The Devil came down from the mountain and took off his horns. He wanted to rest and they were too tiresome to wear whilst reclining on the chaise-longue. Cradled in the valley the Devil beleived himself invoilate and unseen but while he dozed and planned his next house party creatures of clay and water stole his horns.
When he woke the Devil roared with anger, his rage split the mountain and the stolen horns into thousands of tiny pieces, each one shaped like a horn.
Friday 31 October 2008
Monday 27 October 2008
Beat the crunch
Visited my mother this weekend- given that I'm a woman of a certain age I think we could say my mother is a woman of vast and varied experience. There was only one slightly touchy moment when mother failed to thread a needle at first attempt and I dared to suggest she might have to consider getting glasses. She reacted like Truman Capote's rattlesnakes on amphetamines, hissed "You want to put me in glasses? Isn't it enough that my neck has gone?" and retired to the kitchen where she threw daggers at the wall for half an hour. Well, not exactly but that's what it sounded like.
Later on when calm was restored we sat on the balcony, propped our feet on the window ledge and watched the sea sparkle and shift between our toes. As the papers are full of tips on how to beat the credit crunch and mother has survived a few economic nose-dives in her time I asked for her thoughts on the subject. This cheered her up no end - "Die" she roared, "that's a sure way to beat the crunch."
If death seems a bit radical may I suggest another tactic to make you feel less crunched? Learn some poetry, track down and memorise your favourite poems and recite them as you search for a pair of socks or run for a train. This recommendation is also courtesy of mother because as we watched the waves she reeled off James Elroy Flecker's The Old Ships, 'I have seen old ships like swans asleep, Beyond the village which men call Tyre'
I realised my mother has endless vistas of poetry stored in her head, a personal, mobile library she can call on any time without benefit of batteries or mains electricity. In comparison my head seems very bare and boring, stocked only with a limited selection of cliches. So I've decided stock up on poetry then if the lights do go out in this credit crunch winter I can light a couple of candles and declaim until dawn.
Later on when calm was restored we sat on the balcony, propped our feet on the window ledge and watched the sea sparkle and shift between our toes. As the papers are full of tips on how to beat the credit crunch and mother has survived a few economic nose-dives in her time I asked for her thoughts on the subject. This cheered her up no end - "Die" she roared, "that's a sure way to beat the crunch."
If death seems a bit radical may I suggest another tactic to make you feel less crunched? Learn some poetry, track down and memorise your favourite poems and recite them as you search for a pair of socks or run for a train. This recommendation is also courtesy of mother because as we watched the waves she reeled off James Elroy Flecker's The Old Ships, 'I have seen old ships like swans asleep, Beyond the village which men call Tyre'
I realised my mother has endless vistas of poetry stored in her head, a personal, mobile library she can call on any time without benefit of batteries or mains electricity. In comparison my head seems very bare and boring, stocked only with a limited selection of cliches. So I've decided stock up on poetry then if the lights do go out in this credit crunch winter I can light a couple of candles and declaim until dawn.
Saturday 25 October 2008
Memories of Hydrangea bushes .......
Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike .........
Uma on Memory
I've spent a bit of time recently lying on the sofa, contemplating my old sideboard of surprises and thinking about the nature of memory.
How does your memory work or fail? It's worth chewing over this question a little because memory is one of life's free indulgences with no interest to be paid on outstanding items and no obligation to follow up a sample by taking on a full set which you just know will prove to be overpowering.
Being a visual person who has spent time in the rag trade, my memories tend to start with shapes and patterns and textures. Here I am standing in my aunt's garden by the hydrangea bushes. The large, papery flower blooms are just brushing the top of my head and the bushes are massed together by the low garden wall like camouflage, a chintzy defence against the outside world.
Now, next to these pretty, puffball patterns made by the flowers and the little girl's curly hair I see another shape, a different presence - my aunt, my Slightly Dodgy Unreliable aunt. The Unreliable One had a different shape from the other women in my little girl's life, she was sharper, glossier, more defined, very much not a pretty puffball. Her trousers were always skin-tight her nails lacquered to a mirror-sheen and she wore high, high shoes which gave a sway to her hips as she walked Unreliable smelt more perfumed than my mother yet somehow also dirtier, more reckless.
I loved to play with my aunt's shoes, arranging them in a circle so it looked as though a collection of glamorous women were sitting around a huge dining table, enjoying a delicious meal and discussing their latest adventures. The shoes covered all over in striped, rainbow coloured silk, right down to the ends of their narrow, tapering heels travelled regularly to India and danced across the marble floors of a Maharajah's palace. Sandals trimmed with bead tassels spent every winter in a hotel by the river Nile, watching sailing boats and crocodiles. My favourite pair of giant, stomping wedges with patent straps could have had a future as a support for my trusty sideboard if it ever lost its legs, had they survived being thrown at a boyfriend's head and on into the middle of the A1. That was particularly sad shoe death; the mourning only intensified when my mother pointed out that the loss was entirely due to Unreliable's 'rackety' behaviour.
What I like about these early memories of my aunt's house is that they bring together two worlds - the pretty, safe garden with its flowers like coloured clouds, a world I now realise my mother fought to make for me and guard against all threats and the unpredictable world of my aunt, full of vivid patterns and sudden, surprising events. Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike. Perhaps my aunt was thinking of a road trip whilst my mother planned the grocery run but it's one of those moments where the worlds they created came together, even if only in passing on the back of a Harley Davidson.
How does your memory work or fail? It's worth chewing over this question a little because memory is one of life's free indulgences with no interest to be paid on outstanding items and no obligation to follow up a sample by taking on a full set which you just know will prove to be overpowering.
Being a visual person who has spent time in the rag trade, my memories tend to start with shapes and patterns and textures. Here I am standing in my aunt's garden by the hydrangea bushes. The large, papery flower blooms are just brushing the top of my head and the bushes are massed together by the low garden wall like camouflage, a chintzy defence against the outside world.
Now, next to these pretty, puffball patterns made by the flowers and the little girl's curly hair I see another shape, a different presence - my aunt, my Slightly Dodgy Unreliable aunt. The Unreliable One had a different shape from the other women in my little girl's life, she was sharper, glossier, more defined, very much not a pretty puffball. Her trousers were always skin-tight her nails lacquered to a mirror-sheen and she wore high, high shoes which gave a sway to her hips as she walked Unreliable smelt more perfumed than my mother yet somehow also dirtier, more reckless.
I loved to play with my aunt's shoes, arranging them in a circle so it looked as though a collection of glamorous women were sitting around a huge dining table, enjoying a delicious meal and discussing their latest adventures. The shoes covered all over in striped, rainbow coloured silk, right down to the ends of their narrow, tapering heels travelled regularly to India and danced across the marble floors of a Maharajah's palace. Sandals trimmed with bead tassels spent every winter in a hotel by the river Nile, watching sailing boats and crocodiles. My favourite pair of giant, stomping wedges with patent straps could have had a future as a support for my trusty sideboard if it ever lost its legs, had they survived being thrown at a boyfriend's head and on into the middle of the A1. That was particularly sad shoe death; the mourning only intensified when my mother pointed out that the loss was entirely due to Unreliable's 'rackety' behaviour.
What I like about these early memories of my aunt's house is that they bring together two worlds - the pretty, safe garden with its flowers like coloured clouds, a world I now realise my mother fought to make for me and guard against all threats and the unpredictable world of my aunt, full of vivid patterns and sudden, surprising events. Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike. Perhaps my aunt was thinking of a road trip whilst my mother planned the grocery run but it's one of those moments where the worlds they created came together, even if only in passing on the back of a Harley Davidson.
Friday 24 October 2008
Losing - and Gaining - Time
Why do I like this clock so much? Why has it travelled with me from boarding house to penthouse and back again?
Well, the buttery yellow sheen of the brass makes the clock look like a rising sun. And I admire the delicate engraving of the word 'Wisbech', a small town in Cambridgeshire. Paris, New York, London, Wisbech...from Fifth Avenue to the Fens.
But, most importantly, the clock has lost its hands and therefore its ability to order our lives. All that moves on its face are shadows and memories. I like to think of its hands, destroyed in a fire, spinning round in a plume of smoke and ash. Now they're specks on the face of planets that live for a trillion years, not teatime. And I'm free from the methodical tick of measured minutes - a perfect excuse to put the kettle on and dream of sunrises.
Well, the buttery yellow sheen of the brass makes the clock look like a rising sun. And I admire the delicate engraving of the word 'Wisbech', a small town in Cambridgeshire. Paris, New York, London, Wisbech...from Fifth Avenue to the Fens.
But, most importantly, the clock has lost its hands and therefore its ability to order our lives. All that moves on its face are shadows and memories. I like to think of its hands, destroyed in a fire, spinning round in a plume of smoke and ash. Now they're specks on the face of planets that live for a trillion years, not teatime. And I'm free from the methodical tick of measured minutes - a perfect excuse to put the kettle on and dream of sunrises.
Thursday 23 October 2008
Uma's Essentials - A Sofa and a Sideboard
Everyone needs a few essentials in their life, a few landmarks in their personal geography and Uma's happen to be a sofa and a sideboard. Here's why :
"My sofa and sideboard have accompanied me over the years from city to city, attic to basement, veranda to lock-up storage unit. In these days of paint samples, fabric swatches and home improvement catalogues that weigh more than my back pack did when I went off for a month in Mongolia it can be quite liberating to pare the whole creation project down to a couple of basic possessions.
My 'sofa and sideboard' philosophy is based on the principle that, like most people, I have a lot of 'bits in between' in my life, that is all the untidy, recalcitrant stuff that can reside in a sideboard and then uncoil in your memory when you lie down for a bijou napette on the sofa.
I don't know what's in your sideboard collection but I'm willing to bet that, like mine, it looks like a jumble sale but feels like a treasure chest. Spread out on a table, accessories to a giant memory game, all these bits and pieces are a map of birth and death, triumph and failure, delight and disillusion. In short, all the stuff that's happened to make you, you and only you.
Over the years I've encountered many sideboard residents and their stories. Alongside the repeat offenders - love letters, divorce papers and children's paintings - I've counted bullets dug our of a house's walls and doors by a family returning after a war and tried to do the Charleston partnered by a 1920s chain mail evening bag which attended flapper balls in Paris and danced along the Seine's banks.
After a day doing battle I like to give my trusty sideboard a wink and a tap in passing and remember all the secrets we share, before collapsing on the sofa."
"My sofa and sideboard have accompanied me over the years from city to city, attic to basement, veranda to lock-up storage unit. In these days of paint samples, fabric swatches and home improvement catalogues that weigh more than my back pack did when I went off for a month in Mongolia it can be quite liberating to pare the whole creation project down to a couple of basic possessions.
My 'sofa and sideboard' philosophy is based on the principle that, like most people, I have a lot of 'bits in between' in my life, that is all the untidy, recalcitrant stuff that can reside in a sideboard and then uncoil in your memory when you lie down for a bijou napette on the sofa.
I don't know what's in your sideboard collection but I'm willing to bet that, like mine, it looks like a jumble sale but feels like a treasure chest. Spread out on a table, accessories to a giant memory game, all these bits and pieces are a map of birth and death, triumph and failure, delight and disillusion. In short, all the stuff that's happened to make you, you and only you.
Over the years I've encountered many sideboard residents and their stories. Alongside the repeat offenders - love letters, divorce papers and children's paintings - I've counted bullets dug our of a house's walls and doors by a family returning after a war and tried to do the Charleston partnered by a 1920s chain mail evening bag which attended flapper balls in Paris and danced along the Seine's banks.
After a day doing battle I like to give my trusty sideboard a wink and a tap in passing and remember all the secrets we share, before collapsing on the sofa."
Wednesday 22 October 2008
Ms Uma Tussle, Compere and Confidante, Magician of Life and Art
Do you wish you knew a Mr Lun? Some time ago, when men still believed they could speak to angels, Mr Lun was 'Conjuror-General of the Universe' and had a 'Great House' in Covent Garden. He could sort out feasts and floods, children's parties and impossible relatives, whilst arranging for you to have a glow that was born of joy, not rage.
Now, let us introduce Ms Uma Tussle, Mr Lun's most successful descendant, a true twenty first century woman. Uma is a master of mystery and surprise, able to advise and inspire, whether you're organising a banquet or picnic, travelling to the South Seas or re-tiling the bathroom. She's a self-made woman who understands that life is a work in progress and the unexpected is pretty much guaranteed to happen. Never one to let an opportunity to pass by Uma's motto is 'Hell yes' but she knows exactly when to say no too.
Now, let us introduce Ms Uma Tussle, Mr Lun's most successful descendant, a true twenty first century woman. Uma is a master of mystery and surprise, able to advise and inspire, whether you're organising a banquet or picnic, travelling to the South Seas or re-tiling the bathroom. She's a self-made woman who understands that life is a work in progress and the unexpected is pretty much guaranteed to happen. Never one to let an opportunity to pass by Uma's motto is 'Hell yes' but she knows exactly when to say no too.
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