Garden diary: late April

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! Ev’n as the flowers in spring;

To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.

Grief melts away

Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

(George Herbert, ‘The Flower’)

The garden at this time of year is pretty much full throttle – there’s the big planting programme to get through, and of course the vegetables and flowers aren’t the only things getting busy – the weeds are awake and active, and so are the pests. This weekend has been all about the garden, and between glorious sunshine & the children’s desire to get involved, it’s been a wonderful experience. However, taking the truism ‘a gardener’s work is never done’ to heart, we only managed to get halfway round the garden. I’m hoping that next weekend the weather will hold so we can get around the other half, and who knows – maybe even the front garden will get weeded, too.

Come with me on a tour …..

In number 1 bed, called ‘The Boat’ because of its shape, closest to the back door & nestled between a curved block-paved path from the patio around the outside of the garden and the lawn, brassicas are succeeding legumes in the crop rotation. In the centre is an ornamental cherry (inherited the vile thing), and I have permanent sage and rosemary shrubs – our favourite herbs need to be close on hand. The sage isn’t looking very well - the leaves have all died on the central stems, although there is a lot of new growth at the base, and on the outer stems.  I’m not sure what that’s all about, but a little concerned as a Rosemary died there before – I did think I’d cleared out any possibly contaminated soil, but now I’m wondering. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it’ll be alright, but it seeded last year, so I’ve got plenty of little sage seedlings in the worst case. I need to find homes for them – can’t bear throwing out healthy plants! The early peas aren’t doing as well as I’d hoped, but considering they came from saved seed, this batch of Feltham Firsts looks wonderfully healthy, even if the germination didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I’ve consolidated them into a smaller run over half the two-metre-wide bed. The early-sown brassicas have been planted out now, and are thriving, and successional sowings of Cauliflower (All Year Round), Cabbage (Savoy, Hispi & Kalibos), Calabrese and Purple Sprouting Broccoli’s are coming up – a further succession of everything went in this week. I had Calendula and Fennel in there last year, and although I thought I’d collected all the seeds to transfer down into the ‘hot’ bed down by the shed, I’ve still got a little population starting. I’ve moved around a third of the Calendula, kept a third of them in place to be companions for the brassicas, and dug the rest of them in. The Fennel has all been moved down to the hot bed – experience tells me it doesn’t transplant terribly well, but I’ll give it a good try. In one section, I’ve got a catch-crop of salad leaves alongside the Caulis – those were left from last year’s final sowing to self-seed, and it looks like I’ll be able to get me first harvest out of there as early as next week, which is tremendously exciting. I’ve planted dividing rows of parsley and sweet marjoram – one between Hispi & Savoy, and one between Savoy and Calabrese. There be strawberries here, too … I’ve interplanted one side of the bed with Borage, so it’ll be interesting to see how these stack up in terms of beneficial companion. The earlies have all got flowers on now, and they’re all putting on wonderful amounts of growth.

Outside the gate, down the side of the house in what was formerly a wasteland, we’re beginning to see signs of life in the fragrant wildflower meadow – I’m hoping that this is actually the wildflowers germinating, and not weeds . The transplants in – hosta for the dark corner, sweet rocket, german chamomile, heather, aubretia and the baby philadelphus in its outsize pot – are all thriving (though we could do with a day or so of good rain showers). The strawberry plant I moved in as an experiment is looking ill – a little extra tlc needed the next few days, I think.

In the corner, between the fence by the back gate and the boundary fence, there’s a wedge-shaped bed like a slice of pizza. Onion family are succeeding Brassicas in this one … though my brassicas from last year are rather feeble. (My defence is that Bellaboo was too small to tolerate extended gardening sessions). This is a problem area – one of two where we’ve had to clear building rubble to get a viable bed – and I despair of ever properly clearing it of white-tile fragments. I think I’ve got them all cleared, and then it rains, and there’s another crop, though fewer each time. I think that until it’s turned a couple more years of crops (and had the associated soil improvings) it won’t be happy – this is it’s third rotation – it’s done legumes and then brassicas, now into onions because I just don’t dare put root crops in there yet. But there is good news, despite the bolted Savoys! We have heads forming on the Cauliflowes – the children were impressed by that, absolutely awestruck, which made my day, and the purple sprouting brocoli is sprouting purple florets. Hooray!!! The calabrese is still looking a bit dismal, though – hopefully it’ll make a late comeback and surprise us. In terms of new sowings, I’m finally getting Leeks (King Richard) germinating, though I thought I’d blown it for a while there. Likewise, the spring onions are coming up, if patchily, but I’m pleased nonetheless because they’re one of those crops I can *never* get to grow. The onion sets I put in – red and whites – are sprouting prolifically despite Bellaboo’s repeated invasions and trampling, and I’ve put catch-crops of salad leaves in between one row and coriander in another. I adore coriander … I always have it growing inside in pots, but just think the outdoor-grown is so much tastier! The beetroots – another companion planting experiment – are coming on nicely inbetween the bolted Savoys and the just-coming-good Spring Heros. What’s surprised me most, though, is that I had some French Marigolds in last year as companions, and these have seeded and are coming up again this year! Wooot! (So are the nasturtiums, but you can’t keep a nasturtium down, I find).

Further down the boundary is a double strip of a couple of metres, either side of the path – this is Honey’s garden and is sown along traditional pretty cottage garden lines – she’s got an antique lavender and a wigelia (covered in buds, hooray!) and some hebe in there, and aubretia, dianthus, heather, thyme, campanula, geraniums and iris, and we’ve got lobelia, sweet william, cosmos and echinacea seedlings coming along for it, too – it’ll look glorious when it’s all planted & in flower. We had mystery bulbs coming up – neither Honey nor I could remember what we’d planted – with buds on, it’s clear they’re alliums. I am absolutely gobsmacked by the arrival of clematis in this part of the garden – uninvited & unplanted, it has popped up beneath the beech sapling (an invader from the woods beyond our boundary – more welcome than than the brambles & bindweed ) and is quit happily scrambling up the little tree. We’re wondering what colour it will be when – if – it flowers.

At the little paved patio at the end of Honey’s garden, about half-way down the boundary fence, the greengage I planted this year is putting on good growth and I’ll need to train the first cordon shoots very soon. Hopefully it’ll help make a feature of this little area – we don’t use it, and despite the pretty yellow tea-roses at each corner, it doesn’t get much notice. It’d be nice to change that …. though I’m not sure how, yet. With so many other areas under construction this year, I kind of want to wait to let everything bed in for a couple of seasons before I tackle anything as lare-scale as we’ve done this year.

Beyond Honey’s garden, and the tyre swing in the big oak – just outside our garden, but enough  banches overhang our garden that it might as well be in!! – is the ‘hot’ bed. It’s called the ‘hot’ bed because it gets full sun all day, but because it’s shaded by oak and palm trees, it’s desert-dry. At the moment, it’s got two massively overgrown Phormium’s in, and whilst I love the architectural qualities of the NZ Flax, two together is a bit overwhelming in that space (another inherited headache). This became (even more) apparent today after I gave them a good hard prune: the snow we had earlier this year damaged its leaves – they got bent & broken, & the broken parts are dying off – so they both looked very ill. Beneath them, the ground is dry and completely drained of nutrients, but there’s still a brave show of what looks like Crocosmia shoots trying to come up. I’m wondering if I should take a hedge trimmer to the Phormium every year to give the other stuff in the bed a chance. Ideally, I should take one of them out, but received wisdom is that nothing short of a mini-JCB-digger will get them out, & even then it’s a struggle to shift ‘em, once they’ve got to the size ours are. I suppose the other option is to extend the bed so that I can get some ground-covers in, which might hold in moisture a bit better, but that’s a lot of work & will incur further protest on the ‘enclosures’ act already causing lawn-based controversy. Anyway, with the dead/dying growth lopped out, the bed looks much better, so I’m going to extend the planned rudbeckia, calendula, sunflower, fennel & nasturtium mix a bit further and see how we get on. I’ve worked in some compost – from our own heap & lovely crumbly black-stuff it is too, whoo-hooo – and given it a good water for now, and hopefully it will take some planting in a few weeks time, once everything’s ready to go in the ground.

The small plot between the hot bed and the shed, where I cleared junk & built the children a den, got sowed with chamomile & an assortment of old flower seeds hanging around from previous years – there’s signs of germination there, which is tremendously exciting, and the lilac shoots I planted to start a living hut with - like willow, but I’m hoping that I can do the same with lilac: imagine a live bower covered in blossom – how heavenly (fingers crossed I can pull it off, eh?) – have all taken, so progress!!! It’ll be a few years before the vision is realised, but it’s a start.

And that’s as far as we got! Next week, I’ve got to weed and sow successions of root-crops in the raised beds, and clear the shady garden beneath the wisteria of rubbish & other pests, and, of course, the regular grim task of digging out dandelions, but progress this year is fantastic, and the garden is really starting to come together …. still a long way to go to the fantasy potager I dream off, but a good few steps closer ….

Mainspring – Jay Lake

(Tor Books, Mass Market Paperback, May 2008 ISBN: 978-0-7653-5636-9)

Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria still rules New England and her American Possessions; the Royal Navy rules the skies with its mighty airships; and Earth still turns on God’s great brass gears of Heaven as it makes its orderly passage around the Lamp of the Sun from Midnight to Midnight and Year to Year.

In the town of New Haven, a Clockmaker’s young apprentice is visited at midnigh by a brass Angel, and told that he, and he alone, can find the Key Perilous to rewind the Mainspring of Earth. If he does not, the planet will wind down, and life will cease.

I’ve steered clear of Steampunk up until this point, not out of any particular prejudice, but more because it has its roots in the era of industrial revolution and that’s not, generally, a period that I’ve ever been drawn to. So when Jay Lake’s ‘Mainspring’ fell into my lap (a reward for being his 500th follower on Twitter), I wasn’t sure what I’d make of it.

I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be such an intriguing, compelling story.

The main character is as engaging as he is innocent, and the world he explores is a fascinating and well-envisioned parallel of the familiar Victorian-industrial era, coherent and by turns dazzling and terrifying in its differences.

The attitudes and social mores, the obsessions with order and outward propriety are both familiar and therefore credible links from our own recognised history into this world, and serve to set up the conflicts in which the main character, Hethor (the clockmaker’s apprentice), struggles to unravel the mystery set for him by the angel, and to work out which of the powerful figures he encounters along the way he can trust.  Hethor’s quest is simple enough: to find the Key Perilous and wind the Mainspring of the Earth, but the lack of information available to a boy with no social standing and little education AND the active opposition of theological factions, imperial ambitions and the physical barrier of the ‘Wall’ – an equatorial division on which the mechanism of the Earth turns, where heaven and earth meet – all deepen the conflicts and confusion Hethor must overcome if he is to realise his purpose. The storytelling is subtle, apparently random events driving the plot towards its climax, an unexpected realisation that flows in a satisfying way from the individual Hethor has become over the course of his various trials.

Hethor is an intriguing character. In his naivete and innocence, his lack of awareness and education, there are strong echoes of de Troyes’ Percival (indeed, there is a minor character called de Troyes – coincidence? I wonder…).  The overtones of both the chivalrous quest for the Holy Grail and darker, more Wagnerian interpretation of the story (Parsifal) in the construction of Hethor’s character work well with the religious nature of the task he has undertaken. His status as the ‘pure fool’, unknowing and unformed, does, of course, mean that we learn about this world alongside him, and as his learning and development evolves out of his experiences, so too does our understanding and interpretation of the societies, situations and characters that push the story along. His evolution into an almost Christ-like figure – a man with wordly knowledge and understanding and yet still set apart by a simplicity of thought and behaviour – with magical/mystical powers of connection to the mechanisms that drive the Earth and all within/upon it develops naturally out of the callow boy we meet at the beginning – the first clues to this potential sown early on, and refined through the trials and treachery that envelop him right up to that moment of final realisation. In places, his naivete is frustrating – in the early stages of the story, he places his trust too easily and walks into traps with a wide-eyed stupidity, which undermines, to a degree, the later demonstrations of intelligence. Of course, a more charitable interpretation is that those early betrayals forge the determined and intelligent man of the latter stages, but the initial perception persists. His progression from simple (manipulated?) boy to a man confident in his own understanding and abilities comes with the transition from his rational, ordered existence in the Navy in the Northern hemisphere over the equatorial wall to the chaotic, factional, fractured societies of the Southern hemisphere, a powerful dividing line in so many ways in this story, not least of which is the evolution of Hethor’s magic.  The form his powers take is absolutely consistent with the world with which we are presented.  His magical abilities are hinted at, the potential is touched upon, but never fully explored in the Northern hemisphere, and only in the South, beyond the equatorial Wall, do these (conveniently) take on their full form and allow him to overcome the barriers of language, culture, technology and climate that are set in his path. Again, I think there is an understanding that the escape from the ordered restrictions of the Northern hemisphere sets him free and allows these powers to blossom in the less rational, more mystical and intuitive culture in which he finds himself, but there is, nonetheless, a touch of deus ex machina about its manifestation in a couple of places. 

With the evidence of Divine workmanship on permanent, incontrovertible view in this clockwork world, atheism is an untenable position. However, theological factions exist in terms of the interpretation of Divine Intent – Rational Humanists, who claim god abandoned the world after creation and the world should therefore be freed of god, and a more spiritual faction who believe the Divine manifests in the ordinary, that god still has a care for his creation. Our earliest encounter with a Rational Humanist – the clockmaker’s son – sets them up as the natural enemy of both Hethor and his quest, and this perception is borne out with the arrival of William of Ghent. What is interesting is that William of Ghent is a magician and a prophet, a position that seems to sit strangely with the scientific precision of the faction he represents. It works, though, because the ambiguity means that right until the end, we are never sure that Hethor has judged him correctly. It works on other levels, too, particularly in terms of linking back to Wagner’s Parsifal, where William of Ghent could be interpreted as the magician Klingsor, though the impact of Hethor’s ultimate wisdom and compassion upsets that interpretation to an extent.  The opposing faction, the mysterious ‘white birds’, are never fully glimpsed, but their agents assist Hethor at every turn, rescuing him from some seemingly impossible situations. This more spiritual, mystical interpretation of the Divine again echoes back the legend of the Grail, and also offers an interesting comment on our own society’s conflicts between the rather hard-edged obsession with rational, scientific progress and a more spiritual, earth-centred stability/sustainability, and it’s interesting to see this expressed and explored in this novel. 

The two factions also demonstrate the conflicts and hypocracies within the Northern hemisphere society (and absolutely consistent with Victorian double-standards), contrasting a requirement for outer order and conformity with a hidden, internal chaos. This contrast is emphasised and deepened by the equatorial Wall dividing the Northern and Southern hemispheres where the reverse is true in the civilisation in which Hethor finally comes to rest. Although boundaries are blurred between human and animal, outward chaos is contradicted by inner calm, coherence, acceptance and, ultimately, love. I didn’t expect the romantic elements of the story to develop in the way that they did, but the relationship between Hethor and Arellya develops out of their mutual understanding and ability to communicate, mixed with a sense of curiosity, eagerness and simplicity the two of them seem to share. It’s effective and convincing, but also offers a wider comment on how a culture judged as uncivilised or primitive can actually have more coherence than those that attempt to detach themselves from the basic rhythms of life.

The juxtaposition of these two views of civilisation not only provides Hethor a framework in which to understand and question the values he has been inducted with, but also offers an interesting comment on the interpretations of Victorian analyses of civilisation and social structures from a contemporary perspective: are the societies we label as uncivilised truly so, or is it we who are the savages? The answer Hethor finds is not, perhaps, what one would expect, but it is internally consistent.

Is it a straightforward re-telling of the Grail, or Wagner’s Parsifal? No, not by any means. It draws on elements of both to set the stage, but the internal complexities of the world in which the story plays out make this quest something else altogether. It’s a riveting read, a layered story of contrasts and conflicts that come together in the end to create an exciting and satisfying finale. I loved every minute of it.

Warning! Cheese contains milk

It’s been one of those days today.

I took Honey and her best friend into town to see ‘Race to Witch Mountain’ – I enjoyed it rather more than I expected I would, which is a bonus, but it still wasn’t the greatest film I’ve ever seen – I thought that both The Last Mimsy & Nim’s Island were better both in terms of acting and storyline, but as an introduction to your general blockbusting thriller, it was pretty good. (The girls both had a wonderful time, which I guess is the main thing).

Anyway.

What bugged my bear was the immediate demands that we visit McDonalds, almost as soon as we’d arrived in the town centre. I was appalled. Not so much by Honey’s friend, but by the fact that HONEY wanted to go there – I’m blaming advertising and peer pressure on that one – and not all my arguments about the unhealthiness of the food, the environmental impacts of the production processes of that food, the unnecessary packaging &c held any weight with them. It got to the point where I thought that if I held out on them, then I’d have a major scene on my hands & I didn’t feel up to coping with it, so I caved in and we went in. It was every bit as bad as I remembered, and the handful of healthy options didn’t actually bear much resemblance to the cheery pictures up on the walls. They both had Happy Meals (I wasn’t happy, I can tell you) & I had a coffee. The coffee was like dishwater – just vile (the only coffee worse than that I have ever tasted, I had at Brooklands Museum last week) – and the food they got was horrendously oversalted (I use *no* salt in my cooking, ever) to disguise the fact that, actually, it had no taste. Honey’s friend wanted coke, and I actually phoned her mum to double check because I was so horrified by the request. IMO, children shouldn’t drink it, but her mum was fine & seemed a bit puzzled by my call. So, she had coke and I kept my opinions to myself. I don’t think Honey really enjoyed her meal (and she was hungry again 2 hours later), but I don’t think she’d ever admit that.

After the film, Honey’s friend came home to play for a while, and we were all out in the garden enjoying the sunshine. I was sowing seeds and generally puttering about in the garden, and Honey’s friend was watching me …. I invited them to help, and they both joined in quite happily with putting in the seeds and watering them and sticking in the plant labels on the end of each row. But I nearly knocked myself out falling over backwards when Honey’s friend announced that she didn’t realise carrots grew in the ground, and on that basis she wasn’t going to eat them any more ‘because they are dirty’. WTF?!?!?!? I know not everyone has the advantage of outdoor space to the same extent that we do, but we’re not a deprived inner-city urban area by any stretch of the imagination, and the school is quite hot on environmental issues and gardening etc – the children have their own veg garden at school, and suchlike. So it amazed me that the child was so ignorant of where food came from. And it took me aback that she viewed anything coming out of the ground as ‘dirty’ and hence not edible.

So, when it came to tonight’s dinner, and desert of apple-pie, with cheese on the side, and cream, and ice-cream, I was gobsmacked to see warning labels on the cheese, cream and ice-cream: “This product contains milk”. No kidding. (Do people really not know that?)

The whole sorry series of events has got me thinking, and drawing some pretty big pictures in my head. Firstly, about how detached we, as a society, are from food production, and secondly about a sort of squeamishness around dirt and food and our bodies which is, I think, connected to the first and not entirely healthy.

When children don’t know that carrots grow in the ground, something must be wrong with how we are buying our food. When food that is produced to the lowest possible cost, stuffed with fat, anti-biotics and growth-hormones, and then oversalted to disguise the bland taste, there is something wrong with how we are thinking about our food. When you can buy a whole chicken in the supermarket for £3 and no-one stops to think about how little it must have cost the farmer to get that chicken to the supermarket for so little money, there is something wrong with the way we produce our food.

All of these things make me feel that there has been, at some point, a fundamental disconnect between the production and consumption of food. It has ceased to be a means of fuelling our bodies, and has become …. I don’t know what. A leisure activity, that competes with other leisure activities for our time and financial resources? But somehow joyless, when flavour and texture and variety are replaced by some kind of homogenous paste calculated to be somehow inoffensive, rather than a healthful delight, and when it becomes more about consuming as much as possible of a given item, rather than anticipating and savouring rare and seasonal delights.

My asparagus is just starting to come up. I will have a month, maybe a little more, of asparagus frenzy, and then it will be over for another year. It’s worth the wait, and that single month of ecstatic gorging on my tiny harvest sees me through. I don’t get the same pleasure from supermarket-bought asparagus, forced on out of season and flown in from who-knows-where, and ultimately flavourless and unsatisfying, because it has been robbed of its unique rarity value. The same goes for strawberries, raspberries and the other soft fruit, and though I do preserve some of it, there’s little that can beat the joy of a sun-warm strawberry straight from plant to mouth. It seems to me that in our quest for instant gratification, we’ve lost both the pleasure of food, and the connection between ourselves and the earth.

The squeamishness and overly-fastidious obsessions with cleanliness seem to go hand-in-hand with that. Any number of friends think it’s appalling that I generate my own compost rather than buying it (sterilised) from the garden centre. Honey’s friend thinks it’s appalling that carrots grow in the dirty ground. My neighbour is appalled that I let my children pick and eat the (dirty) blackberries growing wild in the wood the other side of our garden fence. People don’t like to think about the food they eat coming from the ground, or walking about on it. They want it neat and clean and with no trace of a natural origin on it. They want it processed and neat, so that it gives no clue to its provenance. A friend of mine won’t handle raw meat unless she’s got latex gloves on her hands, won’t make stock because it means handling the bones.

These are not particularly enjoyable tasks, but they are not as disgusting as she makes them out to be, and what bemuses me is that her attitude is not untypical. The preference is for the ready-meal, so that the consumer doesn’t have to think about or handle the food in order to eat it; so that the food bears little resemblance to the plant or animal from which it came and the consumer doesn’t have to think about where it came from and what’s been done to it to get it to the table, totally divorced from the production process.

The fact that there even *is* a “production process” is appalling. Food is *grown* not *made*. It comes from the ground, not from factories, and the more steps there are between ground and plate makes it *worse*, not *better*. Just because these processes disguise the food so that our squeamish sensibilities aren’t offended by the identification of plant or animal matter on our plates doesn’t make it better – each step reduces the healthfulness of the food, both in the process itself, and in terms of the quality requirements of the original product. Arguments that there is insufficient land to support greater simplicity in the food chain simply don’t hold water – large-scale industrialised agriculture is massively inefficient in both land-usage and yields, and unsustainable in the longer-term because of the need to compensate the efficiencies with increasingly toxic chemical fixes.

The best food is the food that has not been messed about with, that comes off the land and onto our plates with the minimum of distance, time and interference, that has not been subjected to artificial growth enhancers and/or disease inhibitors and that takes account of natural growing rhythms, seasons and locality. I think we need to fundamentally rethink our attitudes to food and set aside our squeamishness to recognise that we cannot divorce ourselves from the growth of our food: we are all part of a great circle – from dust we came and to dust we return. The compost cycle is the quickest and easiest way to grasp that ….within a short period of time, plant matter is broken back down into earth, it goes into the garden and nourishes the food we grow that in turn nourishes us, and the plant waste is composted. And so it goes on. If it can’t be composted, then we shouldn’t be using it, IMO.

To make that connection again, to return to that sustainable cycle of knowledge and understanding  that the earth supports and sustains us rather than offering us a disease-ridden threat is something we need to do, urgently. To change our thinking so that we view food as an essential part of nourishing our minds and bodies rather than a leisure activity, is something we need to do, urgently. To turn away from over-processed zero-benefit food to fresh, healthful alternatives benefits us, and it benefits the planet. 

It’s time to change.

Cook from scratch, eat local food, in season, bought from local producers and *not* the supermarket.

It doesn’t take a lot of time, it will save you a lot of money, and it might just save your life.

Needs, wants & a sense of balance

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty:

You do not see that the Real is in your home, and you wander from forest to forest listlessly!

Here is the truth! Go where you will, to Benares or to Mathura; if you do not find your soul, the world is unreal to you.

Songs of Kabir XLIII

LISTENING to BBC Radio 4’s ‘Midweek’ programme on Wednesday was a welcome diversion in what has been a grim week – Bellaboo came down with a nasty stomach virus and ended up in hospital on Thursday (fortunately, it’s all over & she’s recovering now). The final guest on the programme was Michael Wood, who was talking about a journey he made into Tibet in search of Shangri-La, and it struck me that in a sense we are all searching for Shangri-La in our own lives, for that little piece of heaven-on-earth where there is peace, harmony and contentment both internally and externally.

THAT sense, coupled with a comment Libby Purves made about our tendency to romanticise these remote, under-developed areas, set me thinking about how we address our wants and needs, and that naturally led me back to Maslow.

HE proposed a hierarchy of needs, suggesting that at the base level, we need to satisfy basic physiological and security needs for food, water, shelter and safety, and with those satisfied, we would then fulfil emotional needs – social & belonging needs, needs relating to recognition and self-esteem. And only when all those needs were satisfied, could we achieve everyone’s ultimate goal – self-actualisation.

SELF-ACTUALISATION is, for the individual, the realisation of one’s potential, the point where one becomes all that one wants to be. To me, sceptic agnostic that I am, there is a strong spiritual element to this, a sense that one is not only all that one can be in terms of realising one’s own potential and talents (to paraphrase Thoreau: “living the life you have imagined”), but also implies a high degree of connectivity with the world around oneself – in relationships and in a wider context of understanding and accepting one’s place in the world. It seems to me to be a profoundly peaceful place, and reminiscent of what have been described variously as ‘peak experiences’ or ‘epiphanies’, or, I suppose, the perfect peace of the buddha or sufi master.

SO far, so good. The framework holds, it makes sense, and I can relate it to my own sets of wants and needs. Until I look at the world around me, and then I start to question it. Whilst I know that subsequent researchers have either built upon Maslow’s work, or else posited that there is no such thing as a universal theory of needs, or that there is no ranking to those needs, I think his groupings are fundamentally correct, and I also think that all humans, with their smart, questioning brains, are driven to a greater or lesser extent by the need for self-actualisation, to understand and accept their place in the world whilst existing in the fullest, most real sense, that they are able to.

HOWEVER, what I see is that instead of a hierarchy of needs, with higher level needs fulfilled in sequence when lower level needs are satisfied, is that the need to self-actualise can drive over-compensation in areas where needs *can* be satisfied, to make up for a lack of satisfaction in areas where needs *cannot* be satisfied. For example, a lack of satisfaction of the need for social interaction and a feeling of belonging can lead to over-satisfaction in, say physiological needs, in the consumption of food, drink or material possessions, in an attempt to fulfil the missing need by available means in the hope that it will lead one to self-actualisation. The obverse could be true as well: a lack of satisfaction of physiological needs resulting in a strong dependence of social and cultural identity to compensate for physical poverties.

THIS I can observe in the world around me: in the culture of the developed world, over-concentration and over-consumption of material things – food, drink, possessions – are commonplace, and the satisfaction of the physical self is the established view as the best way to realise one’s potential, and increasingly the higher-level needs of belonging, of community, of love, compassion, empathy and esteem are dismissed as unprofitable and therefore worthless indulgences in an increasingly secular society.

BY contrast, in the developing world, where physical needs cannot be met, where there is hunger, thirst, poverty and insecurity, we see groups of people with fierce, all-consuming loyalties to family, tribe, religion and region that spill into conflict and disharmony even in the few areas where there are sufficient physical resources to satisfy basic needs. And we see in the developed world an increasing tendency to romanticise these communities, a wistful envy for a way of life, a sense of belonging and place, that is lost to us, and we do not see the physical hardship of life in such places, and we do not understand that to exchange the physical luxuries of our lives for this sense of belonging is to exchange our security for a life of punishing physical toil for uncertain return, a life where there are few rights and fewer protections, where medical aid is a hope and prayer rather than a quick visit to the GP or hospital.

IN neither instance can self-actualisation be achieved. And in both circumstances, the clash of the different positions – of lack/need in physical elements and need/lack of emotional (belonging) elements gives rise to disharmony and conflict where the different priorities and outlooks come into opposition. We see this in undeveloped regions resisting the evils of the material, developed world, the denunciation on the one hand of modern technologies and attitudes as destructive evils, and the insistence on the other that to resist such advances is a clear sign of wrong-thinking backwardness. Such cultural arrogance can only lead to dissonance and conflict.

HOW then, can the trick be managed? If we look to history, to the people who could be said to have achieved self-actualisation – Aristotle, Socrates, Mohamed, Jesus, the Buddha, the Gurus and Sufi masters and a handful of other saints, prophets and philosophers - or more recently at people like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt, what can we observe? That their needs are met and satisfied and held in balance, allowing the person at the centre the space to realise their full potential. That there is a recognition that neither physical needs nor emotional needs can alone represent the whole reality of a person, but rather that both are aspects of that same whole that must be acknowledged and addressed. In some instances, self-actualisation is made possible by the complete lack of both physical and emotional support – Jesus’ 40 days and nights in the wilderness spring to mind – but in all cases what is apparent is that an inner balance is acheived, when needs are met in full and the individual is freed from concerning themself with fulfilling those needs and is able to concentrate on the inner self.

Thus the needs could be represented more as a set of balanced weights: self-actualisation only possible when both physical and emotional needs are in equilibrium, thus:

UNDERSTANDING the need for balance in those terms has broad application for me. Not only does it give a powerful insight into my own thinking about my life and how well I balance the different elements, but it also allows me to see where I am out of balance and changes my thinking about how I can address that imbalance. It allows me to recognise that I am in a place where all my physical needs are met: I have enough to eat and drink, I have shelter of the finest sort and enough possessions to make that shelter comfortable and aesthetically pleasant, I have security (although I perceive there are threats to that security). In that regard, I am lucky. Possibly, I have a surfeit: certainly, a surfeit is available to me, should I want it. I perceive too, that although I go some way to satisfying my emotional needs: my relationships with my immediate family and my sense of my self-worth and my engagement with the activities and occupations that satisfy my esteem-needs. However I can see a lack of a sense of social-belonging, a lack of community. That will always be hard for me: social interaction is never going to be easy for someone with Aspergers, no matter how much I want to bridge the gap. But, and this chimes in with my recurring house-dream, it becomes apparent that it is a need I must address, in one form or another.

IN parenting, too, this model gives me an insight into my children’s development and their ability and *desire* to both *recognise* and fulfil their own potential. It is too easy to focus on the easy-to-satisfy physical needs, particularly because I find others’ emotions so hard to identify and understand, and I have done so to the exclusion of some important emotional needs. I recognise now the dangerous pattern-setting behaviour in distracting a distressed child with a food-treat, how that can set up the transference of an emotional lack into a physical need, and send the individual out of balance. It is something I can change, and I need to do so.

I THINK this is a particularly powerful and timely insight in Honey’s case. She stands on the cusp of some enormous changes, at that pre-teen transition phase, and already some of those changes are starting to kick in – she’s moody, mouthy, emotional. What I need to do is support her, feed her emotional needs for acceptance and love so that she has the courage and confidence to find her feet in the tricky rapids ahead. We made our first tentative steps today: a grey overcast didn’t stop us sharing a lovely time in the garden, and athough I had to force myself to abandon my preferred mode of solo-working, the time spent working together and achieving something wonderful and a mutual appreciation of a job well done transformed a cantankerous madam into a sweet, thoughtful, helpful delight. It’s a good, timely lesson, and one I need to learn and apply for her sake, for her siblings’ sake, and for my own sake.

HOW I do that, and make all the other changes, is something I have yet to work out.

End of Quarter progress update . . .

Progress update for end of Q1 2009 . . .

I think it’s overall been a pretty productive one, although as always I find it difficult to recognise my own achievements and focus on where I’m ‘failing’, even though I *always* think I’m going to get more done in a day than I ever do! Still, I’m happy with the quality of the *work* that I’ve been doing, even if progress is slower than I’d hoped.  Time always seems to be my enemy – there’s always more I want to do than I ever have time to accomplish, and the constant juggling gets a bit wearing from time-to-time, and it’s difficult to accept that if I’ve had a good week with the children, then the house looks like a bombsite, but to keep the house clean means neglecting the children …. hello, no-win situation!! The problem is that I end up killing the time I’d use to look after myself – my down time when I’m not parenting, huswiffing or working – in order to keep up with these ‘tasks’, and so it’s the very personal diet and exercise elements that are falling off the radar, as are the handful of self-development targets I’d set myself. I can’t get to them without compromising on the ‘bigger blocks’ of the tasks. I know that rather than bemoaning a lack of time, I should re-prioritise the other things I do, but I’m kind of stuck in a rut with everything, where it’s too difficult (or I don’t have time ) to step outside myself to see what I *need* to do vs what I *want* to do, and prioritising accordingly.

Is there anything I could live with doing less of? The one thing that springs to mind is housework …. it’s something I keep coming back to – can I afford a cleaner to tackle the big cleaning jobs? Do I want a “stranger” in my house? How much time would that really save me? I can’t cut back on the time I spend with the children – until Bellaboo goes to school, anyhoo, nor do I want to cut back on writing time, or the time I spend on Magpies. That leaves precious little else to compromise on. I’m not sure where that leaves me.

One thing this last quarter has taught me, and that I’m facing reluctantly, is that I am getting older, and that I don’t have the stamina I once had. I’ve faced a string of injuries – from a badly torn trapezoid through carpal tunnel, twisted back and swollen knees – and a sequence of stupid coughs, colds, headaches and other minor upsets, all of which tell me that my body can’t meet the demands I’m placing on it any more. Which means that to do more, I need to urgently address issues of health and wellbeing – diet, exercise, and sleep. My hope is that by making myself focus on those areas in the next quarter, by eating right, sleeping well and exercising regularly, I will actually find I have the energy, concentration and focus to better meet the targets I’m setting myself elsewhere, and keep up with the delightful mix of different and interesting activitie s on which I spend my life.

1) Writing  Work list/schedule:

Standard tasks:

- maintain schedule discipline of write/edit/submit a story every other week

In 13 weeks I have written 1 not-so-short story (21k!), edited 3 in detail, and submitted 10 times. Some of those submissions are re-subs of rejected stories. I feel odd about realising that I’m actually on top of the schedule, in so far as I’m sticking to the average of 1 submission every other week, because I’m not writing anything new, nor am I working the backlog. In reality, I haven’t been dropping out of the ‘big’ projects I’ve been working on to hit the short stories, I’ve been rounding up once I’ve finished a project. I think that’s still OK, because I’m averaging around a month on each of the projects, so to slot in a two-week interlude for short-storying etc in between each project is working well for me. Going forward, I think I’m going to make it a target to *add* one new story to the inventory (whether written from scratch or reworked from back-catalogue) each time I do a pass through. This month, it’s ‘In Skin’ which hit the 10-reject mark, and got an in-depth rework – I’m pleased with the outcome, so hopefully it’ll pick up a hit soon ….

- maintain current crit group commitments

Absolutely up to date on this one ….

- complete the “How to Think Sideways” course

I’m behind on this …. I urgently need to knuckle down and put in a good couple of weeks work on it. I got stalled out on the lesson that deals with synopses, query letters and proposals, because they’re so *not fun* and such high-risk activities that I just went into shut-down. However, I need to do these so as soon as I’ve got the Disconnection rewrite under my belt, I’m taking a time out and catching up. Honest.

 Anneth:

- finalise, prepare synopsis and query letters and get out on the submission rounds

Not started! I am so chicken!!! (Plus it’s with my critique group at the moment so will be back with editing needs …..) (and lots of other excuses). I will prepare the synopsis & query letter this quarter, put through any crit-driven changes in Q3 and get it out on the rounds by the end of September.

 Serpent of Colchis:

- complete edit by end of Q1 2009 – DONE!

 Disconnection

- rewrite by end Q1 2009

In progress. It’s a little more extensive than an edit write-in, since the edit pass I did a couple of years ago (the shame of it!!) showed up some major shortcomings which I’ve addressed, and I’ve added in an entirely new sub-plot which both links-in and underscores the main plot activity, so I’ve got about 15k of the original 80-odd-k I wrote that can be re-used, the rest is entirely new. I’m estimating around a 75k finished MS, of which I’ve got 19k written, mostly thanks to FMWriters ‘March Madness’ challenge to write 3k a day.

Writing 3k a day is a tough call when it means that I’ve got to generate 1k/hour out of my daily 3hr writing session. What I found was that I could maintain that sort of pace & intensity for the first 5 days without too much problem, but the last 2 days turned into a real battle for words. At least part of the problem was that this wasn’t standard ‘first draft’ writing, where the words just spill onto the page in more-or-les random fashion, this is a re-write and is a much more controlled and calculating process, less ‘muse’ and more ‘me’ with much closer attention on technical details than I’d normally put into a first draft. So it’s been much more draining as an exercise. My conclusion is that for *this project* what I’m going to do is maintain an intense 5-day-on @ 3k words schedule, but then effectively take the weekends off for critiquing and short storying and blogging and reading and other *fun* things, to stop my enthusiasm stalling to the point where I can’t bear to look at the damn MS. AGAIN.

Textile arts/crafting – from a business perspective, this is more or less where I want it to be right now, though I have branched out to an Etsy shop this year. There are a couple of objectives I want to state, though they feel a little nebulous at this stage.

- try 1 new stitch, technique or craft I haven’t tried before each month

- shame on me! I’ve been so manic, the only new thing I’ve tried is smocking. I liked it, I think I will do it again, and can see several applications (just not in clothing) where it could make a glorious decorative statement. It is rather a labour of love, and once I’d mastered the stitches it’s rather monotonous to do – I’m not sure I’d want to smock an adult garment, for example!!!

- stick to my ‘buy handmade’ pledge

I’ve not bought much for either the house or for myself this year, beyond some supplies for Magpies and a couple of gifts. Sadly, the boy presents I got were stock-from-toyshop because I wasn’t organised enough on the handmade front to get something in time, and it’s difficult to find *good* handmade toys and games for children over toddler age, particularly boys who aren’t necessarily interested in personal ornamentation. Difficult, but not impossible – will try harder!

- stick to my ‘wardrobe refashion’ pledge

on track with that! Have done some refashions for both me and Bellaboo, more to follow …. in my (copious – hah!) spare time …

- do at least one of Marysa’s lovely courses at the Otter Bindery

It’s still on the agenda, but I’ve not been able to get to one recently …. I’m devastated that this weekend she’s doing Japanese Book-Binding and I can’t make it. No FAir!

Personal - not so much here, though with so much going on in the above two, one of them must be:

- REMEMBER I HAVE A FAMILY

- I will take at least 2 weeks holiday this year

 - oooh, ooooh – I’m on track with this!!! I took  a week off for Feb half-term!!!

- I will try at least 1 new thing with at least 1 of my children every month

- well, kind of, but not in a structured way …. I took Bellaboo to the swimming pool & we both had a fantastic time just splashing about. One to try again. Rumpus & I made chocolate chip banana cake. I think he enjoyed cleaning the bowl out more afterwards …. I need to be more relaxed about both mess and the need to do things exactly right, but I think the important thing is to appreciate the one-to-one time that we otherwise miss out on. That came to light in full effect with Honey last weekend …. for whatever reason (mainly her deep immersion in Harry Potter) we hadn’t had any one-to-one time for ages, and on Sunday I washed & conditioned her hair & gave her a head massage and then sat and brushed and dried it to salon standard over the brush – it was just gorgeous to spend the time with her, and made me realise how overlooked she gets because she is so mature and steady and doesn’t need the constant “supervision” the younger ones get. Doesn’t seem fair she misses out, really. My objective is to try to get Bellaboo to sleep and then spend a bit of time with Honey once the others have gone to sleep, just chatting or sewing or playing scrabble/shut-the-box/uno/whatever. I think she needs it – her teacher says she’s rather lost her way this term, and whilst her symptoms match up with classic pre-teen, I don’t think that means I can (as the school helpfully suggest ) just wait it out.

- I will work through the “How to talk/how to listen” book

shame on me! Haven’t even opened it ….

- go to bed before midnight at least 4 times a week

oh dear. can’t remember the last time I did …. tonight, I will!

- Books/Reading

- I will read at least 20 books this year, and I will (try to) not buy any more books (excl below) until I’ve caught up my backlog

- Crystal Line – Anne McCaffrey

- Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck

- Perfume – Patrick Suskind

- I will catalogue the existing collection on Library Thing

8/32 shelves listed, 3 cartons not even started. A long way to go ….

- After cataloguing the existing collection, I will rationalise it, and divest duplicates, those I won’t read again and the misfits in the first edition collection

- I will reinvest the proceeds of any divestments in new acquisitions that fit with the first ed/rare collection

- house and garden

- grow more fruit and veg this year than we did last year – stick to the planting and maintenance plan

well, that at least is on track …. garden is starting to come together, and the potting shed is looking like day-of-the-triffids …. need to start planting out and getting further successional sowings done. April is a bit manic on the gardening front, I don’t see that much else is going to happen!

- reduce waste again to 1/2 a bin bag every week

That’s going pretty well, and we got an unexpected bonus as the council have announced a switch to wheely bins plus kitchen caddies for food waste as of September, so that’s all good. I look at our 1/2 to 1 bag per week against next-door’s  usual 5 or so, and wonder if I should offer to help them reduce theirs …..

- take another 5% off our total energy usage for the year

My crusade to minimise electricity usage continues in the face of familial intransigence: tho the children have mostly got the “TURN IT OFF” message, t’o-m is consistently the worst culprit, despite my best efforts to represent money-saving aspects …. sigh. The battle has a way to go, but we’re more-or-less holding steady against last year – which is actually pretty good, considering the addition of laptop & Wii to the household. I’ve signed up for Selvedge’s pledge to turn off the tumble-dryer, tho admittedly it won’t save much because it more or less exists with an ‘in emergency break glass panel’ isolation and only really gets used for desperate & immediate nappy needs, and/or holiday packing.

- declutter and redecorate loft, improve my workspace

Did a massive declutter and reorganise, but little has happened since then. I need to decorate and put some shelving up, so that I can shift the 3 big boxes of books onto shelves, and evacuate the copies of Economist/New Scientist/Resurgence/National Geographical out of their storage boxes & onto shelves where theyre more accessible. Difficult to set aside time to do it, because my task-time in the week is Bellaboo’s sleep time – so drilling & that sort of carry on is not an option. Sigh. Looks like it might be a rainy-weekend’s work later in the year ….

- list and sort out all the little leftover jobs now the refurb is finished

Well, we made a list, and it’s more or less been allocated. It’s just a question of working through it now! Things are starting to happen – the kitchen walls are finally de-tiled, re-plastered and ready to paint. We’ve got, we think, a solution to the missing kitchen-floor-tile situation, subject to t’o-m being able to prise them off the floor somewhere else intact. Curse you, Porcelanosa, for discontinuing our tile!!!!

- and last but not least, get my BMI back down to 22. It’s completely out of control since Bellaboo arrived, and I don’t think I can call it baby fat any more. It’s just fat. It must go.

Well, the least said about this, the better. It’s one step forward and 2 back at the moment. I’ve been trying to get into a routine with it, and have been stymied at every turn by illness and injury – either my own or others!! I am, though, determined not to bail out on this, so once I’m clear of the latest cough (me), swollen knee (me), stomach bug (Rumpus) & clock-change induced insomnia (Bellaboo) I’m getting right back to it. I *so* need a Time Turner. Still can’t find one on ebay!