said it would be, this was the best decision of my life. My happiest moment this year was during the ceremony, the ancient power of the words of the wedding vows producing a joy that overwhelmed me (yet somehow I didn’t blub - at least not there and then in the registry office). The wedding day fell during a heatwave. The whole week was sweltering, sultry, dreamlike.

The day after the wedding was the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. I woke to see the first rays of sun of the longest day, the air around me scented by roses.

Softest night loosened its grip over the world.

Darkness is not to be feared.

As transporting as that dawn was, the most beautiful dawn is always tomorrow’s.

Believe.

Keep your Eyes Open - Day 3

Day 3 (Sunday 3rd December 2017)

Three spirits visit Scrooge in Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol - Past, Present and Yet to Come.
Charles Dickens did not invent the tradition of telling ghost stories during the dark
winter nights, and almost all cultures have a tradition of telling deep and frightening stories 
on dark evenings. In pagan times and indeed in certain parts of the world even today
there is a belief in the power and importance of the appearance of spirits, with a number
described on only being seen at certain times of the year, such as Christmas Eve.

I hope you are enjoying the first weekend of Advent. 

Today's post is written by Jo Wainwright, who has been a previous contributor to the Advent Blogs series, as you will see when you click on the link in the below post. (You might recognise her as Jo Stephenson, her former name). She is active on social media, her Twitter handle is @Jo_coaches and is a supportive and charming contact. She is an advocate of being kind. Born and raised in Derbyshire, she enjoys the outside spaces (and walks with her dog).

You can see from both pieces that Jo's personal sanctuary is yoga, but much of the time she is connecting with and helping others to rebalance and help themselves; she works as a coach and L&D Manager at the charity Addaction and for nearly a decade she has been devising and delivering initiatives to help young people with personal addiction issues, and those who care for them, to build a better future. Jo is mindful and sensitive, I greatly enjoy her blog, Growing in the Komorebi, although, like me, she is a sporadic rather than regular writer. She describes herself as a Humanist Psychologist and her coaching is focused on building resilience, emotional intelligence and behavioural change.

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My last contribution to the advent blog was 2 years ago in Dec 2015, when shared my fear of the dark (read it here). This time last year was very dark with zero capacity to blog. This year I got contact lenses. And my eyes are so sharp, that I no longer hallucinate in the dark. My fear has faded.

Enhanced vision - human vs. cat vision of the same scene

If you read that bit again, there isn’t much more to say. My blog can end there.

This morning I woke up before birds – delighted to say that I still live surrounded by trees – and walked in the dark to make a 6am train. Maybe it’s the knowing that it’s getting lighter. That no matter how dark is feels, the dawn will arrive. That change, that cycle, I can be sure of.

A Figure Walking along a Waterway in Winter, Louis Apol

Last year I thought I would never run. Having never been a runner I didn’t sense a loss. However, not running to catch the train, with my dog... No running AT ALL. This year I ran 10k.

I’ve recently found a new yoga teacher. A remarkable and wonderful new yoga teacher. After years of practice she has re-taught me discipline and personal practice via Mysore: she teaches individually so each person in class is doing personal practice. The group matters because it doesn’t matter. The space and conditions we generate collectively, matter.

I learnt that when I’m practicing yoga and it get’s hard, I close my eyes and go somewhere else. This is ok in Hatha. It’s not ok in Ashtanga Vinyasa. She observes my practice and adjusts my postures and pushes me the right amount, constantly listening: “Keep your eyes open, Jo”.

At the end, when eyes closed for Shavasana and the release was – incredible. I need(ed) that. I need(ed) a teacher like her.

That’s my one thing to share with you this advent: keep your eyes open