Flying down to Rio Part III. A Beetle, Jesus and crabs

Posted on August 9, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

By the sink in my bathroom sits a small paper bag containing pills. Lomotil, they’re called.  A gift from an American colleague’s wife.

Thanks to them, I no longer need to visit the bathroom several times a night, every night. But the bugs are still sticking pins in my abdomen.

I would eat something different for dinner, but beef’s really all there is. And if it’s the caipirinhas – well, forget it. I need the stress relief.

Yes, I know, I’m in Rio, but it’s no holiday. Most days I’m out at the swamp  – sorry, exhibition centre – well before 7 am, ready for another day brimming with challenges.

Today, Sandra has a meeting in town, so I’m default driver. The Americans with us don’t like ‘stick-shifts’, I’m told. But, unlike me, the poor American chap in the passenger seat, does drive on the right …

‘Watch out!’ He yells. But it’s too late.

Taxi drivers gather. Someone winkles me out, reverses the car into the hotel car park.

The almighty bang that shot me sideways – yes, I was wearing my seat belt – hasn’t done any permanent damage to me. Just to the Beetle. But my already fragile morale shatters into a thousand pieces the moment the sympathy starts.

Tears flow like British summer rain. My shoulder hurts a bit, but my ego hurts a lot.

And it gets worse.

  1. I wasn’t insured to drive the Beetle (I didn’t know).
  2. Accidents have to be reported, in person, by the driver, at the police offices.
  3. A vast pool of witnesses saw me drive out into the traffic looking the wrong way.

But:

  1. I’m just a British female. Not a memorable, girl-from-Ipanema female.
  2. Sandra has the same colour hair as me.

Sandra queues, reports the accident. Saves my bacon.

Which is yet another reason why, sitting around the pool on a welcome Sunday off, I’m staring at her in admiration.

She’s so cool, so calm, so – different from me. And she’s organised a visit from a gem dealer.

I gawp at emeralds.  She buys them.

I gave my mum the teardrop shaped one, she never had it mounted. A jeweller in Shaftesbury, Dorset, turned the triangular one into a silver ring which became known as 'the ring of power'. Worn at important meetings, it was supposed to boost my confidence.

I gave my mum the teardrop shaped one, she never had it mounted. A jeweller in Shaftesbury, Dorset, turned the triangular one into a silver ring which became known as ‘the ring of power’. Worn at important meetings, it was supposed to boost my confidence.

I buy some pretty smoky quartz. Beautifully cut (I’m told). And cheap.

I thought I threw this away last year, but apparently not! Sentimental fool am I...

I thought I threw this away last year, but apparently not! Sentimental fool am I…

We visit a hippy market. I buy a sarong made of coarse, tie-dyed cotton.

It makes me feel better  around the pool (yes, I followed Sandra’s lead,  started wearing heels, but heels don’t hide thighs.)

I also buy a wooden sculpture of Jesus.

Why????

I think it’s the sun.

Or gratitude.

Or maybe the shock, lingering.

Anyway.

One thing at least is working out well. What with running around the site, the tummy bug and dawn swims, I’ve lost a load of weight.

Guys at the exhibition are chatting me up. One’s rather nice.

I accept an invitation to dinner. At a very smart restaurant. Top floor of a tower, view of a world-famous beach at dusk.

Pudding comes with a sparkler – I’ve never seen anything like it.

But then I make a big mistake. I go back with him to his hotel.

I know, I know!  It sounds stupid. But it’s still early, where else are we going to go? And every night we all congregate at our hotels, so it seems quite normal…

It’s a really bad idea.

Suffice it to say he’s expecting payback for the fancy meal. Doesn’t get it. Sends me back across Rio, alone, in a taxi.

Apparently no-one sends foreign females home alone in taxis. But I survive.

[Look into the crystal ball: his boss tells him off for his presumption. Back home, he takes me out. He’s a cute little chap with a cute little sports car, but, actually, not my type. The End.]

On safer ground, I make a new female friend, from the Boston office. Let’s call her Betsy.

We get on really well. So well, she confides something really very personal.

I wish she hadn’t.

You see, I’ve had quite a sheltered upbringing.

Apart from a girl who lived across the corridor from me at university, who barged in one day telling me she’d ‘got the clap’ (and her boyfriend telling me what the doctor did to him), I’m not really familiar with what they call venereal disease. Or in this case, not disease, but – well, not to hedge around it any more – crabs.

There, I’ve said it.

I didn’t know about crabs. Now I do.

Anyway, Betsy has had the treatment and now she’s clean. Or whatever you say when you no longer have crabs.

She helps me buy some shoes – mine don’t let enough air circulate round my purple feet, apparently. I find a pair of with just enough leather strapping to hold high-heeled wooden soles to my toes.

The extra height makes up for the ignominy of flaky violet feet. And they come in useful when we fly back to Boston.

Betsy invites me to stay at her upside-down house on a river.  I have no casual clothes, so borrow a pair of jeans. Betsy’s taller than me and the new shoes compensate for my shorter legs.

We go shopping. Eat lobster. Have a riot.

I sleep upstairs, on the sofabed.

Day three, her jeans lying on the floor beside my bed, I hear a wail coming from the bathroom.

’Noooooooo!’

The crabs are back. And I’ve been wearing her trousers.

You know what imagination does. Just think about nits and wait for your scalp to itch.

But by the time I’m back in London, when it’s plain I escaped the wee beasties, something else is amiss.

I wake every night, sweating and cold.  Have no appetite. My doctor diagnoses exhaustion – and possibly malaria. Gives me two weeks off work.

My editor in Boston thinks I’m malingering. He wasn’t there, doesn’t know how bad it was.

Soon, it doesn’t matter what he thinks. Those nice folks from Philips, the ones I met in Rio, invite me out to play. Offer me a job in the Netherlands.

The legacy of Rio?

Always expect the unexpected. Who knows, it just might happen.

Or, in the happy case of the crabs, it might not.

smoky quartz sequence

 

 

 

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Flying down to, Rio Part II (the bit with the purple feet)

Posted on August 5, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

Beautiful. That’s Rio. Well, the public face. If you ignore the favellas. Which it’s hard to do from our hotel unless you wear earplugs. Then you wouldn’t hear the dogs howling or the shots at night.

But the mountains are beautiful. The sea and the beaches are beautiful. All the young people (it seems) are beautiful.

Long-limbed girls in teeny bikinis. Swinging so coolly and swaying so gently.*

Bronzed gods exercising on the kind of equipment I last saw in our smelly school gym – but on the beach.

Yes, the smart side of Rio is so lovely it’s depressing.

I had a perm not long before I left. Big mistake.  I have to spend ages, each day, blow-drying it. And given my new routine, I could do without that.

I’m up way too early. Swimming lengths in the pool by five thirty. Just two of us sharing the cool hours. Me and the man scooping out last night’s shower of leaves.

The best part of the day comes next. Room service breakfast.

Lush little pastries, pregant with custard. A big orange grin of papaya. A fruit I’d never eaten before – now, I’m hooked.

But, all too soon, I must go. Sandra slips into my room so we can be seen leaving together.

It’s 40 kilometres out to the exhibition centre. Sandra drives us in a rented VW Beetle while I try not to fall asleep.

By the time we arrive the sun’s beaming, the sky’s impossibly blue and the mountains framing the distant view are –  yes – beautiful.

The site is a reclaimed swamp. But no-one told the mosquitoes. Or the rodents.

My base is a subterranean room with no windows. And the air conditioning – such as it is – doesn’t work the long hours we work.

The cable ducts that open into the room are handy – for the rats. But that’s what chairs are for, right? For jumping on.

I learn early on that I must work with the ‘mañana’ thing.  Book essential services to arrive way too early and keep my fingers crossed.

The opening day arrives, the ceremony happens, the speeches go well. The scurry of waiters arrives… half an hour after everyone’s finished.

I booked them for two hours earlier than needed. It’s not a great start. And it just gest worse.

The conference programme, nicely printed in booklets, distributed widely in advance, copies posted out around the world to all the particpants,  is wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I scurry around telling speakers, posting notices and – yes – keeping my fingers crossed. But getting the right people in the right rooms is, it turns out, the easy part.

The first time we use the ‘flexible’ big room – designed so it can be subdivided – there’s a gasp as the lights go off for the slide show in room number 1.

The gasp is from room number 2.

Because the lights are all controlled from one side. Worse, they’re all either on or off across the entire, flexible space.

Luckily I have the electrician on standby. And he has a bright idea. (He’s a bright Sparks ha ha! Sorry.)

He gives me instructions in baby-Spanish, then dashes down to the fuse cupboard on the floor below. I take my position outside the meeting rooms, appoint people from each room to tell me when the lights should be off.

A volunteer stands at the top of the stairs, another at the bottom.

‘Lights off room 1.’

A stage whisper passes along the line – and it works.

It’s fun, you can imagine. No stress. No stress at all.

But after a week or so things settle down a little. I reprise the role of journalist now and then, visiting stands on the huge exhibition centre and – I will find out in due course – meeting my future employers at a well-known firm in The Netherlands.

We even squeeze in some sightseeing.  Corcovado (‘oh how lovely’), the cable car up Sugar Loaf.

Those views!

Basking, hump-backed  islands. Like mythical sea creatures, marooned by old magic.

Yes, Rio is … beautiful.

But it’s not a great place for the morale. I mean, no tan to speak of, classic English pear shape. And don’t mention the thighs.

How come Sandra looks so good around the pool?

Eventually the penny drops – she’s wearing heels.  I’d never have thought of that. But I’m not about to copy her. Two weeks in, the last thing I want to draw attention to is my feet. Which are peeling, badly, visibly, distressingly (well I am a young woman of marriageable age).

I visit the nurse. She tells me it’s fungus.

Mortifying.

The office, the rats, the mosquitoes – that wasn’t enough? No, the heat and humidity have done their worst and now I must suffer the ignominy of having my feet painted, all over, with Gentian Violet.

I’ve never been painted with Gentian Violet before. It’s stained my feet purple. When it wears off I have to have it applied again.

I feel like a member of a secret society. Not one the girl from Ipanema would have joined.

But then, she probably wouldn’t have got foot fungus. And almost certainly wouldn’t have done what I did next.

But that’s for the next – and final –  instalment of this husk’s Rio memoir.**getz gilberto

*you have to know the words to the Girl from Ipanema to understand why I use these adverbs 😉

**which tbh I wish I’d never started 😦  And if you’re wondering why no pictures – I didn’t have a camera and it’s long before digital photography.

 

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Flying down to Rio

Posted on August 1, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

It’s late April, 1980 BE.*                                                                                                            *Before Email

I’m in an office in London, not far from the Houses of Parliament. Listening for the stutter of an incoming telex.

Sending a telex is quite a skill, especially correcting mistakes. And I’m not very good at it.

A person types a message into a machine. In this case, a person in Boston, USA.  Force is needed, the keys being stubborn.

The machine turns words into holes in a thin paper tape. The tape’s fed through a machine that converts the holes into signals.

The signals swim through submarine cables across the Atlantic.

A machine in London turns the signals back into words. And prints them on paper.

Magic!

Anyway.

I’ve been travelling a lot for this job over the last year or so.

Every day I can choose from an array of duty-free perfumes. Some still unopened.

In the only shared social space of our north London flat – the kitchen – there’s a cupboard of duty-free bottles of booze. Gin and whisky, Cointreau and Benedictine, bought in airports while waiting for planes back home.

But, despite the cheap booze, travelling hasn’t helped my social life.

‘What’ve you been up to,’ friends say, when I find the time to see them (I often have to cancel because my work’s so unpredictable).

I don’t tell them any more.

If I tell them the truth – where I’ve been, for example – they put on, ‘here we go again, “I’ve been jet-setting all over the place,” she’s such a show-off,’ faces.

You see, no-one else is going anywhere. None of them travel abroad for their work. A train trip to a Manchester branch office is about as exotic as it gets. A holiday in Europe, if they’re lucky.

But I can’t help it, it’s my job.

And it’s all a big mistake.

You see, the guy who should’ve been flying around visiting digital telephone exchanges, driving French army tank simulators and taking notes in fibre optic cable factories –  the man who hired me – he left one Friday afternoon and never came back.

I started the following Monday. Now I’m all that our Boston HQ has to keep the London editorial function going. And believe me, it’s not enough.

A history graduate, a rubbish one at that, the sole European conduit for news about telecommunications and defence?

Yup.

But here I am, faute de mieux, (my French is improving), passport in handbag, as always, just in case.

And this time, there’s a really big trip on the cards. Three weeks in the southern hemisphere. Which is why I’m on edge, waiting for that telex, anxious, because for once I really want to go.

A colleague (let’s call her Sandra), who works on the exhibition side of things, has already gone. She’s en route, in Boston.

Yesterday the tension got the better of me. I braved the telex beast.

‘To fly or not to fly?’ I thumped out in dots on the tape. ‘That is my question.’

And now, the machine is chattering out the reply.

The message is simple and, as it turns out, somewhat prophetic:

‘Start packing, you’re going to suffer the slings and arrows along with the rest of us!’

It’s unnaturally chilly in London for April. I travel in a raincoat, wearing knee-length boots and a scarf.

Boston, too, is a little on the fresh side. But I’m not staying long and soon I’m on the first of two more flights.

As we stroll through Miami airport, my companion, a plump man of Middle Eastern origin, hands perennially flicking through worry beads (and who blagged us up to first class on the way here) chuckles.

‘Have you noticed people staring at you?’

I have.

It’s not my looks, it’s the raincoat.  And the boots.

It’s warm, not to say hot, here in Miami.

I’ve put the scarf in my bag.

We board our second flight. Anxiety overriding my embarrassment.

My companion had already told me how many flights you need to have taken take before your risk of dying in a crash goes way up (congratulate me, I’m there!).

Now he tells me Caracas, the next stop on our route, is one of the most dangerous airports in the world. A shelf with a huge drop if you overshoot the runway.

We land. I keep my eyes shut. We take off. I keep my eyes shut.

I live to tell the tale.

As we approach Rio my calves are trying to fight their way out of my boots. By the time we’re in the airport I wonder if I’m going to have to cut them off.

But I don’t.

Soon I’m unpacking in the room I’m going to ‘share’ with Sandra.

The illusion of Sandra.

Because it’s now as clear as the mud coming out of the shower head, that my presence here has less to do with my superior conference organising capabilities than my mute loyalty to Sandra. Who, it seems, is really rather fond of my travelling companion.

Next: my conference organising capabilities are stretched to breaking point.

 My feet turn purple.

 And Sandra saves my bacon, big time …

And if you want a bit of amazement from 1933 here’s some ‘wing dancing’ (the planes are real that’s all I’ll say)

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Two booklets and a spiral. Ways of being humankind

Posted on July 25, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

Poetry seems to stalk the streets of Liverpool. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration given I’m basing it on a mere two examples, but they are good ones.

I’ll start with the most recent.

Last year I went to a political rally in a well-known hotel in the city centre. A first for me – a rally organised by trades unionists in support of a left-wing member of parliament.

The atmosphere was way above buzzing. It was crackling, fizzing, bursting. As was the room. Bursting I mean.

Just the front of the hall

Just the front of the banqueting hall

Health and safety rules had fled long before the fire exits were blocked.

It’s a miracle we weren’t squashed like flies against the mirror doors behind us.

But skip the rousing speeches, the roars of wild applause, the chanting.

On the way out, a man stood on the steps, handing out business cards.

I took one.

Many people didn’t.

I assumed he ran a taxi business. Or a radical magazine, something of that ilk. But when, months later I came across that card – white type out of black, making it hard to read – it turned out he was a poet.

That was last summer.

Now … peer into the TV screen of time and ripple back a few years.

We’ve been to our local community cinema. It’s a sunny summer’s evening, light and warm.

We’re walking out, hand in hand (ahh), when we both notice a man, standing on the inner edge of the footpath, watching passers-by.

He looks sort of furtive. Without saying a word, we both know we’ve noticed, acknowledge we won’t acknowledge him, carry on chatting banalities.

We pass him, hoping he won’t launch into a rant. We’re feeling good, post-film. Don’t want any tirades.

But he steps right up to us, proffering a booklet.

Polite beings that we are, we stop and listen.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he begins.

And minutes later we walk away – or he does. Yes, I think he does. Leaving us bemused, almost tearful, but feeling warm inside.

He met his wife of many years at this same cinema. She’s no longer in this world – and he misses her. Writes poems. Printed some in this booklet I hold in my hand.

So far, so sad, even if so beautiful. But there’s more.

He watched as people left, waiting for a couple, two people who looked happy in each other’s company.

And he selected us, on that basis, for his gift.

I’d like to share some of that poetry with you, but the booklet is lost amid boxes and papers, envelopes and biros, huddled in the spare room while my office is stripped, a radiator moved, two holes in the ceiling repaired, a carpet replaced, the walls painted.

It may be some time before I find that very slim volume.

Sitting in front of me as I type, though, is another booklet. A small book in every way except ambitions and meaning.

It’s called The Gifts of Reading.  The author is someone called Robert MacFarlane.WP_20160725_15_10_16_Pro

An essay in 34 small pages, it’s about the author – aren’t all books ultimately? But it’s also about the giving and receiving of gifts, the giving and receiving of affection, the giving and receiving of friendship.

The booklet itself is a gift to me from someone, a kind, caring person, who bought several copies to give away. A stratagem for being humankind endorsed by Mr MacFarlane.

The proceeds from the little book go to Migrant Offshore Aid Station.  That’s being humankind, too. But even if the proceeds went to the author, the gift has already given. It’s kind, it’s thoughtful, it’s touching.

The world is a weighty burden, at the moment. To think about the state of things is to feel bowed, dismayed, even hopeless.

In Britain we have somehow voted to leave our friends in Europe.

Our politics are in turmoil – and in that we’re not alone.

Hate and paranoia lurk in the ether like evil sprites around midnight.

But.

Let’s pedal down to Mecycle, aka the bike café. A social enterprise, run by Autism Initiatives.

My sanctuary when times are bad.

Lovely young people dressed in black, serve teas, coffees, cakes. Wines beers and tasty treats.

But they’re far from immune to the currents of negativity dragging our lives off course.

We share our thoughts about the vote to leave Europe.

We’re trying not to despair at the atrocities close to home, pounced upon so eagerly by the vultures of the media.

We’re beyond dismayed by the ones that go unreported because they’re so far away, so insoluble.

I’m drinking tea, eating a toasted teacake, feeling flat in a flat world.

One of the black-clad young women stops to chat.

We shake our heads, talk about that vote to leave. How sad it is that the campaign resurrected ugly spectres we thought were buried years ago. Or at least made unacceptable in polite society. Racism, bigotry, intolerance, lies.

And then she says …

… we can all do something to make it better. We can all be good and kind and affect other people that way.

We need to be a spiral of love.

That’s not exactly what she said. Because that went straight to my heart. Bypassed my head, the place that remembers words.

Except for that one word, ‘spiral’.

‘Spiralling’ is often used with down, with whirlpools of despair. But spirals can turn up as well as down, spread out as well as drawing in.

Let’s create that positive kind of spiral.

Give books, hugs and smiles.

Gifts going round and round and round.

Positivity spinning all about, till we’re giddy with hope.

Naïve? I know, I know.

But do you have a better idea?

A spiral with many books – looking up the staircase in Liverpool’s newly refubished central library

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Who you calling a sissy?

Posted on July 15, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

It’s meant to be derogatory, isn’t it? Calling someone a sissy. Sad to think that it started out as ‘sis’ meaning sister.

As an insult it’s usually applied to males displaying signs of fear, cowardliness, timidity. The implication being that’s female behaviour. That the female’s role is to be weak.

Better, I suppose, to be called a ‘big girl’s blouse’, at least that has a bit of character and movement to it.

The expression ‘big girl’s blouse’ (since adopted by an Australian comedy show) originated in 1960s Britain, uttered by a comedy actress called Hylda Baker.

As a sometimes-blouse-wearing woman, I can’t help feeling that as an insult – as applied to males, again – it’s a bit, well, insulting to women.

It’s not just the girl word, it’s the big word. It’s saying, if there’s anything a male regards as being even more offensive than being the blouse of a girl it’s being the blouse of a big girl.

Hmmm.

Then there are the rather more intimate insults.

Tw-t. C–t. And the one that set me off down this track: ‘fanny’.

It’s new to me as an insult, fanny, when used to describe a man.

It came to my attention the day after Boris the buffoon (non-gender specific as far as I am aware) Johnson was appointed to the British Government’s Cabinet as Foreign Secretary. (I still can’t really believe it).

I was scrolling through the usual mess of comments and insults on Twitter, vowing never to look at it again, knowing it would make me flail around in frustration and despair for the world, when …

… someone Tweeted a picture of some Glasgow graffiti. Which read:

“Boris Johnson is a pure fanny”

Among the thread of comments that followed, a couple of kind souls explained to Americans who thought they’d got the joke – they hadn’t.

Here in the United (still just about) Kingdom ‘fanny’ means (sorry about this, close your eyes if you’re sensitive to descriptions of private parts) vagina, not arse, ass or bottom.

Inwardly I felt cowed (I wonder about that one? Unfair to cows?). I knew what would happen next, but still I was disappointed. Sure enough, there among the comments were the usual forthright souls, confirming to their American peers that it’s much more offensive, for a male, to be called a vagina, rather than a mere bottom.

But I’m still confused. I mean, ‘pure’ fanny? Glasgow, is that a generic local insult? Or is it reserved for fannies?

So far so female. The insults.

And a digression into knobhead, dickhead, wankers and prick territory does tend to the conclusion that this is a peculiarly female problem.

We rarely damn females as dickheads, knobheads, wankers or pricks, after all. In fact I never do. In fact … well, never mind about the insults I do and don’t use. Let’s keep with the illusion that I’m a kind, considerate soul who speaks only in gentle words and fulsome praises.

And I’m not taking this much further, don’t worry.

But, I’m sorry, I have to come back around to that other word. The one that’s still regarded as pretty much unsayable in polite company.

The word beginning with a ‘c’. Still rarely used in everyday speech here in Britain, but when written in anger, often preceded by ‘total’.

And, men, let me ask you. Don’t some of you actually like this particular part of the female anatomy? Why, then, reserve it for your most ‘total’ abuse?

I’m leaving it at that. I’m no expert, this is as far as I can take it.

I have a young (female) friend who knows much more about this than I ever will. Who tells me I should read more about language and power. About language and identity.

To which I say, what the Foucault?

😉

P1020191 (2)

 

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Soundscapes [The Great Escape, days 3 &4]

Posted on July 9, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

Tired legs. A little light rain. Wimbledon on the BBC.

Day three becomes a day of rest.

I’m finding something deep and reassuring in Haworth on this visit. As if the town is built on a well of feelings. And not just tragedies. Life bubbles up everywhere amid the tales of sickness, sadness and death.

I’ve been listening to some of that life. And recording.

So, this time, fewer words. And some listening along with the images.

First, standing beside the graveyard near the tower of the church where the entire Brontë family, apart from Anne, is buried. (Anne died and was buried in Scarborough.)

Our sun-baked walk on day two took us to the stream and the (rebuilt after a flood) bridge below the Brontë Falls. There we sat and listened to the stream. The birds chirrupping in the background, ahhh! Peace and tranquility.

On day three we ventured out of town (not very far) for a ride back in time …

Anyone who’s seen the film the Railway Children has seen a bit of this journey, though a different Tank Engine (and the station is not in my little video).

Here, filmed from the inside, some of the most comforting rhythms a boiler on wheels can make!

Out for supper to the pub. The White Lion needs a preservation order slapping on it. No prawn cocktails or black forest gateaux to be seen (the food is very good) but the interior is several steps back in time and actually rather … comforting.

Comforting. I think I’ve used that word before.

Reassuance, comfort, peace, tranquility… I found them here in Haworth.

The video didn’t work for this next lot.

I tried to record the background music, but all I got was clattering plates. So look at these stills and imagine Neil Diamond singing Cracklin’ Rosé 😉

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And finally, back to the little house and the night life…

The birds which I thought were rooks are, I think, jackdaws. I saw one drinking from the gutter of the house opposite –  and part of its head was grey.

I don’t have my bird book and refuse to consult the oracles of the ether. But, whatever they are, they like company.

As the sun wanes and the night waxes, I stand on our little terrace, watching. Listening to a sound that has no doubt been heard for many, many years by people who stood where I stand now.

The dark birds settle down for the night in the trees over the graveyard. And the bats begin their silent flights.

And when they are settled, the other winged ones sing.

Good night. I hope you enjoyed the listening.

 

 

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Weathering Heights [The Great Escape, day 2]

Posted on July 5, 2016 by memoirsofahusk

‘Don’t trust anyone who tells you they know a short-cut!’

So says one young woman as a group of them emerge from the deep shade of many trees on a  steeply sloping hillside.

We take no short cuts. But still the road seems to go forever on.

I’m not a walker. Past long walks (the maximum 13 miles) have put a severe strain on my relationship with the long tall Texan. He, too, is a short-form walker, but his legs are considerably longer than mine. And he weathers our self-imposed excesses with far better grace.

Which is why I decide that Top Withens, surely the ultimate destination for an Earnshaw, is beyond me. And anyway, I’ve seen it from afar.

It’s not the Wuthering Heights of my imagination. That’s not a lush, green hill under vibrant blue skies, feathered with weird and wonderful clouds. And it’s certainly not warm.

We aim instead for Brontë Falls, which, so the notes said, are a mere 2½ mile walk.

Hah. Never trust country miles.

DSCN1790We stop for a premature rest by some wild roses. I’ve seen these flowers before, painted by Charlotte’s delicate hand, reproduced on tea towels and cards in the Parsonage Museum shop.

I wonder if this bush is a scion of the one she captured in paint.

Charlotte's roses on a new tea towel

Charlotte’s roses on a new tea towel

 

 

 

 

An old reservoir glimmers in the distance, a stone turret out on the water, utilitarian but built as if it’s important, with windows. It looks enticing, that sky-reflecting water.WP_20160704_10_46_16_Pro

By the time we get to the sign (also in Japanese, should you need it) saying 1½ miles, I swear we’ve already gone at least that far.

We set out in bright sunshine, but this being Yorkshire – and Brontë country – I assume it will cloud over and rain. I have no hat. I’m wearing a bright yellow jacket with hood. And we have just one small bottle of water.WP_20160704_12_30_33_Pro

And still the road winds onwards – and upwards.

Sheep laze or graze.

A dead rat lies splayed on the path.

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A wreck of a house is now home to a large and flourishing elder tree and a family of black birds that could be rooks or ravens or crows.

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It’s all wrong, this sunshine, this should be a sinister, brooding sight, but hey, it’s the day it is – and we’ve still a way to go.

The sky distracts with a mesmerising pageant. Clouds, performing against a backdrop of gentian blue, under a constant sun.

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Looking back along the path

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A fragile feather?

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Weather, approaching

At last the path dips down Picking our way carefully over stones and muddy ground, we finally reach our goal.

A delicate bridge crosses a tumbling stream.DSCN1803

The peace is palpable. We sit, alone a while. We saw only one other couple along the way and they were ascending from this spot as we descended.

WP_20160704_11_46_47_ProSoon another couple – sensibly be-hatted – arrives and sits in the shade. Next, a lone man wearing a brilliant white shirt.

And then, a Jack Russell, in harness, pulling along another couple.

The water’s a clear brown, like milkless tea. It gurgles and burbles as it rollicks down the valley.

Birds sing.

The air smells like honey mixed with mown grass.

The world is perfect.

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Looking back the way we came

Except, we now have to turn around.

Up the hill, through the reeds and bracken, the startling purple foxglove spears. Past the old wreck, again. The reservoir with its stone turret.  The dead rat – and a desiccated frog I missed last time.

Yorkshire. The force is strong!

Yorkshire. The force is strong!

My head is hot. The water bottle is empty. The longed-for bench bears a sign saying ‘wet paint’.

At last, we reach the field across the back of town. A narrow entrance to be squeezed through.

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Ordnance Survey map for scale…

Strait is the gate, as the scriptures say. But this one’s a warning for the walk-lite and frame-heavy, not the rich.

My own frame is complaining now, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, this walk.

Brontë country looks different now, to me. Not bleak, but beautiful. Magnificent. Inspiring. Or do I mean inspirational?

Perhaps.

And now, there must be water. Then, maybe, tea and cake.

A reward and a refuelling, for a weathering.

Top Withens, a mile or more too far, in the distance

Top Withens, a mile or more too far, in the distance

Posted in Art, jaunts & going out, Yorkshire | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments