There are so many joys and new experiences to be discovered, personally and professionally through the many aspects of the world of the internet. With Countryside Connection's swift and steady growth increasingly bringing members and new visitors from around the world together every day, the joys of my business life are enriched and enhanced on a regular basis. However, last week the most wonderful and unexpected email arrived in my Inbox through my website: http://www.countrysideconnection.com/ . A friend I have known all of my life (her father and my mother were once 'promised to one another', then each met and married another wonderful person and the four became the best of friends).
As the years past, two children were born into her family and three in mine. Sharon, her sister Carole and I were always reminded by their father that I could have been his first daughter, and with great love and joy he treated me as his third daughter and they 'adopted' me as the other sister. Their mother and mine shared so much in life as did our fathers, making us, with the later addition of my two brothers, one big happy extended family. As young children, we all lived in New York City and then six months apart both families moved across country and settled in Southern California. The friendship and family gatherings continued throughout our childhood and into adulthood.
Sadly, as so often happens with marriages, travels, life changes and relocations, we somehow lost touch. Sharon decided one night that she had spent long enough thinking and wondering about where I was and what was happening that she decided to google my name and immediately discovered my websites among the listings. Now, my dear, dear friend, so unique and fantastic is back in my life and we are in the throes of catching up on lost years and wasted time without contact.
How many people do you know, or have ever heard of who are qualified, lawyers, teachers, belly dancers, manicurists . . . Well, MY FRIEND SHARON IS FOR ONE and I am filled with joy that she and I are reunited! Watch this space as I learn more ~ don't know about you, but I cannot wait . . .
Why not google someone you have been out of touch with for too long. You never know what you might discover has happened in the intervening years. I hope that you take the time and that you are left filled with the same full heart and permanent smile that I have had since Sharon's first email arrived. I wish you joyous reunions and would love to hear about them.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Another Moving Experience
“Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1902 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Known for his pithy, short and frequently quoted opinions. 1841-1935
Where does the time go? I cannot believe how much has happened since my last entry. Once again, we have been on the move. Family and friends at Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire mentioned in earlier entries are no longer hundreds of miles away, but less than ten! We have returned to Yorkshire to live in a village we have known and loved for so many years. We are still surrounded by boxes and chaos, but it feels as though we have come home. The difficult adjustment comes from the fact that Morgan, our beloved daughter, lives on her own with friends and no longer moves home with us. This is not the first time, for so many of the past years she has either been away at school or university and now is living and working in London. Thankfully, she is always close at hand; she took part in our move a few weeks ago and will be ‘home’ with us for the long Bank Holiday Weekend.
This is our 16th move in 29 years of marriage; relocations between the west and east coasts of America and the southern and northern regions of England. For the majority of the time, the moves were to enable us to live near family who needed us to be close at hand. When you marry someone from another country, airports and relocations are part of the package and one I would never trade. The life of each member of my immediate family is tightly bound to two cultures and I believe it has given us a clearer understanding of the uniqueness offered by every person and country in the universe we are all part of.
For now, once again, I shall return to unpacking and find ‘the perfect location’ for the treasures we have collected over our shared lifetime together.
“In fact at home I sometimes like to be quiet and hear the sounds of the world outside.”
Brenda Blethyn, British Actress
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Experiencing The Familiar - Making Time For Play
Mum has graciously offered me the chance to jump aboard this blog and introduce myself. My name is Morgan, and I'm working in and researching children's play. What this means practically speaking is that I spend much of my time with kids aged 6-12, covered in glitter and wood chips, pretending to be a tiger and covertly taking notes.
I live and work in London, which might seem an odd choice for someone raised in a family that loves the countryside so deeply. I came here for graduate school nearly two years ago, but the more complicated lesson that I've been learning is that questions of community, of sustainability, of what it means to be "local", are just as vibrant and problematic in the city and countryside. The ways in which we live, work, shop and play all matter.
It's this combination of local and global that I think is at the heart of mum's company, Countryside Connection: http://www.countrysideconnection.com - a business predicated on the idea that new technologies can help very traditional businesses, and that "local" people can work together and create new communities - even if they're thousands of miles apart. This idea was brought home to me the other day, when I faced the most terrifying sight of my young life: thirty 14 year old girls, expecting a lecture on urban theory.
Many months ago I agreed to participate in University College London's Widening Participation Program, which brings in groups of local schoolchildren to offer them a tour of the University and a sample lecture by a current or (in my case recent) graduate student. I wanted to talk to them about what it means to know a place, how we live in cities, how they shape us and how we, if we only try, can shape them in return. I wanted them to think about who controlled public space, who the "public" really are, and how social groups monitor public behaviour. I don't know if any of this actually happened.
But part of this process was getting them each to make a map of their local environments. The Situationists (a group of French theorists in the late 1950s/early 1960s) believed that most people operate within a triangle of work, home and recreation that they rarely break out of. To re-experience the familiar city they did some fairly odd, early 1960s things, such as walking around Paris following a map of London, just to see where they'd end up. They took careful notes on how streets smelt, how their character changed along their length, took photographs of signs and shop fronts.
The girls thought this was a bit stupid, but they made their maps anyway and when they'd finished they waved their maps at me, asking me to look. What I saw was startling. Their maps were tangled lines cross-crossing at points labelled "where we hang out", friends' houses and chip shops. Their worlds already encompassed far more communities than mine, with school and home being complimented by the homes of friends and relatives, and the locations of enough places for recreation to make me quite jealous. They not only inhabited a London that I knew nothing about, they had made it their own in a way that I'm still figuring out.
This might seem off-topic, but play for me is mainly about finding different ways of experiencing the familiar. For children and adults, much of what we do can be done 'playfully' - even if it's technically work! Taking tiny bits of time to remember why we do the things we do, whether sending emails, painting fences, stuffing envelopes and running out for milk, can give us back some of the joy we had when we started out on these projects. It's so easy to get stuck into something and lose enthusiasm for it (my dissertation springs horribly to mind) and that's where I think play can help. I've been reading The Playful Self by Rebecca Abrams lately, and she speaks eloquently on the need for adults to find ways of enjoying themselves purely, and of the positive knock-on effects of this in all areas of their lives. Creative play is a kind of networking, too, and out of half-joking conversations can come the most remarkable (even profitable) ideas. In paying attention to the possibilities of places, relationships and objects we can open up those relationships, turn a cup into a boat, a pavement into a dance floor, an acquaintance into a co-conspirator.
So what ways have you found of making time for play, or of reconfiguring your relationships to your area, work or colleagues? Any suggestions for the rest of us?
I live and work in London, which might seem an odd choice for someone raised in a family that loves the countryside so deeply. I came here for graduate school nearly two years ago, but the more complicated lesson that I've been learning is that questions of community, of sustainability, of what it means to be "local", are just as vibrant and problematic in the city and countryside. The ways in which we live, work, shop and play all matter.
It's this combination of local and global that I think is at the heart of mum's company, Countryside Connection: http://www.countrysideconnection.com - a business predicated on the idea that new technologies can help very traditional businesses, and that "local" people can work together and create new communities - even if they're thousands of miles apart. This idea was brought home to me the other day, when I faced the most terrifying sight of my young life: thirty 14 year old girls, expecting a lecture on urban theory.
Many months ago I agreed to participate in University College London's Widening Participation Program, which brings in groups of local schoolchildren to offer them a tour of the University and a sample lecture by a current or (in my case recent) graduate student. I wanted to talk to them about what it means to know a place, how we live in cities, how they shape us and how we, if we only try, can shape them in return. I wanted them to think about who controlled public space, who the "public" really are, and how social groups monitor public behaviour. I don't know if any of this actually happened.
But part of this process was getting them each to make a map of their local environments. The Situationists (a group of French theorists in the late 1950s/early 1960s) believed that most people operate within a triangle of work, home and recreation that they rarely break out of. To re-experience the familiar city they did some fairly odd, early 1960s things, such as walking around Paris following a map of London, just to see where they'd end up. They took careful notes on how streets smelt, how their character changed along their length, took photographs of signs and shop fronts.
The girls thought this was a bit stupid, but they made their maps anyway and when they'd finished they waved their maps at me, asking me to look. What I saw was startling. Their maps were tangled lines cross-crossing at points labelled "where we hang out", friends' houses and chip shops. Their worlds already encompassed far more communities than mine, with school and home being complimented by the homes of friends and relatives, and the locations of enough places for recreation to make me quite jealous. They not only inhabited a London that I knew nothing about, they had made it their own in a way that I'm still figuring out.
This might seem off-topic, but play for me is mainly about finding different ways of experiencing the familiar. For children and adults, much of what we do can be done 'playfully' - even if it's technically work! Taking tiny bits of time to remember why we do the things we do, whether sending emails, painting fences, stuffing envelopes and running out for milk, can give us back some of the joy we had when we started out on these projects. It's so easy to get stuck into something and lose enthusiasm for it (my dissertation springs horribly to mind) and that's where I think play can help. I've been reading The Playful Self by Rebecca Abrams lately, and she speaks eloquently on the need for adults to find ways of enjoying themselves purely, and of the positive knock-on effects of this in all areas of their lives. Creative play is a kind of networking, too, and out of half-joking conversations can come the most remarkable (even profitable) ideas. In paying attention to the possibilities of places, relationships and objects we can open up those relationships, turn a cup into a boat, a pavement into a dance floor, an acquaintance into a co-conspirator.
So what ways have you found of making time for play, or of reconfiguring your relationships to your area, work or colleagues? Any suggestions for the rest of us?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
What's In A Name?
With the news filled with reports about all the new homes being built around the country, so many often square and soulless buildings, I was delighted when my husband and I recently spent a lovely day in an enchanting historic town that we have not visited for many years. Rye in Sussex is filled with ancient buildings, all so beautifully maintained and we love wandering about the cobblestone streets, our favourite is the historic Mermaid Street.with buildings from the 15th – 17th Century. We walked from the rear of timber framed Mermaid Inn through Mermaid Passage, a little cobbled passage that runs uphill from The Mint, through the Mermaid Inn's yard and archway, into Mermaid Street. I revelled in viewing wonderfully named ‘old friends’ such as 'The House Opposite', just across from The Mermaid Inn and others with equally unusual names such as 'The house with two doors' and 'The house with the seat'. Most of these timber-framed buildings are either Tudor or Medieval in origin and filled with a sense of history and belonging.
House names have always intrigued me, but Alan finds great dismay in those that are so often seen ~ where I am prone to wonder about the lives, past and present of those who live there now and others who were resident in the past, he visibly cringes at those that carry names such as ‘dun roamin’ and ‘sea view’ (why ARE these cottages so often miles from the sea!). He finds the homes with their unique names that grace Mermaid Street a great relief and does not offer any negative comments which is always pleasing (oh, dear, sounds like a Victor Meldrew or ‘Grumpy Old Man’ reference and although I admit that as a young man he was often teased about sounding like Victor from ‘One Foot In The Grave’ he has definitely mellowed with age. Morgan and I like to think it is our charming influence and unwillingness, over time to rise to the bait.
In a way, my curiosity about houses and those to whom they are known as home (oh dear, is ‘nosy’ a more apt word? I hope not!) is similar to the reaction I have when I am at an airport or train station. I am always filled with interest as I watch those ready to depart and wonder to myself (some things are definitely best left unsaid) about the reason for their journey and hoping they are off for some wonderfully romantic adventure. Clearly you can see that we are a case of ‘opposites attract’ but thankfully it has worked quite well over our many years together – he has mellowed and I no longer go through life will rose-coloured glasses ~ okay, at least SOME of the time they are removed.
After twenty-eight years of travel and living between England and America, we have spent more time than most in airport terminals (our daughter’s first passport has a photograph of her at the age of 10 weeks – yes, sentimental as I am and have already described, I save all of our expired passports and with dual citizenship I admit that does add up to quite a few). I never tire of the opportunity to wonder about the other travellers I encounter and can sit happily for hours watching individuals and the world pass by before me. However, being a product of two very different parents and although definitely her own unique person, our daughter is like her father in many ways. As a result, to continue to enjoy family travel when we were all still journeying around the world together, I had to become quite clever in finding ways to ensure that my flights were still the same wonderful experiences I had always found them to be. My daughter and her father delight in making discreet comments about the other passengers to pass the time (definitely not romantic wonderings about their journeys); especially on the very long flights we had during our years of living between California and England. In the end to enable myself to continue my pleasure in flying during family trips, I would always reserve two seats together for them and a separate one for myself just a couple of rows ahead to avoid suspicion. It was several years before I was caught and they realized that my excuse about my inability to find three seats together was unfounded (in the end it was an almost entirely empty flight that left my totally defenceless!). Oh well, it never hurts to be forced to use one’s imagination to come up with new ideas . . .
House names have always intrigued me, but Alan finds great dismay in those that are so often seen ~ where I am prone to wonder about the lives, past and present of those who live there now and others who were resident in the past, he visibly cringes at those that carry names such as ‘dun roamin’ and ‘sea view’ (why ARE these cottages so often miles from the sea!). He finds the homes with their unique names that grace Mermaid Street a great relief and does not offer any negative comments which is always pleasing (oh, dear, sounds like a Victor Meldrew or ‘Grumpy Old Man’ reference and although I admit that as a young man he was often teased about sounding like Victor from ‘One Foot In The Grave’ he has definitely mellowed with age. Morgan and I like to think it is our charming influence and unwillingness, over time to rise to the bait.
In a way, my curiosity about houses and those to whom they are known as home (oh dear, is ‘nosy’ a more apt word? I hope not!) is similar to the reaction I have when I am at an airport or train station. I am always filled with interest as I watch those ready to depart and wonder to myself (some things are definitely best left unsaid) about the reason for their journey and hoping they are off for some wonderfully romantic adventure. Clearly you can see that we are a case of ‘opposites attract’ but thankfully it has worked quite well over our many years together – he has mellowed and I no longer go through life will rose-coloured glasses ~ okay, at least SOME of the time they are removed.
After twenty-eight years of travel and living between England and America, we have spent more time than most in airport terminals (our daughter’s first passport has a photograph of her at the age of 10 weeks – yes, sentimental as I am and have already described, I save all of our expired passports and with dual citizenship I admit that does add up to quite a few). I never tire of the opportunity to wonder about the other travellers I encounter and can sit happily for hours watching individuals and the world pass by before me. However, being a product of two very different parents and although definitely her own unique person, our daughter is like her father in many ways. As a result, to continue to enjoy family travel when we were all still journeying around the world together, I had to become quite clever in finding ways to ensure that my flights were still the same wonderful experiences I had always found them to be. My daughter and her father delight in making discreet comments about the other passengers to pass the time (definitely not romantic wonderings about their journeys); especially on the very long flights we had during our years of living between California and England. In the end to enable myself to continue my pleasure in flying during family trips, I would always reserve two seats together for them and a separate one for myself just a couple of rows ahead to avoid suspicion. It was several years before I was caught and they realized that my excuse about my inability to find three seats together was unfounded (in the end it was an almost entirely empty flight that left my totally defenceless!). Oh well, it never hurts to be forced to use one’s imagination to come up with new ideas . . .
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Sentiment and Memories
“Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us." ~ Oscar Wilde
My members and my website, Countryside Connection, are so much more than simply ‘my business’ they are a driving passion that I find very difficult to pull myself away from. If I am not corresponding and promoting members and their unique offerings, seeking new networking connections for them or working on the latest issue of our newsletter, there seems to be a hundred other things demanding attention at that very moment (the demands are only within the recesses of my own mind, as my wonderful members are always so supportive and send the most thoughtful email messages that, of course, I find impossible to delay responding to them or telephoning to say thank you and so on . . . My Inbox would astound most of you but I cannot part with any but the most mundane, or the dreaded Spam that manages to bypass my controls as they are filled with memories and bring joy when re-read.
I have been wanting to add to my new blog for weeks and always wonder aloud late each night at where the time has gone ~ the answer frequently comes from my wonderfully supportive husband and it is always the same ~ you have not left your office unless it was unavoidable (meaning impossible to ignore) and to be fair, he is right. In the icy chill of wintertime it is even easier as I have the excuse of wanting to stay snuggled against my hot water bottle which rests against the small of my back (my poor teddy bear bottle, a present from same irreplaceable husband of 28 years, has a face that is threadbare below his lovely eyes and increasingly I notice yet another missing bit of fur on his patchy, worn body, but like a child with a beloved cuddly toy from childhood, I cannot bear-no pun intended-the thought of another one as he is truly irreplaceable and filled with memories and comfort) My daughter understands this perfectly as we share our passion for beloved items with their anthropomorphic qualities so filled with cherished memories ~ it is one of the reasons Moving Companies LOVE us so much as I feel certain the owners of each company have enjoyed a glorious holiday following yet another of our expensive international moves.
In the Bookshop Category on my website, I describe our family passion for books, especially old ones and the inscriptions from those who have possessed them in the past, and our inability to part with them. Oh, if books were the only items we were sentimental about . . . memories of those I love who are no longer physically with me yet always in my heart and my thoughts are bound up in so many items that I cannot part with, ranging from large pieces of inherited furniture to bits of old lace, a collection of buttons and treasures collected from sandy beaches I have explored. I have saved almost every item my daughter has brought home from school or created at home since she first started at nursery; she and my husband have corresponded whenever they have been apart, whether he was working away from home at the time, or when she was at school, then university and now living and working a few hours from home. They have never resorted to emails, as she and I now exchange, and she recently revealed to his great astonishment, the boxes in which she has kept every letter he has ever written and all of the enclosures, from cartoons and drawings he created for her to articles and comics he searches through newspapers and magazines to include for her enjoyment each week. We are a sentimental threesome, each in our own individual way and I would not change that or either of them for anything in the world.
“Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories” ~ from the movie An Affair to Remember. This is one of my favourite films of all times and never fails to require a box of tissues or a large handkerchief close at hand. I have a very sad worn tape and do not know what I will do if our old VCR ever dies and I cannot find this film on DVD, once we finally join the modern age and buy a DVD machine that is! I wish that I could say this reaction was unusual for me, but one of my brothers commented at an early age that I was the only person he knew who cried at commercials. As you can see, my sentimentality really has no bounds.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
First Steps
Years ago, on a bitter cold spring day in North Yorkshire, I sat for hours in my car by the side of a tiny country lane. Increasingly, as the cold seeped in under the doors and window surrounds and my heavy winter coat no longer provided its usual protection, I wrapped my trusty long scarf closer and closer around my neck (it was once intended as one of five knitted gifts but having fallen in love with the softness and familiarity of its texture, soft blue and green tones of the sea and the gentle touch as it steadily increased in size, in the end I could not bear to part with it, for which I was now more grateful than ever). The shivering became more noticeable, my hands began to tremble and thoughts of a large pot of tea now grew into an obsession rather than simply a desire. Yet still I sat and stared filled with the delight and remembrance viewed upon my child’s face when she remained upright after her first unstable steps.
I literally have hundreds of photographs of cows, many indistinguishable from dozens of others, individually standing and staring, or within a beautiful gentle herd. These have often been taken in a state of panic as we are preparing to move house and I fear that the local cows are the last I will see for a while. However, Lucille, my Cow Door has been a faithful companion since 1988 when my husband and daughter created her for me following a car accident which left me virtually housebound for a few months. Lucille has been with me in homes as diverse as a seaside house in California and a converted milk parlour in England (please know that I do not lie, even for affect!) Once again, we have for the time we are here (more about that in later entries) Jersey and Holstein herds grazing in adjoining fields and a house still filled with photographs, sculptures and so many other items and objects depicting cows and sheep, not to mention ducks and rabbits . . .
The objects of my fixation? Five small lambs standing in a queue and one on the top of a singular, rectangular bale of hay in a close section of a nearby field. As each lamb tired of being “it” off she jumped, quickly replaced at the top by the next one in line before it reached the back of the queue to await its turn again. It was only the threat of frostbite that finally forced me to depart and continue my journey.
I am passionate about Cows & Sheep! I love all aspects of life in the countryside, including the little quirks that drive city folk to distraction; but my passion for cows and sheep are on an entirely differently level.
I literally have hundreds of photographs of cows, many indistinguishable from dozens of others, individually standing and staring, or within a beautiful gentle herd. These have often been taken in a state of panic as we are preparing to move house and I fear that the local cows are the last I will see for a while. However, Lucille, my Cow Door has been a faithful companion since 1988 when my husband and daughter created her for me following a car accident which left me virtually housebound for a few months. Lucille has been with me in homes as diverse as a seaside house in California and a converted milk parlour in England (please know that I do not lie, even for affect!) Once again, we have for the time we are here (more about that in later entries) Jersey and Holstein herds grazing in adjoining fields and a house still filled with photographs, sculptures and so many other items and objects depicting cows and sheep, not to mention ducks and rabbits . . .The birth of my beloved daughter was one of the greatest moments and enduring memories of my life, but recently, whilst visiting family at Bolton Abbey, I witnessed the birth of a calf for the very first time and as it struggled to stand upon its wobbly legs, I admit to a similar feeling of my heart about to burst. This miraculous moment of the emergence of life was again shared with my daughter, only this time, aged twenty-six, we stood side by side, arms entwined. Our eyes met and I knew words were unnecessary ~ she knows me so well and her eyes showed the same joy in the moment we had witnessed together. The miracle of birth and the cycles of life never cease to amaze me.
Hello and thank you for encouraging me to join the blogging world to all my wonderful Countryside Connection Members, fellow WiRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) members and family and friends who all offer such tremendous friendship and ongoing support!
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