Cumbria in mourning

I think everyone who lives here is feeling shaken today by a crime that would seem more credible if it happened in the USA. A quiet man,a good mate in the pub, a man who kept himself to himself, suddenly goes on the rampage with two guns, killing his twin brother, his solicitor, and at least nine other people, injuring many others and finally turning the gun on himself. There are many questions. We are all asking why a man who was capable of 'flipping' like this was allowed to have two high performance guns. Are the checks adequate? Probably not - it's still very easy to get a gun. Cumbria is a hunting and shooting county - I live surrounded by it. But I always want to ask why anyone really needs a gun? Is it necessary to kill anything? I don't believe that killing animals for fun is either ethical or moral. And if private individuals are allowed to keep guns, there is always going to be someone, somewhere, who is going to use that gun under stress against another human being.

When I landed in Boston, USA, the first thing I saw was a giant poster with a picture of a dead child and the slogan 'It is easier to child-proof your gun, than it is to gun-proof your child'. It's stayed with me for ever.

Earth Day

Spring is a month late in Italy this year, but even later in Cumbria. The magnolias have already wilted in Tuscany, but my beautiful Magnolia Stellata has only just begun to open its star-shaped, fragrant petals. Yesterday was Earth Day and, appropriately, I spent as much time as I could in the garden which is suffering from six months of neglect and the ravages of winter. Because the river bank floods so frequently during the winter months, it isn’t possible to do anything to the garden between October and March. If the soil’s disturbed it gets washed away when the water levels rise taking plants and nutrients with it. So I’ve learned to leave the flower beds alone while they’re dormant and plant only things that are water resistant. This year it’s the garden fence that has been demolished and will have to be replaced.
The river also brings gifts - most of them unwanted; plastic bags and bottles, and a plethora of weeds. Every year there are miles and miles of ground elder roots to tease out of the ground. It’s the Genghis Khan of weeds, choking everything in its path, and immune to every attempt to exterminate this ubiquitous Green Strangler. Digging it up is the only way to get rid of it.
There’s something totally satisfying about getting your hands into soil. I feel absolutely right with my wellington boots in the mud and my fingers round the roots of a plant. It also frees my mind to think and whatever I’m working on keeps on running inside my head while I dig.
But I also wonder if this compulsion to grow and nurture things is genetic. A primal urge to connect with my ancestors.
My father’s family were the children of small farmers, horse dealers and cattle drovers, who came over from Ireland to settle in the city and try to make a better life. My grandparents were delighted when Dad won a scholarship to the grammar school (you had to pay in the nineteen thirties) and hoped that he would become a teacher or a civil servant - something respectable to eradicate every trace of the Irish Tinker.
Unfortunately Dad hated the city and was crazy about horses. He used to get up at 4am to cycle out to a farm and help the owners with their milk round before he went to school. When he was fourteen the farmer offered him a job as a hired lad but my grandparents were scandalised and refused to allow him to leave school. So, one day, he simply got up at 4am, put his belongings in a backpack and cycled out to the farm leaving a note for his parents. He used to tell people, with a laugh, that he had run away with the milk-man!
The land was in his blood, and I think it’s in mine. I loved being brought up on a farm and if I’d been a boy I suspect I would never have left. I often wonder how different my life would have been but for that accident of gender.

Coming Back

Coming back to my home in the north of England has been an odd experience. I’ve been gone for more than 5 months. Although the house was familiar, it felt like someone else’s home. I went to make a cup of tea in my kitchen and stood there like a stranger, not knowing where anything was. My tired, jet-lagged brain couldn’t even remember which cupboard I kept the mugs in!

The quiet rooms smelled damp and musty - there’s a tidemark on the wall downstairs where the winter floods came in and a lot of mud and plant debris on the flag stones. Judging by the smell, a rodent seems to have died in some secret nook or crevice. Upstairs the rooms had a Marie Celeste feeling to them. A magazine lay open on a coffee table where I must have been reading it before we left in October. Gardening shoes had been kicked into a corner of the hall with their socks curled up beside them and there was a half drunk mug of coffee mouldering on the table. Someone else’s abandoned life I was walking back into. The feelings of disconnection were very disturbing. I am certainly not the same person who left last autumn. I’m seeing my life here from a different perspective and part of me is still in Italy.

This morning, waking in my own comfortable bed, looking out of the window at the early light on the river, it all feels better. I’ve actually managed to sort through the stacks of mail that were sitting, a foot deep, on the dining table. The sun is shining outside and the fields are full of baby lambs. Very different to the Italy I left yesterday, but pretty good all the same.

Cumbria's Floods

Here, from my safe vantage point in Italy, I 've watched the news anxiously wondering how friends are managing to cope. Some of them have had to leave their homes for the second time in a very short period. Last time the centre of Keswick flooded it was over a year before all residents got back into their homes. It's easy to overlook the devastation this is going to cause in people's lives. In a few weeks time it will no longer be news, but the displaced residents will still be living in temporary accommodation and businesses may well be closed until Easter or beyond.

Many people no longer have insurance (we don't) and after this flood, those who do will find that it's been withdrawn. This is going to have a terrible effect on businesses like the one above. The book trade is difficult enough - many rely on Christmas as their big earner. Cockermouth was lucky to have one of the last independent bookshops in the county - a wonderful place to browse - author friendly and very pro-active in supporting book-related events. It made me very sad to see the picture above. Only one image to represent many, many altered lives.