The butterflies

I had a lovely day last Tuesday, which was cold, clear and bright in Ottawa like the rest of this week. In the morning I caught one of the new double-decker busses through town, sitting in the front seat on the top deck as excited as a small child to enjoy my unusual view of the city from above. A grown man on the other front seat was just as enthusiastic.

Wellington St. from the top deck

I got out at Bank and Catherine Streets to walk to the Museum of Nature where I bought an entrance ticket that included the temporary exhibition Butterflies, featuring live ones in a tropical greenhouse on the ground floor at the back of the museum. It was full of children as well as butterflies, the insects settling on their heads and sleeves and hands. I had one of the blue morphos (Morpho menelaus) from the tropics of Latin America land on my finger for a while, until I transferred it to a three year old little girl's hand. When they land you can hardly see the blue side of their wings; the other sides are dramatically patterned in shades of brown, giving the effect of eyes. Entrance to the show was by timed slots, meaning that I had to wait my turn, but once in the butterfly room, I lingered there for a good three quarters of an hour, entranced by the different kinds and colours of butterfly that begin and end their lives there. (They emerge from their chrysalides in the glass walled hatchery next door.) The staff give each visitor a thorough lecture about not treading on the butterflies---not touching their wings, not bringing them back out through the doors either accidentally or on purpose---before allowing you in.

Blue morphos sipping orange juice and showing their "eyes"

While awaiting my entry slot, I also took another look at the Arctic Gallery on the 4th level, which I saw last summer with our young German friend Toni Aschentrup, another well prepared exhibition. On this 2nd visit I had time to listen to the voice-recordings that accompany short video presentations from and about the people who live in the Arctic, very interesting. One of them said that what the Inuit can teach the world is "endurance, patience and respect", a phrase that impressed me so much, I jotted it down immediately.

Floor map of the Arctic

After my museum visit I walked home through town, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine.

Tuesday was not such a good day for my mother or my sister, though, in Wales. Unbalanced and more than usually bewildered by the onset of a urinary infection (a common ailment for the very elderly), Mum fell in the bathroom at her care home and needed to be checked over in hospital; my sister having to comfort her and calm her down all day.

The big rally

As before (on March 14th, during the school walkouts) I have been glued to the TV channels this afternoon watching the live broadcasts from the USA of the March for our Lives in Washington DC; the young people's determination and sincerity shines through the world. A remarkable number of world-famous people support them, including Malala Yousafzai.

This morning Chris and I took part in a smaller scale, sympathy demonstration in Ottawa, marching from Parliament Hill under a bright blue sky to the park behind the U.S. Embassy, shepherded by some of our local police force. Every generation, including the Raging Grannies, was represented in the demonstration; even a few pet dogs carried placards round their necks.

The Canadians students taking part are probably just as impassioned as their U.S. counterparts, but don't seem as loudly uninhibited. Something to do with the national character, probably. I have not yet heard how many Ottawa people participated, but shall update this post as soon as I find out.

I have felt very involved in all this, because I can imagine so well how the initiators feel. I have been a young person myself. I have been a teacher and parent of teenagers and cannot imagine anything worse than having the children you love perish from senseless violence. We once sent our children to a school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for a whole school year: in those days we didn't consider that they might be shot. They had tornado drills where they were taught to crouch in the windowless corridors while the danger went by, but didn't undergo shootout drills as happens nowadays. When I was a teacher in England and Wales I met a few kids who were mentally disturbed, either from some physical infirmity or trauma, and could not be reached and helped, so deeply were they wrapped up in their misery. The young man who shot the others at the school in Florida reminds me of them. To think that he had easy access to the most lethal of guns is upsetting in the extreme.

Home-made happiness

A cartoon I saw posted on Facebook from the Deutsche Welle site appealed to me.

"Where did you find that? I've been looking for it everywhere!"
"I made it myself."
Happiness



I have always been an advocate of homemade happiness. People try hard to grasp that elusive thing. The point is, it can't be grasped by force.

Alle rennen nach dem Glück / Das Glück rennt hinterher

as is sung in Brecht's Dreigroschenoper of 1928. I saw this on stage once. During this scene, all the actors ran round in a circle, with one holding up a placard saying "Glück", either at the front or the back of the line ...

An earlier poet, William Blake, had a brighter idea, when he wrote

He who binds to himself a joy / Does the winged life destroy. / He who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity's sunrise!

Last year I acquired (or won) from a travelling group of Chinese subversives a scroll of Chinese calligraphy. Shown on the scroll are a depiction of the characters reading

Yiqie jie xiaoshi / Wei dangxia yongcun

meaning: everything fades away; only the transient moment stays forever. This is hanging on our living room wall now.

I believe that the secret is to seek and find happiness in very simple things: a breath of fresh air after a morning spent indoors, the smile heard in an old lady's voice, the warmth of skin on skin, a bunch of flowers from a friend, a familiar song, a technical problem solved, shared laughter after a funny use of words, or the sun shining on snow as when, a couple of days ago, we drove through the pure white fields between Bourget and Rockland after visiting a bathroom showroom in Bourget (this last clause is irrelevant to the subject of my blogpost).

Young children know how to access happiness without trying. You'd only have to observe our Australian grandson sprinkling the hot patio stones with his toy watering can to realise how intense is his appreciation of the momentary bliss he has made for himself.

If only we could all retrieve such an ability. Homemade happiness costs absolutely nothing.

Contrasting Doors Open concerts

Re. the DOMS Wednesday lunch hour concert series, I went to one of these concerts last month, on St. Valentine's day and one today (March 7th).

The February one was A Trumpet Romance, with Peter Crouch on the trumpet playing pieces chosen for St. Valentine's, including some romantic compositions of his own (one of these written for his wife, he said), accompanied on the piano by Nick Rodgerson. To start with, the two men played an arrangement of the traditional Irish song, Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms, and a series of similarly sentimental numbers followed, including some "Spanish music of love": Crouch's arrangement of the Adagio from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez and the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen. The trumpeter took a break by turning pages for his accompanist, who played a famous "Consolation" by Franz Liszt, solo; this was followed by the arrangement for trumpet and piano of a Saint-Saens aria. They finished with a rendition of Johnny Mercer's Skylark, which Mr. Crouch confessed was his "favourite type of music."

Today's concert was more serious, with the crucifix at the front of the church (i.e. behind the performers) draped in sheer purple for Lent. Southminster has an attractive interior with multicoloured stained glass windows and an embroidered wall-hanging that states: BIDDEN OR UNBIDDEN, GOD IS PRESENT.

The music was by J.S. Bach, the harpsichord played by the Artistic Director of the DOMS concerts, Roland Graham, with Christian Vachon on the violin. They performed three of Bach's first group of six Violin and Harpsichord sonatas: Numbers 1, 3 and 4. Numbers 2, 5 and 6 will be presented at a matching concert later in the year, on June 6th, by the same performers. It is wonderful music of the 1720s, the two instruments in an equal partnership which, so the violinist told today's audience, was an original idea in those days. The six-pack of sonatas was according to the conventions of the Baroque period, though.

Each sonata took about 15 minutes to play. We heard the two minor sonatas first (No. 1 in B minor and No. 4 in C minor) and they finished with the major one (No. 3 in E major). Their concentration on the notes was palpably intense. The C minor sonata was particularly impressive, the violin part in the opening Largo movement resembling the obligato part for Erbarme dich, mein Gott --- the famous aria in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, with its meditative, spiritual qualities.

The Allegro movements were taken at a lively pace; the fugal second movement must have been particularly challenging for the harpsichordist. The other slow movement (Adagio) in this sonata was also lovely, with the violin line at a lower pitch than the harpsichordist's right hand, which played an elaborate melody in counterpoint. This minor key movement ended with a major resolution, as is often the case with Bach.

Similarly startling, in Sonata No. 3, the Adagio movement, in a contrasting minor key, seemed to end on an incomplete cadence. The final movement of this sonata bounced along in 9/8 time like a Gigue.

After the concert was over I caught the violinist's attention and told him that I had enjoyed every note of this concert.

End of the day, in Kingston

We did well this Sunday, first driving north to meet Elva and Laurie at the MacKenzie King Estate in the Gatineau Park to follow the Lauriault Trail, less than 4 kilometers. However, according to the app. on Laurie's smartphone, the hills you climb on this walk are the equivalent of going up flights of stairs in a 35 storey building; you might think twice before attempting that, but you don't mind the ascent under blue skies between the lovely trees, taking it at an easy pace in good company. There was a fresh covering of snow on the slopes, not deep, just enough to cover the icy patches. I'm glad I wore the spikes over my shoes this time, didn't slip once.

Free of ice, the stream was flowing through the valley, with little water falls and clear pools in it. Woodpeckers were knocking at the maple trunks and crows were soaring on the thermals over the south side of the hills. It is starting to feel like spring although there is not a trace of green, nor of buds, or sprouting plants. We must be patient, since it's only the beginning of March. We watched enthusiastic skiers go by as we crossed their trail. In Chelsea, hundreds of cars were parked so that Chris and I had four goes at finding a space. Elva and Laurie, more lucky, saved seats at a table for us in the lively Chelsea Pub, where we ordered large salads, or in Chris' case, fish and chips.

Chris wanted to go flying this afternoon and again (with a day off work) tomorrow --- to Kingston, he said --- so Elva asked, "Why don't you go to Kingston this afternoon, spend the night there, and fly back tomorrow?" We thought: that's a good idea, so we did.

We took off from CYRO at about 3pm at which time the sky was quite overcast and dark with snow clouds to the east, but obviously clearing to the west, as was soon confirmed once we were up above the Ottawa VOR near Aylmer. Our route was obviously going to be mostly in the clear; we only flew through one area of precipitation (sparkling fast moving snowflakes), near Carleton Place. Chris sensibly asked for flight-following from Montreal Centre Air Traffic Control outside the Class C controlled area, which gave us ATC protection until we were only 10 NM away from Kingston. The scenery was as beautiful as I've ever seen it, today, shining bright lakes, the thin ice reflecting the sunlight, and the grassy areas mostly clear of snow, even at this date! Another aircraft from Rockcliffe, C-GMME, was flying the same route at the same time as we; we knew of its whereabouts but only actually saw it once, when we were on the ground at Kingston. During the flight the winds were gusty, but not violently so, and we had a 25 knot tailwind which made our time en route 10-15 minutes faster than usual. We told the taxi driver about this on our ride into town and he made some knowledgeable responses. He'd also had a go at learning to fly.

At home I had quickly found a hotel room online, not spending too long researching the possibilities; we're staying (like Elva and Laurie on their last visit here) at the Sheraton Four Points on King Street. It is comfortable and conveniently placed and we have just been in the swimming pool and hot tub on the 4th floor. The sinking sun lit the city sights (domed roofs, waterfronts, ferry) very nicely this evening. Before it got dark we sauntered up and down the central streets, seeing people skating on the ice rink in the market square behind the city hall, and sat down to share a muffin in Balzac's Coffee Rosterie on Princess Street. After all the exercise and excitement I was still hungry, so we found a satisfactory early supper at Mango, a "pan-Asian" food place, also on Princess Street.

Retracing our footsteps in the dark and then extending the walk a few blocks brought us back to the Sheraton where Chris promptly fell asleep on the bed (this was before we went to the pool).

The art gallery in York

While we were in York, England, last month I paid two visits to the city's Art Gallery which has a permanent collection of paintings and sculpture worth seeing; we also got to see the temporary exhibitions, the main one featuring the landscapes of Paul Nash (1889-1946).

In the 1920s when he made a name for himself, Nash, back from the trenches and suffering from what he had seen there, thought of himself as a "war artist without a war". The exhibition notes said that he had "an ambiguous attitude to landscape" which was shared with Spencer, Hillier, Burra and company: neo-romantic, surrealist, uncanny.  The exhibition's curator John Stezaker (himself an artist) said:

Paul Nash’s work represents a watershed in British landscape painting. His First World War paintings are probably his most famous works. But it was in the immediate aftermath of the war [...] that a much more disturbing spatial order emerged. A dystopia created by the technological clearing of war ...

Shades of Magritte in these pictures, too.

Nash was based at Dymchurch, Kent, on the Romney Marsh, often the subject of his landscapes, although around 1920 he had also been to the north of England to paint industrial scenes, the chimneys, canals and the "Millworkers' Landscape" of Leeds (urban realism, art historians call it). Paul Nash had met his wife Margaret Odeh, a young woman from Jerusalem, in 1913; when she was studying history at Oxford. She nursed Paul through his mental collapse after the First World War. There are touching representations (oils, chalks, watercolours, lithographs, engravings) of her or of the two of them walking along the promenade at Dymchurch and of the strangely angular, black and white waves on the shore, the black shadows cast by the groynes (as in The Tide, a lithograph, 1920) and the geometric shapes and curves of the flood barriers there. Dyke by the Road, 1922, or The Bay, same year, are typical examples of these images, where the influence of the cubists is evident, printed from engravings on wood. The painting featured on the exhibition posters, in black and white oils, was of a Winter Sea (1925, reworked in 1937).

In the 1930s, Paul Nash took up black and white photography, an art form he found easier because of the asthma he had suffered since becoming a victim of a gas attack on the battlefield. His mind was clearly still on the war, as evidenced by his choice of subject matter in the photo Wrecked Aircraft, Cowley, which he took while visiting Dorset. An experimental oil painting from 1930-31 shows a dreamlike, disturbingly unreal scene where the exterior wall of a house appears to merge with an interior wall and floor. He called it Harbour and Window.

Included in the Paul Nash exhibition were pieces by other artists, his contemporaries (Hillier's surrealist, over-bright Hay Making, Spencer's View from Cookham Bridge, and several paintings by Paul Nash's brother, John, that were somewhat gentler in execution), as well as relatively modern imitations of Nash, like Jeffrey Camp's The Way To Beachy Head in oils.

In a side room on the ground floor, John Stezacker (mentioned above), had his own work on display, Aftermath: photographic collages where two images were juxtaposed in one frame, either on the diagonal or in parallel, creating a surrealistic effect.

Paul Robeson (1927) by Jacob Epstein

The remainder of the Art Gallery, upstairs, was interesting too, including a life sized sitting wolf hound, an extraordinary bust of Paul Robeson by Epstein in bronze and marble and a sculpture in corrugated cardboard, "the humblest of materials", called Wave, by Martin Jenkins. Up here, I was permitted to take photos. Another bust caught my eye, carved from oak with a space between the front and the back of the polished head: Reverie, 2015, by Harold Gosney. Among the paintings was a still life abstract in the manner of Mondrian by the 20th century British artists Ben Nicholson, entitled Birdie.

Robin Hoods Bay in Winter, by Dame Ethel Walker

Wave, by Martin Jenkins, 2015

Clifford's Tower by LS Lowry

The ceramics collection on the upper floor

People and places

Where to start? People or places?

This trip was to see people rather than places. Although well planned in advance, it felt miraculous to see George (from Australia) meet us (from Canada) at the airport and then have our daughter (in England) join the three of us that same morning on the street outside NPL where she works; she had slipped out between meetings to give us a hug. That weekend, her sons seemed pleased to spend time with their rarely seen Uncle George who gave them a model Maglev train from Japan and taught them to play Chinese chequers.

When my mother was a girl in the 1920s, she used to have an exotic Uncle occasionally visit from Rhodesia, bringing candied fruits with him.

My mother is vague as to who came to call on her at the end of January, only aware that she’s “had a lot of visitors recently”, as she puts it. To see George delivering her Chinese and Australian gifts from that great distance and holding her hand was an important moment for me. My sister and brother-in-law, George’s cousins and 5-year old Phoenix also enjoyed George’s company that week; George kept Phoenix entertained with paper dragons and toy koala bears for hours and even, using the computer, created a movie starring Phoenix, what a thrill for the boy! One fine morning, Faith, Mel and Rhiannon took George down to Dunraven Bay where they had the beach to themselves and found fossils. They got back up the cliffs on steep ladders, near a waterfall that made a rainbow against the rocks. We had a congenial family supper at the Gwaelod y Garth Inn, despite the fact that at least three out of the seven of us were fighting the flu that evening. I shared some lunches with my mother too and one afternoon read her the poems she has written at various stages of her life, which awoke many old memories. When we said goodbye to her (perhaps for the last time in George’s case) she was feeling sleepy in her chair, stroking a stuffed toy hedgehog, didn’t quite realise we were going and so the farewell caused less of a pang than it might have.

February 1st, Chris and I took George to Goldcliff where our friends live; we were there last February too. Kay served us some lunch and Andy led us on a refreshing walk up a lane through the fields, beside the irrigation ditches, letting us appreciate the fresh air, the wayside primroses, and a familiar panorama of hills to the north. Then we drove through Newport to Cwmbran where we’d lived for over three years in the 1990s, although I was the only one in the car who recognised the streets there. The two men did at least remember the house where we used to live, at the top end of Wesley Close. There was no need to linger, so we pressed on to Abergavenny and Crickhowell in the Black Mountains, spending two nights under low beams in the attic of The Dragon Inn. We had supper at a rival inn up the street, The Bear, 500 years old.

February 2nd was a fine day for driving to Hay-on-Wye on the narrow old roads through the hills, through “the most beautiful landscape in the world”, as Chris called it. We stopped at the peaceful, enchanted little whitewashed church, no bigger than a cottage, St. Mary’s of Capel-y-Ffin, which Emma tells me she remembers, though her brother doesn’t. It has a dozen teddy bears of various sizes sitting on the front pew, a harmonium, a balcony with a crucifixion painting by David Jones on the wall, and a wonderful altar window overlooking the mountainside with calligraphy etched into the window panes by Eric Gill, saying the very appropriate opening words of the 121st psalm: I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help. I can imagine wanting to be buried in the little graveyard outside, outside of time, where birds sing in the ancient yew trees. Across the road from the church an old fashioned phone box still stands, one of the few left in Britain, next to a whitewashed farmhouse. This tiny community was an artists’ commune in the 1920s; I gather it was primitive and wild in more than one sense. Some of the artists were suffering from PTSD after their 1st World War experiences.

Then we slowly rolled further up the Vale of Ewyas and across the Gospel Pass, snow on the hilltops, where wild horses roam. This was our last full day with George, from whom we parted at Cardiff Central Station at lunchtime on the 3rd, roisterous rugby fans milling around us on their way to a Wales-Scotland match at the Cardiff stadium. Back he went to New South Wales, with Chris and I continuing north on the trains to Manchester and York, seeing enticing views of the hills between Abergavenny and Church Stretton (under the Long Mynd), breaking our journey overnight at Shrewsbury. No family or friends there, though I had vague memories of a hiking holiday in this part of England with my parents and sister when we were teenagers. We stayed at the Premier Inn beside the bus station, opposite the river bank, quite a comfortable lodging. Despite the grey skies and rain, Shrewsbury city centre was an interesting place, with more tudor buildings still standing than in any other town in England, apparently. It has a red stone medieval castle, a mock tudor railway station that’s quite impressive, and an all-inclusive museum where I learned about Charles Darwin, who grew up here. I also found some good paintings there, including a watercolour by Turner of Shrewsbury’s English Bridge over the Severn as it looked in the 19th century.

Beyond Shrewsbury, on Sunday, the views were increasingly northern, the area around Crewe and people on the platform there depressed-looking. We changed at Manchester Piccadilly for the Transpennine Express to York, a fast train that took us through snow-capped hills. There was an atmosphere of fun on the train, with three ladies in their 60s returning from a wedding, in the seats across the aisle, proposing toasts with glasses of champagne. The steward with his Yorkshire humour kept announcing over the tannoy that “John” was able to serve us refreshments at the rear of the train, but couldn’t come through the other carriages with his trolley because of “all the loogage and too many bodies”! We came through Huddersfield and Leeds, the dark satanic mills still prominent features of that landscape.

We reached York on the afternoon, in time for Chris’ work meetings on Monday 5th. Once more we had a reunion with friends because Rob and Sally and two of their daughters live there; during the week we met Jenny, now working on a PhD at York University, and all of Bryony’s family. On Sunday Sally immediately took us for afternoon tea at the famous Betty’s tearooms, made us supper at her house and she and Rob joined us for two restaurant suppers (one at the York Assembly Rooms, now a stylish Italian restaurant) as well as treating me to lunch on Wednesday, my free day, when we walked right round the city walls.

On the Tuesday I met ghosts, including the ghost of my former self, by taking the train the Yorkshire Wolds country, from York to Scarborough and back, so that I could walk to the places I knew while I was a pupil at the Scarborough Girls’ High. I didn’t go to the school itself, but did walk with a rapidly beating heart past my old house and up Throxenby Lane to Throxenby Mere --- ducks, swans and Canada geese swimming there --- and the steep Raincliffe Woods; I went up Throxenby Lane in the direction of my primary school too, before catching a bus (from the same brick-walled bus-stop as ever) back into town, names and moments coming back to me all the way. Or is it a landscape of dreams that I remember? In town I rediscovered the harbour, the beach and the spa, only superficially changed since the 1960s. Even Boyes’ department store was still prominently doing business. Carol Boyes used to be in my class; I slept in a tent on her back lawn, once. From the beach I had a good view of the ruined castle and St. Mary’s large church where on one occasion I sang Faure’s Pie Jesu solo, having a job to keep in synch with the distantly placed organ. Half a century later, snow flurries filled the air as I climbed from the rockpools to the Italian Gardens in the South Bay.

My Scarborough day ended (back in York) with my attending Evensong in the Minster, which happened to be a special service on the anniversary of the Queen’s accession to the throne. The excellent Minster choir sang Handel’s Zadok the Priest as the anthem and the service was a fine quality setting by Gibbons. One of the psalms was Psalm 121, mentioned above!

Thursday, my cousin Wendy and my aunt Ruth were the people to visit, this time in Darlington, hardly more than half an hour’s journey from York by train. I could see the Sutton Bank part of the North York Moors to the east --- the stomping ground of my youth! --- and I think I caught a glimpse of Roseberry Topping. Wendy met me at Darlington Station and immediately said that I looked just like my mum. It was good to spend time with her after such a long gap. She took me out to lunch at an old pub at Hurworth Moor, called The Tawny Owl, which entailed a short drive through the local country, none of it familiar to me, although I must have been driven along these roads as a child, since all my mother’s relatives lived in this part of England. My lunch was an excellent vegetarian (butter squash) pie. We spent a while at Wendy’s house too where she showed me fascinating photos of my Victorian ancestors and some paintings by our grandfather that I don’t remember seeing before, and in the afternoon we saw Ruth in her house too, who couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw me. I look much older, apparently. (Well, it has been almost 17 years.) On her mantelpiece, she had a photo of George playing the cello.

That week I also paid two visits to York’s Art Gallery, described in a separate blogpost.

Our final day in Britain was mostly spent travelling to Heathrow where we stayed at the Ibis Styles to be sure of a quick getaway the following morning, not a bad hotel for the price, efficient, comfortable, and easy to access by bus, with quiet rooms, although the noisy background music at breakfast was off-putting in the extreme. We spent Friday evening with Emma, Peter and the boys at a Spanish restaurant near their house at Hampton Hill, whence the 285 bus took us straight back to the Ibis, taking half the time it did on the outbound journey during the rush hour.

It’s worth recording that our longer than usual flight from Heathrow to Ottawa took a northerly route over the southern tip of Greenland, to avoid over-strong headwinds, which gave us the chance to see the pure white scenery of that country from high above: the glaciers, sheer mountainsides and fjords dotted with icebergs. No sign of human interference at all, down there. It was worth seeing.

Elva and Laurie, like the faithful friends they are, met us at Ottawa airport and drove us home.