Where next?

If I am honest I put too much hope in the election result, in a change of government, in a change of culture and approach.  The exit poll and subsequent results have knocked me flat: I am honestly not sure how I am going to cope with another five years of Conservative government.  Another five years of being described as a "scrounger" and a "shirker", another five years of the poorest in society suffering the most, another five years of fear and blame and divide and rule.

It is not that I hate the Conservatives per se, or that I hate Conservative voters.  I do hate the campaign they ran, filled with fear, fear of the Scots, fear of the economy, fear that if you do not grasp all you have you may lose it.  I hate the idea that all that matters is you, you and your hard working family, nothing else matters.  I hate the idea that the poor deserve poverty, that it is a matter of personal responsibility, if only people tried harder they would not be poor.  This is blatantly untrue: it ignores all the structures that keep people poor.

I am filled with dread of what £12 billion of welfare cuts are going to mean to my community, to the disabled, none of whom chose their circumstances, what is going to happen?  How are we to live?  What is it going to mean for the increasing numbers of children growing up in poverty?

There is so much that concerns me, scares me, angers me, I feel so passionately about what is happening.  But, but, I am ill, I am exhausted, the anger and anxiety make me more exhausted and sore and ill.  How can I make a change?  How can I get involved and fight and campaign?  To be sure, if I were well, I would be out there, doing everything I could to make a difference.  Instead I feel like my arms are tied behind my back, my feet tied together and my mouth gagged: I feel silenced and made invisible by my illness.

So where next?  I am at a loss.  I am trying to keep an eternal perspective, trying to pray, trying to find hope in God, but the present feels so overwhelming.

I may head back to the Psalms, it feels like a time for lament.

The Year in Books: August

This month's book is actually a children's book, Grace by Morris Gleitzman, a British born author who has lived in Australia most of his life.  My sister and I had a few of his books as children, I particularly remember Blabbermouth and Two Weeks with the Queen.  His books are unconventional and like Jacqueline Wilson he is not afraid to tackle big issues, so when I spotted Grace on Audible I thought I would give it a go.

Morris Gleitzman

Grace and her family belong to a very strict church who believe that only they are going to heaven and that they must keep themselves away from the world to avoid "catching sin"; Grace herself is an engaging narrator, trying to do the right thing but often committing the sin of thinking for herself and asking questions.  Gleitzman captures the atmosphere of a very tight-knit, controlling community, while managing to keep his protagonists from appearing monsters, through Grace we see that the people who are hurting her family have been hurt in their turn.  The church has a very Old Testament focus, presenting God as demanding above all obedience, but I found it notable that in this Old Testament world, Grace's parents, the (comparatively) free thinking rebels, had given their children names with a more New Testament flavour.

Ultimately Gleitzman does bring a sense of hope and redemption out of these apparently unpromising beginnings.  Reading it from the point of view of a member of a church the book, while it could have been incredibly negative about religion, in fact felt positive and affirming and spoke about what church should and should not be like.  We need to think for ourselves and encourage and enable our young people to think for themselves: Christianity at its roots is a thinking, reasoning, questioning faith.  Exploring the Bible you can see many people grappling with God, with who He is, questioning Him, thinking, considering, from Jacob and Job, right through to Paul.  So we need to be able to take our faith beyond obedience and conformity, faith and reason do not have to be mutually exclusive.

If you want to get a flavour of the book you can read the first chapter on the author's website here, while in this interview he discusses the background to writing Grace.  I think I will be revisiting some of his books, I think adults can learn a lot from children's and young adults' books.

You can see the other entries for August in The Year in Books here

A Time of Contrasts

The news lately has been abundantly dark, full of the terrible things we humans do to one another and I admit I have been finding it hard to deal with at times.  I pray and try not to brood or become utterly overwhelmed and it feels so little.

Meanwhile in the garden the summer continues oblivious, as it as always done, the borders a tangle of blooms and lush green.  It is, as the wonderful writer Ronald Blythe has noted, a growing year: young trees have shot up a foot or more, the roses reach for the sky, the sole remaining raspberry cane performs hitherto unheard of feats and the ceanothus and holly attempt to meet from their separate sides of the lawn.



To sit in the garden and appreciate its beauty as it hums and twitters and flutters with wildlife seems indulgent, inappropriate somehow, like I should not be enjoying that moment when others were suffering so much.  But what does it profit anybody if I did not enjoy that moment, since there is nothing I can do as I am to change matters, once I have prayed and prayed again?





Also thank you for your comments to my last post, try as I might, I cannot get blogger to let me reply, but I do very much appreciate what you have said.

New Year's Resolutions?

At the end of my last post I wrote that I would be back with some goals or aims for the new year; however, when I came to think about it being a New Year (the words seem capitalised in my head) and thinking about what I wanted to achieve in those 12 months I ended up overwhelmed.  During the closing month or so of last year I had many ideas about how the New Year was going to be, changing my life, being bolder, doing various things better, the usual sorts of things.  Then the New Year came, in its usual underwhelming style and over the first few days of the year I have felt a sense of disappointment, that things are not immediately better, that I am still making some of the same mistakes and failing in some of the same areas as before, that each day feels the same as it did last year.

My expectations both of myself and of an arbitrary division in the calendar were vastly over-inflated.  Surely I should have remembered how overwhelming it is to look at something as big as a whole year in one piece?  And I had also failed to remember that my body has not magically got better overnight, the succession of headaches that has marred the first week of the year should be a sharp reminder.

So instead I am rethinking the goals and aims and what I want to achieve and breaking things down into smaller, more manageable chunks.  Overall this year I want to live more boldly and be more prepared to try new things and take risks, albeit carefully calculated risks.  But I do need to start where I am, more rest needs to be on the agenda and my first big goal is finishing my dad's jumper, which is becoming something of a struggle due to lack of motivation.  Fellow knitters will understand when I say that I am on the sleeves, often a dispiriting section of a jumper.

On I go, step by step, taking the year day by day, with my usual slow dance of two steps forward, one step back, trying to keep trying and not get discouraged.  After all an arbitrary change of date is not enough, on its own, to change life.

2013 - some best bits

A challenge to myself and to my usually gloomy outlook: to find and write about some best bits or favourite things from the past year.

Knitting
I think the project of the year has to be Dad's Fair Isle jumper, I'm just coming to the end of the first sleeve, so it will not be finished this year, but it is the knitting I am most proud of.  The Jamieson Spindrift I am knitting the jumper in is undoubtedly my favourite yarn find of the year, I never thought I would be saying how soft Shetland yarn is but it has really grown on me.



Additionally I am pleased I managed to get my Pomme de Pin cardigan finished, it was another epic knit, but one I wear a lot, very snug and soft and warm despite its light lacy fabric.



Cooking
The recipe of the year has to be the apple and fruit cake I made for Dad's birthday, it was so, so moist and so simple and clever.  Again it was a recipe from Aunt Daisy dating back to the late 1940s; her books contain a rich seam of recipes to continue trying.  As a recipe it suited my energy levels and needing to pace myself because I could make the apple purée one day and the cake the next, a good while ahead of the party itself so that the cake could mature.  No need like a sponge to cook it that day or at most the day before.

Here is the recipe as it appears in the book, I baked it in a 23cm round tin, the cups are English although it would probably work in American cups and just be a slightly larger cake.  A moderate oven is around 180C though I may have used a slightly lower temperature as our oven can be a bit fierce.  It came out perfectly flat on top without so much as a dip.  When you first bake the cake it does look a bit dry and uninspiring, hold your nerve, wrap it up and pop it into a tin for at least two weeks and your patience will be rewarded.

Apple fruit cake – delicious
Do not cut this cake for a fortnight. Have ready 1 ½ cups stewed apple, sweetened with ½ cup sugar and with 1 tablespoon butter melted into it. Mix together 1 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cocoa; 1 dessertspoon spice; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 2 large cups flour; lemon peel and dried fruit to taste (about 1 ½ to 2 cups). Add the apple mixture and a little milk if necessary. Line tin with greased paper. Bake in a moderate oven for about 1 ½ hours.

Music

After much thought I think my album of the year has to be Seven Stars by Chris Haines.  It is a quiet, peaceful album soaked in the Bible and the past of the church.  Of all the songs the one that I love the most is "Strangers", about our true home, it is a peaceful, hopeful song that helps to put all the worries of today into perspective, speaking of the "colours undiscovered", the "sweet aromas" of heaven and how we will be home soon.  Throughout the year this song has helped me in times of despair or panic to find my bearings again and remember that this life is not forever, that a better life is forever.  You can listen to the album here on bandcamp and read the lyrics here.

Rend Collective Experiment's album Campfire has probably been my other album of the year, full of life and energy.  I am so looking forward to their new album.

My garden find of the year: Southover Grange in Lewes

Books

Elizabeth Jane Howard was my book find of the year.  Radio 4's dramatisation of her Cazalet novels caught my attention and I started by reading her autobiography, Slipstream, in January; a tremendous work, lively and honest, one of the best autobiographies I have ever read.  After this I moved onto the Cazalet novels themselves and devoured them, I was so completely in their world and found myself, in the intervals of reading the world insists in inserting, wondering what was going to happen, utterly caught up in the lives of the characters.  They are more than the usual "family saga" novels, all the characters are real and engaging, no mean feat in a novel sequence about such a large family and there is a strong sense of place.

My reading has also branched out, inspired by Katherine Swift's Morville Hours, a book about the creation of a garden and so much more besides, don't just take my word for it, go and read it, now, go on!  So I have read more garden and countryside books, ideal if you cannot get out that much, to go to other places in books.  I have read my way through most of the Penguin English Journeys books, particular favourites were the volumes by Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville West on gardening and I plan to read more of both their books in the new year.  Some of Gertrude Jekyll's books are out of copyright and so available on line for free which is particularly handy.  The extracts from James Lees-Milne's diaries were amusing too and he has been added to the ever increasing list of books to read, along with more of Elizabeth Taylor's novels.

Tomorrow I shall do some thinking on goals for the coming year as is traditional.

Christmas

When I was a child December seemed to stretch forever, day after day, marked out in little cardboard doors, tantalisingly keeping me from the apex of the excitement, the best day of the year: Christmas Day.  The air seemed almost to sparkle, there were endless excitements, carol concerts, plays, parties and treats, baking, decorations, pantomimes, a sense of goodwill seemed to pervade.  There were the yearly rituals, watching the Blue Peter team lighting the advent candles, helping to decorate the tree, going to the church to watch the familiar story acted out.  Then my one night of the year of excited insomnia before the Big Day with all its stockings and presents and turkey and crackers.

But Christmas now, where has the magic gone?  Now December seems a different sort of time-warp, the days falling over themselves in their rush to get away before Christmas looms.  Days full of lists of presents to be bought, cards to be sent, jobs to be done.  The reality of the work behind the sparkle hitting home.



Now instead there are small, quiet compensations for the onset of age, the satisfaction of choosing just the right present, the happiness of cards sent and appreciated, meeting old friends in the box of decorations, the heady spiced whiff of mixing Christmas cakes and puddings. While that feeling of Christmas joy and magic is more fleeting, glimpsed occasionally in a child's face or conjured up from turning on the Christmas lights at dusk and watching them make the glitter come to life in a quiet twinkling glow.  Light coming into the darkness.

Light coming into the darkness, that's what it is about in the end, hope coming into the world as the nights draw in.  Trying to find time, amidst the lists, to remember the first Christmas in all its ragged perfection.



Since I started this meditation a few days ago the weight of expectation and waiting has increased, I have slowed down (responding to the aide memoire of a two week headache) and the days seem to have joined me.  I am grateful for the slowing of the days and for the time to think, if not for the illness that creates this time.  The wind whistles and howls around the house with occasional breaks for glorious mild sunshiny winter days and a feeling of Christmastime has crept into the house on the heels of gingerbread and carols.  At the same time I have remembered some of the reality behind those painfully exciting childhood Christmasses, such as the year I slept so little on Christmas Eve that I was tearfully exhausted by seven and wasted precious hours of Christmas day in an early bedtime.  Christmases pile up memory and experience in layers, each bringing a part of themselves to each new Christmas; while my understanding grows and changes, of what Christmas meant and means.  I go again to the child in the manger and the light come into the world, and begin to ponder the Christ who will come again and the double waiting of Advent.

Charles Wesley's hymn Come Thou Long Expected Jesus is a current favourite, I especially love this version by a band called Kings Kaleidoscope

Come thou long expected Jesus
Born to set thy people free
From our fears and sins release us
Let us find our rest in thee 

Israel’s strength and consolation
Hope of all the earth thou art
Dear desire of every nation
Joy of every longing heart 

Born thy people to deliver
Born a child and yet a king
Born to reign forever
Now thy gracious kingdom bring  

By thine own eternal spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone
By thine all sufficient merit
Raise us to thy glorious throne 

Come Lord Jesus, into this dark world, bring your light, your presence and your kingdom. Thank you for Christmas, in all its meanings, Amen

God of Contradictions

Something I wrote a week or two ago and have just polished up, mostly by getting the verses into order.  I suppose it is a Psalm?  Nothing on David's level though.

God of Contradictions

The God who made the earth the skies and sea
And allows us to trash them

The God who made man and woman in His own image
And allowed us to sin and break His heart

The God of beauty and perfection
Who allows ugliness and imperfection to reign

The God of justice, friend of the poor,
Who allows injustice and poverty to flourish

The God who is the prince of peace
And yet allows wars and rumours of wars

The God who sent His son
to save us in human form
And allowed us to beat and kill Him

The God who heals,
who makes the lame walk and the blind to see
And allows children to get sick and die

The God who is holy and perfect
And allows sinners to join Him at His table

The God of all joy
Who allows unimaginable sorrow

The God who collects our tears in a jar
And allows us to go on and on filling the jar

The God who hears our prayers
And so often allows silence to answer them

The God who rose again
And allows us to share in His hope

The God of contradictions
whom we so little understand
One day will you allow us to see as you see?
Will you seem so contradictory then?

The God who will soon return
And allows soon to feel like forever

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  1 Corinthians 13.12

Trust

On days when it is fine enough one of my greatest pleasures is sitting out in the garden.  Over time I have found that if I am quiet and relatively still the birds who frequent the garden gradually begin to trust that I will not hurt them and start to come closer.  It will begin with a rustle in a tree or perhaps in the holly bush just to the left of the bench.  There are little twitterings, whispers and clicking sounds as they consider me and wonder if it is safe to venture to the seed feeders.  Then one adventurous soul, generally one of the robins - they are the boldest of our garden birds - will break cover for a moment, grab a piece of seed and retire with it.



The robin often loves company and will come to see what I am doing, there will be scufflings in the holly bush and a beady eye will peak out and sing softly.  Of course his favourite time of all is when my father is out gardening, he and his partner have spent entire afternoons following him around within inches, sometimes getting perilously close to the spade or fork as my father digs.  Over time I have learned to tell the two robins apart by their behaviour, for example the less bold of them hovers close to things rather than land and this robin also likes to fly across the garden narrowly avoiding my head to announce his or her presence.  Our current robin's new trick is to bring whatever he has found, small grubs, caterpillars and the like to show us, before flying off to eat them or take them to his nestlings.

The day before yesterday one of the robin even had a bath while I was standing a couple of feet away, a sign of trust that brought me such joy.  Indeed it has struck me that perhaps this is how God feels about us when we trust Him?  When we dare to approach, or show Him something we have done or just come to see what He is doing, does He feel that same joy? Is my joy at the robin's trust and company a small echo of what happens in God's heart when we come to Him and trust Him?  I do hope so.  Certainly it makes me more determined than ever to try to trust God more and to keep coming to my Father.

Doing enough

Last night I was having another of my guilt-filled panics with God about "the future" and whether or not I should be doing and achieving more.  This is a frequent thought, which derives from a vague sense that I should be doing something, regardless of how I am and it seems to be a deep seated idea as I have struggled with it for a long time now.  I see all my friends and contemporaries getting PhDs or married or having children or careers or travelling, or a mixture of the above, and feel like a failure, an idea further engendered from my family, where to have a BA degree is to be somewhat under-educated.  What am I doing?  What have I done with the last six years of my life?

Then something like this morning happens, a sudden crisis in my mother's health and all these thoughts fall away as the central business of existing suddenly takes over and consumes all my energy and thought.  Thankfully my mother is recovering and I am gradually recovering from the shock, although things are not entirely back to normal.

In the midst of this I read Ruth's post on her excellent blog One Little Drop this morning and then read the blog posts she had linked to and they gave me back some sense of perspective on myself, the first article in particular.  All this time that I have been ill I have felt under a pressure from others to be doing something, or that it was time to move on from being ill and do something, as though it were that simple, when so many days are spent simply managing to get through the day, when being consumes all energy.

And yet, and yet... I still lack the confidence to say that I am doing enough, that just being and getting through the day with grace and the minimum of self pity and bitterness is enough.  Jesus help me, give me your perspective.

Observations in a garden, between seven and eight on a June evening

I am sitting on the old bench in the middle of the garden in the cool of the evening. Little snatches of sunshine have made their way through the tall trees to the west and are illuminating a piece of the trellis, making the bark of the wild cherry shine in a fluttering leaf-filtered light and turning a few privileged leaves of the apricot tree translucent and more intensely green.

The biggest sensation around me is the wind, first in big whooshing gushes in the taller trees, then echoed down lower in the shrubs, bushes and smaller trees of our garden. The sound is all around me, gentle, rushing and persistent, putting into sound the scritchy-scratchiness of the holly trees as the leaves scrape against one another. Most of the sound is more gentle though, a soft constant, drowning out more modern noise, lifted and enlarged by bigger gusts, varied with sudden stillnesses when only the slightest breeze travels lightly across my hands and around my body.



The tall trees are like illuminated green tents, formed by leaves caught in evening sunlight, full of life. Around them insects dance and birds fly to and fro chirruping to one another. One young bird cries persistently, as though searching for his parents, or wishing to affirm his own identity.

This is the hour when often a blackbird will sit on an ariel above a neighbour's roof, or perhaps on a convenient chimney pot, singing to all the world, but tonight he is elsewhere. Often when I sit here I am aware of the birds around me, even if I cannot see them, hearing the little scufflings and hoppings and twitterings as they go about through the trees and bushes and fences around me, communicating with one another in a constant game of, "Where are you?" "I am here, where are you?". Occasionally a bold fellow, usually the robin, will come closer to see who or what I am and what I am doing in his territory, sometimes lingering to look over my shoulder and hovering near.

If you sit still for long enough you can be rewarded by the birds coming down to the seed feeder as though you are not there, scuttling in for a piece of sunflower seed before carrying their prize into the wild cherry or holly trees to peck it into submission.

My fingers are cold now but I have no wish to go in, the evening is so perfect, the sky so blue after so much grey and rain and I can smell the already dampening grass beneath my feet, speckled with clover flowers. In between the wind bears towards me the scent of the roses and honeysuckle, both blooming profusely and other scents whose origins are foreign to me. The wind ruffles my back and I watch the golden green leaves of the biggest of the trees fluttering too and fro, the branches pitching and tossing like the sea.






The adult robin comes onto the trellis, looks around the garden to check all is well, flutters to the fence and speeds off between the houses. Leaf shadows show like puppets across pots, plants and bows and a bumble bee, out late, investigates a likely looking nasturtium, crawling bodily into the heart of the flower. A snatch of song comes through the wind, comes closer and the conversation continues across the gardens, but I must leave the garden to its true owners, it is only ever on loan to me, and go in and attend to supper.


(As written except for corrections to typing and spelling errors, 30th June 2012.  Photographs from other occasions)

Autumn

Time slips on, complicated hat has made way on the needles for complicated mittens, while in the past few days I have been enjoying finally being able to wear the complicated hat. When I finished it we were in the middle of our intense Indian summer and I had to unearth my sun hat instead. How glorious that was and how cold it felt yesterday by contrast.

Stepping outside today, despite the comparative warmth, there is a definite smell of autumn, of falling leaves and damp lawn and cooling earth and decay. It is the sort of day which inspires me to want to put on some wellingtons and do some digging or other essential autumn job in the garden. If only I had the energy.

Sometimes I regard this slow slipping into winter with dread, all those dark, cold days, but in my saner moments I just take each moment as it comes and watch all its changes and moods. This is a better way I think, it feels calmer. Watch the leaves slowly change, the birds, who all vanished during the heat of the Indian summer, return to use the feeders so lovingly set up for them, wash and drink in the bird bath and chatter and preen in the bushes, hopping around the branches of the big holly as though it were a green stair case, up and down, up and down. Watch a robin sitting apparently doing nothing, looking casually about him before diving to the ground for some grub smaller than I can see.

That robin is delightful, he always comes down when I am outside to see what I'm up to. I'll look up from my magazine or book, having heard the flutter of wings, to see him sitting on a branch two feet away watching me. I love the look of triumph in his eye when he has a particularly juicy worm or a good berry, a look that says "this is mine, back off". The blackbirds are just the same.

These trees were so golden, lit up by the sun, I half expected Aeneas to turn up, guided by doves, for his golden bough.

In between there have been blacker moods and darker times, part of chronic illness I suppose. But I am writing this almost to prove to myself that it hasn't all been bad. And time slips on, flowing past, while I nap and knit and watch.

Rowan and Ravelry

I am frequently frustrated, when browsing Ravelry's immense database of knitting patterns, either while in search of something to knit for myself or while helping someone out on the forums, by the lack of Rowan patterns in the database. It frequently means that I simply do not knit the designs myself and do not have the opportunity to recommend the designs to others, a pity, since they have some extremely good ones. Rowan do have their own website on which some of their designs are pictured, but since the new site was launched it is no longer possible to view them closely enough to see the details, for example is it a dropped or set in shoulder? I have been lamenting this absence for a while now, but some interviews with Rowan designers, in their latest magazine (kindly lent me by a friend for me to read) have made me consider the subject again.

From what the designers were saying it was clear that Rowan are currently wrestling with how to approach the new realities of the digital age, where knitters from all over the world can communicate with one another instantly and self publishing has never been easier. Some of this phenomenon is not all that new - Elizabeth Zimmermann blazed a trail self-publishing through her Schoolhouse Press and her Wool Gatherings news letters as early as the 1950s. However, the realities of publishing, involving as it used to, the costs of printing and distribution, did mean that until the rise of the internet self publishing was not easy to accomplish. Now it can be done at the press of a button and yes, as Sarah Hatton cites "people like Ysolde Teague [sic] and Jared Flood... have just created themselves" and worked hard to create excellent professional brands and beautiful, stylish designs. These independent designers have used the internet to communicate directly with their customers and build up their brand, there is no reason why Rowan cannot do the same.

Indeed knitting always has been a very grass roots movement, passing from person to person and finding new ways to create. Knitters have always improvised, changed patterns to suit their circumstances and come up with innovative new designs - Kate Davies' excellent article on Shetland lace knitting a few pages earlier in the same Rowan magazine makes this point superbly. However, now instead of only being able to share their ideas with knitters in their immediate vicinity, or by post, we can share our ideas, our designs and put them out there. In terms of design there is little difference between the Shetland women's lace innovations of the early 19th century and a knitter today coming up with a design and sharing it for free or selling it via her blog or Ravelry. It is all part of the same creativity.

I can see how a more traditional company like Rowan could feel quite threatened by the internet, but actually it offers a great opportunity to interact with customers in a new way and to get your designs out there cheaply and effectively. And of course it is worth bearing in mind that important though Ravelry is to many of us, it is not the entirety of the knitting world. But at one and a half million members strong, it does represent a huge market for yarn and knitting companies and I feel it is a pity that Rowan has not yet made the most of this opportunity. Rowan yarns already have quite a profile on Ravelry, there are more than 15,000 projects listed using Kid Silk Haze for example. I have used the yarns far more than the designs and love their quality, a jumper I made in Rowan pure wool aran is still going strong after more than two years hard wear.

If more Rowan patterns were listed on Ravelry, together with pictures and tags to identify the techniques, used then more knitters would buy Rowan booklets and knit Rowan designs, very probably buying more Rowan yarn in the process. As Rowan is ultimately a company that exists to make money, this surely makes sense?

Personally I would also love to see at least some of the amazing Rowan back catalogue on sale as individual patterns, as Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting both do. Back copies of Rowan magazines and booklets often sell on ebay for eye-wateringly high prices, yet Rowan itself gets none of that money, why not put the back catalogue to work?

As the designers said again and again in the interviews this situation is exciting, things have been changing and bringing us all new opportunities and creative possibilities, so Rowan, please make the most of it!

The Gentle Sex

This afternoon I was able to indulge in spending the afternoon watching a black and white film, something I have always enjoyed doing. On this occasion Film 4 were showing a second world war propaganda number called *The Gentle Sex", which used seven women's lives to show the contribution women were making to the war efforts.

Like many such propaganda films of the period it was well made, well acted, and although it was no Brief Encounter it was engaging and gently educative. The periodic "set speeches" in which characters earnestly discussed the themes of women's role in the war and what the war was fundamentally being fought for did jar at times, and with the hindsight we now have over the seventy years that have elapsed since then gave some of their idealism a tragic irony. Despite the horrendous ills of Nazism, their defeat has not, alas, meant that the world has become necessarily a better place; new sources of evil have sprung up. Truthfully no human war could end evil in the war, it is too deeply in ourselves.

However, the film was right that the war would change women's place in society, it did, perhaps not quite as far as the idealists would have liked, but like their mothers in the first war, they had an impact. I liked the film's emphasis on how women were needed to win the war, were essential and showed them working alongside men in a variety of occupations: manning anti-aircraft guns, driving and mending lorries, working capably and hard.

So... why then, after a stirring finale showing our heroines helping to shoot down an airplane, were the closing credits presented the form of a cross stitched embroidery? I found the juxtaposition interesting and frankly startling. Perhaps one could argue that they were comparing women's peacetime, decorative, fairly useless role and occupation with their wartime, utilitarian, essential role? Perhaps it was just a lazy way of demonstrating the film's feminine subject matter? Certainly in that portion of the film I saw no woman embroidered anything, though many knitted and this is by no means the first time I have seen knitting stand for the new role in society that the war had given to women. For example, in Daphne du Maurier's 1943 play The Years Between there is a contrast made between the main protagonist's pre-war embroidery, when she was "just" a wife and wartime knitting, when she is active in politics. Interestingly du Maurier's play was written in the same year as this film was released and both share a pre-occupation with winning the peace as well as the war.

To the women of World War II

One could question why this film was felt necessary in the first place, but then to expect women's role automatically to be considered as important as a man's, particularly back in the 1940s, is perhaps to be as hopelessly idealistic as the film's characters were about the purpose of the war. Its very title says a great deal about the attitudes the film was seeking to challenge. To an audience today the sight of a woman in military uniform is everyday; in 1939 it still had the potential to shock, although as the film points out, through the memories of an elderly lady of driving an ambulance in the first war, women taking an active, rigorous role in war was not new to this conflict. Yet the contribution of these women to the war effort is still little discussed and it is only comparatively recently that any kind of memorial to them was erected in London, so perhaps this film should have shouted louder?

The hall of mirrors

Or which image is real? Unpicking the tangles in my brain.

I've been doing a lot of thinking this week, though I can't say I've got far. Right now I feel like I've just emerged (or am just emerging?) from a hall of mirrors at the fair, where it's never clear which image is reality and everything is distorted and bewildering.

For a start I've realised a couple of things I need to work on, anxiety would be the first one as it is apparently still well and flourishing. There is no way that worrying yourself to a point of near physical sickness over sending an email is normal, neither are "stress nosebleeds". As another DWP appeal looms I do need to get an urgent grip on this; I don't want to end up in the state I was in last time. Though as a side note I am constantly amazed by the fresh and inventive ways that my body comes up with in order to express anxiety, most creative.

The other is that I need to let go of past hurts, trite and hackneyed as that sounds. There are old wounds, some healed, some not quite so healed, that I keep revisiting and picking over like a child picks at its blister and that needs to stop. It's pointless, it's like my mind running round and round on well worn railway tracks getting nowhere except to keep the old hurts and wounds of the past alive. Or rather it serves no positive point, it keeps negative feelings hanging around and allows me to feel like the poor wounded soul, ideal fodder for a pity party. However, the reason I called the phrase "let go" trite is because although it sounds simple I don't entirely know how to do it. Prayer seems like a good first option (it generally is after all) and I suspect that this one is going to require some real wrestling. Stopping myself (and asking the Holy Spirit to prompt me) every time I start to revisit these dark but familiar old haunts also seems like a good option.

Meanwhile the church is looking different to how it looked a couple of weeks ago. Then it looked like a fortress, without any means of ingress, moat, sheer walls, draw bridge drawn firmly up and portcullis down. It felt like you were either cosily in the church, part of things, or utterly outside and on your own. Now at least this blog seems to have blown a small hole in the walls; when I couldn't work out where to begin trying to find an entrance. Hopefully things will be better from here, though it still tears me apart inside that I can't be more involved, can't be there - the guilt every time someone asks for volunteers at life group is terrible. But that's just how things are, not anyone's fault, something I need to learn to live with.

Another thing I have realised, from things various people have said, is that the difference between the person I see as me and in me and the person other people seem to see or say they see is startling. I cannot help seeing the utter blackness inside me, seeing the self obsession, greed, pride, general wimpishness, moaning, self pity etc. etc. I hate all this in me. I am trying to remember grace, to remember the cross, to remember that we are all sinners in need of forgiveness. But at the same time I can't help seeing myself as a self pitying attention seeker. That label keeps ringing in my ears: attention seeker, or attention seeking. When I was so so depressed I ended up so worried about not attention seeking, or not trying to seek help in an attention seeking manipulative sort of way and it worries me now, what if I'm just attention seeking? Maybe I should just keep quiet. I don't even know where to begin to untangle that lot or know what to do with it. That's what I mean about the hall of mirrors, it's so hard knowing what is true and what is distortion.

But as, for some peculiar reason, God does seem to love me and want to know me and want me to know Him, then I want to "follow on to know the Lord" (Hosea 6.3 KJV, via J. Rees Larcombe, Journey into God's Heart). It's always good to have a goal, right? And that's one I want to re-commit to.

A final thought, in the form of a "Not-poem"

A little girl is knock knock knocking on heaven's door,
Asking when she can come home;
Listening to her Father say, "Not yet my beloved child."