One Hundred Words About A Party

Until early Saturday morning our party only partly existed in Katy’s mind and partly in mine. It also existed in all the people’s minds that were going to come, but nowhere else. We had not made any plans or preparations.

At eight we had a plan. In a hectic whirl we did supermarkets, prepared food and organized the house.

By six o’clock I was shattered. Then the first guest arrived.

It was a great evening. I welcomed people while Katy disappeared into the kitchen.

At one o’clock I sat on a sofa with Katy and my second glass of wine.

One Hundred Words About Fear

At first fear hangs in the air, I breathe it in. It is an ache in my stomach. It is heavy, screwed down and locked tight. I don’t want to let it out. I know what it’s like and I’ve felt it before. It is a wild blind thing that has no thought; it speaks in screams. Speed and action are its limbs. It destroys everything in its path. It feeds on ignorance. Time contracts.

I feel it stir inside me. Tonight I will sleep in it and when I wake tomorrow it will still be there, clawing at me.

One Hundred Words While Drinking Coffee

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Border’s Bookshop, drinking coffee. All around me are people sitting at tables alone or in pairs. A mother and daughter, a retired couple, single women surrounded by shopping bags, and a few men, brief case or rucksack beside them.

All of them are busy either talking, reading newspapers or new books, a woman is fidgeting with her mobile phone. A man in his twenties is fiddling with his i pod. Two women are sharing a joke.

I take a book of poetry from my bag and open it, reading, I slip silently away.

One Hundred Words About Escape

I used to be able to escape but not any longer. When I was a child time was like a great cloak that I could wrap myself up in and hide for hours.

But now I am always visible to the world and the world is always visible to me. Time is no longer a cloak but a constant light that exposes me.

Sleep is a temporary refuge. And films have reduced to a thin flickering veil.

Sometimes I rush for the stairs where I work, each slow step lifts me out of sight, a cloak that barely hides me.

One Hundred Word Poem For Good Friday

"Mercy"

A fragile cry
struggles free
into the parched night.

Then silence
except the low drone
of the wind
through bare winter branches.

Until the cry rises again
splits open the darkness
with a long low moan
strong and insistent,
falls to hard wrenched sobs
then to sudden silence.

Heartbeat.

Again.

Now raw and wild,
gouged out of fractured breath.
Throat muscle and tongue
sculpt air
to a single word
that hangs trapped
in cold moonlight.

In the darkness
I imagine
a naked thing
cowering in the dust
red faced
twisted limbs
blood stained,
torn bandages
searching the darkness.

(c) David Loffman

The poem is inspired by different sources. The most important one being Prayer of the Heart a piece of music by John Tavener - which I comment upon in an earlier post.

One Hundred Words About The Troubadour

The Troubadour - 50?s coffee house in Earl?s Court with a deli, gallery, club and garden.

I read at The Troubadour last Monday. Despite being exhausted, it is always a warm and friendly place to be. I always come away from an evening feeling strong and positive about my writing. When I get home it always takes awhile before I can relax.

At the end of a season Anne Marie organizes a poetry party. Poets come up and either read one of their own poems or someone else’s on a theme. This season ended with the theme of coats.

I read At Penmon Point. (see 19 February post)

When the evening finished I just wandered around chatting to Troubadour friends.

One Hundred Words About An Anniversary

Today we celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. It feels like yesterday. It feels like a lifetime ago. Last night we ate at an Italian restaurant just round the corner. It was a gorgeous evening.

Our wedding day was a fragile spring day. It hailed in the morning but the afternoon glittered with low dazzling light. Pam was in Africa and sent us a telegram. I walked in on Katy – her sisters sewing flowers to her dress. I wanted the day over and the two of us driving away. Our car decorated inside and out with balloons, beer cans and confetti.

Another One Hundred Words About Joy

Despite the pain and the morphine that dripped periodically into me, in the recovery room, after the last amputation, I felt a joy already surging through me. What I felt was a deep and fundamental sense of wholeness and completeness.

At that moment I was for the first time in years healthy. The disease that had rumbled inside my body and had so spectacularly erupted in February 2004 was no longer active.

I know it was not the drugs that gave me that feeling, because in the days and weeks and months that followed, that feeling is still with me.

One Hundred Words About Praise

People’s praise is overwhelming. Wide smiles full of shock and surprise, sometimes mixed with pride, or sympathy or wonder and disbelief, terrifies me.

Praise is like a mirror in which I see myself through others eyes.

It is a false reflection.

Belief in it would destroy me.

Even writing about it maybe dangerous.

In those looks and words of praise, I see my tightrope walk each day and the bottomless chasms that open up on either side of me. I’m frightened of losing my balance and falling far to earth.

It’s the feeling of vertigo that recurs in my dreams.

One Hundred Words And A Poem About Joy

Once when I was failing, I'd come outside and sit in the graveyard beneath a church. The deer park and the Hall shimmered in late summer heat. I watched the strong clotted green of ancient oaks, the drone of lorries carrying grain from the fields and watched House Martins gathering along high cables.

And from this, a deep glorious joy stirred and rose up through me. In these moments, every afternoon, I felt angels were beside me, feeding me. The earth was holy and as this joy pulsed through me I felt lifted up and made strong and holy.

House Martins

Late summer
and the harvest almost over.

Each late afternoon
I closed my books
and left a room
that reeked of defeat,
where each word I read
joined the liturgy of failure
I was reciting to myself.

So I came outside
to sit beyond the church
among the grave stones.
The sky poured light,
the dark lines of clotted oaks
framed distant stubble fields.

I watched house martins gathering,
perched on long lines of cables
then scattering like seeds
into the wind.

Then I closed my eyes
listening to their high pitched whistles,
sharp, metallic, tuning in and out,
tearing my books apart.

The house martins reeling,
arcing the sky
low sunlight catching
their quick wings.

And further off the heavy drone
of lorries for miles
down winding country roads
carrying grain to empty silos.


22 October 2002

David Loffman

One Hundred Words About Joy

Joy is like a jewel. A precious stone I keep close by. It is so bright I have to keep it under cover. Sometimes it ‘s so strong I feel as though it shines through me. I have to hold it close to myself.

The summer I had my legs amputated I spent everyday in a wheelchair in a bamboo garden beside a tree, under the sun. I felt an overwhelming joy rise through me. I watched the bamboo shoots, high white clouds and ants scuttling along broken paving stones, with only the sun to hide this strong insistent joy.

One Hundred Words About Memory

We played music today I’ve not played since we moved in, in June – eight months ago. The children wanted to hear Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, then Eva Cassidy’s Field’s of Barley and something by Nora Jones’s.

The children balanced themselves on the sofa and danced to Anderson’s wolf howl, which startled them when I first played it to them, when they were two or three years old.

Then they quietened down. Iona curled up on my lap as we listened to Cassidy and Jones – memory filled the room. She knelt against my shoulder – remembering what we were and have lost.

One Hundred Words

Sometimes I can hear the suffering in people’s lives. Sometimes their pain is so overwhelming it is difficult to hear anything else. It feels like storm clouds are gathering around us as friends and family struggle with enormous difficulties.

A family dog has been run over and may have to be put down. Reluctantly a friend took her son and slept away from her husband on Thursday night for the first time. While a friend was being violently sick and had to be taken to casualty, his wife was undergoing a caesarean operation they now wonderfully have a second son.

One Hundred Words About Prayer of the Heart

John Tavener - Prayer of the Heart from John Tavener A Portrait

The first time I heard a piece of music that started with a heartbeat it changed my life. That was in 1973, thirty-three years ago.

The second piece of music I heard that starts with a heartbeat I heard for the first time today. I wonder where it will take me.

I listened, unable to move.

A girl’s voice emerged from the tangle of heartbeat and strings, then struggled free and climbed in a wild, raw, painful, fragile, insistent spiralling chant, sometimes so thin I thought it would break and in a moment a voice so strong, deep and rich.

At Penmon Point

We've had a week's holiday. It's been quite a busy time. Lots of jobs needed doing and I had saved up a few hospital appointments for the week. However I did manage to work on last week's entry a little. Hope you like it.

At Penmon Point

After the funeral we came

to Penmon
in fragile twilight,
in the unformed year
because she loved the place.

We came past

ruined Priory and dovecote
to a broken sea line
scoured by hard winds
and a grey Viking sky.

There we poured ourselves
onto this abandoned headland

wandered unsteady along
a rough uncertain track
to face the raw, bitter wind
that beat me to tears.

I remembered her here
in a summer blue dress
and an easy smile.
Looking out to Puffin Island.

This keeps me warm.

And all that time
a bell from the lighthouse
rang, slowly announcing
an end to something.




© David Loffman

One Hundred Words and A Picture of Penmon Point

We came to Penmon Point after Kathy's funeral. She loved this place.

We drove past the ruins of the Priory and the domed dovecote.

It is an isolated headland, especially in January. There, a grey sea scoured by winds from the north opened to us.

So we emptied ourselves out onto the raised beach. The children and dogs seemed to be lifted up into the arms ofthe wind, scattered among rocks and puddles, searching the sea towards Puffin Island and beyond The Great Orme.

And a bell from the lighthouse rang slowly announcing the end of something. 

One Hundred Words About Another Sunday

So far this has been a classic winter Sunday. Before church I had a little quiet reading time – an Austin novel. The children had baths and tidied their rooms. Then church and after the service brief chats with old friends. Then home to make a roast dinner. My mother came for the afternoon. We had coffee and After Eight. After dinner she spent time with the children and I had a nap, then read a bit of the paper and listened to a little music. Then tea, apple flan and chocolate fingers; we played cards until six, when she left.

One Hundred Words About APOD

APOD: 2006 January 15 - The Sombrero Galaxy from HST

It is about time I let you know about Astronomy Picture of the Day is one of the best sites I have found on the internet. It is a jewel of a site.

I visit it almost daily to catch up on the new photographs. I’ve always had an interest in astronomy. I even took a module in the first year of my degree on astronomy.

Each photograph comes with an explanation and each explanation comes with hyper links to other sites and pictures in the APOD archive.

I watch transfixed by patterns, colours and distances in time and space.

One Hundred Words Without You

Without you the house feels cold.

My thoughts return empty.

I leave the radiators on all night
and forget to turn a light off somewhere.

I buy too much food
to comfort us.

I don’t know when to go to bed
and wake with a jolt.
The radio whispers all night.

I wake the children early.
Hold them a little tighter,
give myself up to their
playground tragedies
and classroom news.

But the days are smooth and easy.
We slip in and out of them
without difficulty,
because you are out there
holding us
in the quiet of your mind.


(C) David Loffman

A Womb of Stars

 

One Hundred Words About Self

A Book Review

Self by Yann Martel

Self is very easy to read. It’s a compelling story. It’s part autobiography, part fiction, and it conveys a vivid experience of adolescent loss and discovery.

On page 89 the narrator’s parents die. On page 108 aged 18 the male narrator becomes a woman. Between 108 and 282 the narrative focuses on her developing sexual relationships with women then men. This culminates on 282 when she’s raped. On 313 she becomes a man, again. He’s a vagrant, has a number of same sex sexual encounters. The rape destroys his life.

At the end he meets Cathy. She wants a baby.

One Hundred Words About The Leopard

The Leopard is a great book. We follow the measured, careful and self-conscious stride of Don Fabrizo a Prince of a province of Sicily in the 1860’s. He presides over a declining aristocratic way of life at a time of struggle for a unified Italy.

But whether political struggle, religious debates or domestic concerns this is a delicate and intensely sensitive portrait of an aging nobleman. We see him from the inside, poised, struggling with competing emotions, duties and responsibilities. A man imprisoned and yet completely at ease in his role as patriarch, father, husband, uncle, master, lover and Prince.

One Hundred Words About Boubacar Traore

Amazon.co.uk: Kongo Magni [Import]: Music

I first heard Boubacar Traore ten years ago.

His voice has an extraordinary depth to it. It is a weathered, beaten up voice, burnished through personal hardships and suffering. It seems to reach out to the listener with an unassuming and surprising emotional intensity.

But that is not all. He sings his own songs. They seem simple and unsophisticated but the melodies are haunting and seductive. They draw you in to his world where he sings of life in Mali, celebrating its vitality, independence and hope for the future. There is dignity and integrity in everything he sings and plays.

One Hundred Words About Shylock

The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Michael Radford’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice is stunning. And Pacino was born to play Shylock.

The play reverberates through our racist society.

Shylock, the moneylender Jew, seeks revenge disguised as justice against Antonio who has broken his bond. In return Antonio must give up a pound of his flesh to Shylock.

In court Shylock is tricked. He loses everything, even his religion. But the Christian court and its fashionable nobles are seen as bigots taking their own revenge.

The storyline of Bassanio’s – funded by Antonio – courtship and love for Portia shrivels under the harrowing fate of Shylock’s tragedy.

One Hundred Words

We’ve just returned from Anglesey after a four-day trip. We went up for the funeral of my mother in law and stayed on to spend time with the family. I think it was the first time we’d all been together for years.

Despite staying in a hotel it is hard being there. Away from the home we’re enjoying, it’s a long drive, its colder up there and being on the coast the land is quite steep and hilly for me.

But it was very successful. At the lunch I knew most of the people there and I talked non-stop.

One Hundred Christmas Words

Not an easy Christmas but successful. My wife’s mother died on the twentieth and my wife left to help her father. They returned on Christmas Eve. We had invited seventeen and had to slim this down. Twelve came.

I spent two early mornings – day six and five - buying presents and took my time. The children were still at school. Day four I spent sorting the house out. Day three I did the main shopping. Day two more tidying with help from my mother. On Christmas Eve the children wrapped presents and prepared vegetables. Our Christmas Day worked very well.

One Hundred Words

In the midst of death there are still Christmas presents to buy.

Katy rang me when I was in Kingston on my second day of Christmas present hunting. I had just spied my prey on a bookshelf in Waterstones when she rang to tell me her mother had died.

I let the book go. Took a step back from the tables full of books and piped Christmas music. Another step back from growing crowds and the unspoken urgency in the aisles and in the queues.

Christmas that seemed clearly in my grasp a minute ago slipped out of my hands.

A New Poem

Here is a recent poem. I posted a draft of this a few weeks back. This is as close to being completed as I can get. It contains about 10% of the original impulse to write it.

New Home

Occasionally we get a glimpse
of our new home.

It rises up
fractured, vague, unfocussed
like rippled glass.

Until for a moment
clear and sharp,
it shines at us.
A promise
within our grasp.

And we stare
in silence,
unspoken hope
impatient longing,
from the margins
of our living rooms.

Yesterday we stopped
at a new shelf -
and a single saucepan, gleaming
nestled, settled in

until home slipped away again
lost under the grey skin
of masonry dust
and packed boxes.

But today at dinner
I felt it surge suddenly
in our open smiles
and easy talk

across the table
warm and sweet -
a kind of food
we have craved.

© David Loffman

A Book Review Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

I've read Frankenstein recently. I'm studying it with a first year literature class. So here is my review.

A novel in three volumes in which we read the journal of an arctic explorer whose ship is trapped by sea ice. He encounters Victor Frankenstein on a sleigh, close to death, chasing another sleigh navigated by an unknown but huge man.

When he has recovered a little Frankenstein tells his tale to the explorer. It is a moral tale warning against obsessive ambition and international fame.

Doctor Victor Frankenstein first fascinated by the work of alchemists and natural philosophers undertakes a degree at Ingolstadt during which he decides to create a living creature out of the dead limbs and organs of a dead person.

Eventually the creature is brought to life.

Immediately Frankenstein is revolted and disgusted by what he has created and falls ill under the strain of what he has done. A friend and fellow student called Henry Cherval looks after Victor.

Frankenstein recovers and continues to study at the university but under Henry’s example studies other languages.

Before returning home to his father, his bride to be and his two brothers he receives news that his younger brother has been murdered and an adopted sister has been blamed for the crime.

He returns home certain that the murderer is the creature - after cqatching sight of him in the mountains. The adopted sister who Victor had never met is found guilty and is executed. Two deaths.

Victor is filled with guilt, anger, revenge and disgust. He retreats to the mountains to escape his feelings and meets the creature. This meeting is explosive and Frankenstein wants to kill it. The creature persuades him to listen to his tale and journey, his struggle and defeat at being accepted by society.

Rejected by people it tells of a family who he watches secretly from a hovel he has made and develops loving and affectionate feelings towards him. He eventually makes himself known to them and they are totally repulsed by him. This final rejection is to much. He vows to be an enemy of humankind and to destroy his creator.

Searching for him he kills William – Victor’s brother and frames the adopted sister.

It demands Victor creates a female companion for it. And vows to kill Victor if he does not. Eventually Victor agrees and travels to a secluded area on Orkney, Scotland, accompanied by Henry Cherval. However Victor refuses to continue his work. He is sickened by it and fears what a male and female creature could achieve together as enemies to humanity.

On destroying his work he sails out to sea and lands in Ireland where he is arrested for the murder of – he later discovers – his friend Henry Cherval. He knows the creature killed him. He is freed, returns home and marries Elizabeth his long waiting bride to be. She is murdered on there wedding night and Victor devotes the rest of his life to hunting and destroying the creature. His father too dies broken hearted and weakened by the tragic events that have surrounded his life since the death of his wife of Scarlet Fever when Victor was still at home.

His chase leads him to the barren white wastes of the arctic ocean where he dies in the arms of his friend Robert Walton the polar explorer.

Walton witnesses the creature in Frankenstein’s cabin. It tells Walton he will travel to the Pole and there make a fire and destroy himself.

Walton returns south on a melting ocean with his crew and no longer seeks to discover the north pole. Here the tale of Frankenstein come to an end.

This is generally a badly written book. But is rescued by some engaging features.

Something different happens on every page. It is a page-turner and I genuinely wanted to know what happened and how it was achieved.

The creature’s character is interesting. A beautiful mind and sensibilities corrupted by Victor’s disgust and humanities prejudices against the unknown, the alien.

Some of the descriptions are beautifully realized for example, the setting of the novel, the Alps, Scotland are stunning.

However the book is over written. It could have been a third less in length at least.

Characters are not well drawn. They are superficial and uninteresting. Relationships are stereotyped, sentimental and gushing.

Much of the story is unrealistic and impractical and there are so many questions that the narrative just does not answer or address in any satisfactory way. For example how does the creature travel from Geneva to Scotland? How does it learn to speak, read or write so eloquently? There are many questions.

And yet what perhaps is the most successful feature of the novel are the moral and philosophical themes and issues it raises. For example, the novel asks, what is it to be human? It also discusses our responsibilities in science. And Frankenstein raises lots of issues around, parenting, paternity, individual identity, developments in artificial intelligence and genetic technologies.

One Hundred Words About Remeberance Day

Remembrance Day. I turn on the television and call the children down at ten thirty to watch the parade and wreath laying at The Cenotaph. We listen to David Dimbelbey’s commentary and the music of military bands. Dead leaves rustle and fall from the trees in Whitehall.

On that first stroke of silence tears begin to fill my eyes. The children keep silence with me, watching, curious, silenced also by the grey uniforms and the pale sombre expressions of all those remembering. Elgar’s Nimrod seems still to hang in the air, dark, weeping, smoulders like smoke from an autumn bonfire.

One Hundred Words About One Hundred Words

I’ve decided I’m a writer. I’ve come to this page several times over the week and almost got to the end of a line – then scrapped it. But here I am again wondering if I can carry it off this time.
Simon Hoggart usually manages to write three or four paragraphs each week in his column so why shouldn’t I? There are some simple answers to that but that would be something like making excuses for not writing anything and to even mention him in the same sentence as me is assuming far too much about my abilities. So there!

One Hundred Word Poem

Dear Pam

Here is a little variation on the one hundred words theme. Hope you like it.

D

New Home

Occasionally we get a glimpse
of our new home.

It rises up to us
fractured, vague, unfocussed
like rippled glass.

Until for a moment
clear and sharp,
it shines at us.
A promise
within our grasp.

And we stare
in silence,
unspoken hope
impatient longing.

Today we stopped
at a new shelf -
and a single saucepan, gleaming.

Then it slips away again
lost under the grey skin
of masonry dust.

I look out
from the margins
of our living room.

All the pieces
of our broken lives
slowly emerging whole
out of a black, lifeless deep.

(c) David Loffman

One Hundred Words About Wind

It feels as if we are travelling. Thick dark grey cloud has been surging in from the west all day. And then it thins to bleached grey, then white. There have been stretches of blue, clean and spotless but the cloud smothers in on high winds.

Last night the rain kept waking me. The sudden sharp slaps of water hit windowpane and guttering. Water knocked hard against the wall wanting to get in. I worried about it for a while.
Outside trees twist and shake under the furious weight of the wind whipping them. Branches fling themselves at the sky helpless.

One Hundred Words About A Desert

It is four O’clock in the morning. It is dark and the air is biting. Either the sky has begun to brighten or I have got used to the dim predawn light.

I can only hear our sleepy, dry voices. Out there in the thin light is silence and beyond that the broken wall of rock that drops down into the canyon, hundreds of meters below.

Then the sun comes like a knife over the mountains. And I stand in the shadow of the earth. Soldering light scolds the cracked rock. I watch my own shadow forming – in an instant.

One Hundred Words About A Forest

Once there was a forest that stretched all the way to the sea. It was vast, unbounded. Hills and valleys were hidden in its folds. Streams flowed through that land and deep, silent pools settled in its shadows. Here Pike and Carp grew undisturbed in clear water. Great English Oaks grew and stretched out their branches over the ponds and hidden in forgotten groves grew Elm trees, tall, strong, majestic. Among the young Oaks deer grazed and sheltered in the tall ferns that grew among the clearings. And I’d heard that Boar, Bear and Wolf roamed the valleys and hills.

One Hundred Words About Sunday

We’re on holiday for a week. So we don’t need to rush. I got up at seven thirty to read the paper in peace for a couple of hours. Katy was unwell so she stayed at home with Iona while l went to church.

Then we all had lunch with old friends. We had not seen them for years. It was good to catch up.

At home by five thirty and went to work on putting up bookshelves on the landing. We unpacked about fourteen boxes of books and are beginning to make some space in the study at last.

One Hundred Words About Too Many Words

There was an open evening on Tuesday.

I stood at the English Literature stand and waited.

At five I started talking to parents and I did not stop until eight thirty. As each party left a new one came. Sometimes I looked up to see three or four other groups listening to me.

At other times I looked up and saw my colleagues and parents directing other parents in my direction.

It was an extraordinary evening, parents were impressed by my summaries and enthusiasm and colleagues were impressed with my energy.

It was exhausting and exhilarating. I didn’t sit once.

Sleepy

It feels like a heavy fluid weight that shifts position inside me so it almost throws me off balance with each step I take. I have to check myself, force myself to keep control. If I stop and sit still, the world dissolves and fades out behind my lead eyes that close and embrace the darkness. Sleep is so close to me I feel I could reach my hand out to it. I feel I could unlock my grasp of the day, and let myself fall – warm muffled thoughts. Silence, soft embrace, a sweet lingering taste, cradled, dark and hidden.

Poetry Reading Details

The Poetry Library | Events | Poetry Readings

check out this listing for the poetry reading on the 29 November

Note of Absence

Dear Reader, David has not been able to blog recently. Firstly, he has the most demanding timetable he has had. He teaches from nine till five twice a week and nine till four twice a week. He is teaching six A level courses – most years it has been three or four.

The family have been looking at secondary schools in the evenings and trying to decide what schools to apply to for the children.

At weekends we have been stripping doors, stripping walls, painting walls, hanging shelves, neglecting the children and unpacking boxes.

I hope normal service will resume soon.

One Hundred Words to Pam

Dear Pam it was a shame we could not talk this morning but we were just going out to my mother’s for lunch, to say goodbye to my aunt from Australia. Her last and only other visit to London was in 1978. However I remember the first time still vividly. We went to the Tate in Pimlico to see an exhibition of Blake’s paintings, like walking through a nightmare. She was and is an incredible woman. There is something very special about her. We struck up a friendship immediately and twenty-eight years of absence did not seem to diminish that.

Poetry Reading

I'm reading along side Michael O' Siadhail at Poetry in the Crypt on 29 October from 7.15 at St Mary's Church, Upper Street, Islington. £3.00 entry - £2.00 conc. All proceeds go to the St Mary's Church Homeless Project.

One Hundred Words About Children Growing

My children are growing up and I want to hold on to them. Fear dominates my thoughts when I think of them leaving the house alone in the mornings to go to school. And fear again when I think of them coming home alone, across the main road, over the level crossing. And yet they are confident and feel secure.

Today I arranged to meet my son from school. But he did not appear. So I walked slowly back until I saw his smiling face the other side of the level crossing. He greeted me with, ‘so there you are.’

One Hundred Words About Views

What a triptych of dull views I can hear you thinking and of course on one level you are absolutely right. Our friends in Abbotsbury have a view of the sea. Our friends in Toulouse live on the edge of a forest and our friends in Canada live near a ski resort. I bet the views are stunning. And friends that live near Oxford. They have an orchard for a garden. So our suburban townscape must seem pretty dull. And yet it is fascinating to me to live among so many people, each person amazing like a view of Everest.

One Hundred Words About A View

From the old house I worked mostly from the back room. There was just one small window looking out over the back garden and alleyway.

Now in the new house I am in the front of the house, sitting at a desk looking out over a bay window with three views. I can look directly down the road towards the main road filled with cars passing and the occasional pedestrian crosses. I can look directly across the road to the street and houses opposite. And then look up the road to the darker, quieter street away from the main road.

One Hundred Stressful Words

Sunday is a small breathing space. I fend off difficult thoughts that haunt us and will demand our attention as each day passes. I expect every family lives under stress. Stress is our normal state and moving house has created new pressures and strains on us all. Our bigger mortgage creates a whole range of financial pressures on us. One example is Katy will have to leave the house at eight fifteen on Wednesday’s and Thursday’s to go to work and the children will have to leave the house for school alone at eight thirty-five without us waving them off.

One Hundred Damp Words

Over the summer our stress levels were high as we moved from house to house waiting until we could move into our new home. We knew moving in wouldn’t be easy but we hoped that gradually our stress levels would decrease as everyday challenges would take over.

But I am sitting in our study where the hard rain fell this afternoon and dripped from the ceiling onto a desk with our computers and onto the new carpet we had laid. The gutters at the back of the house don’t work and there is a smell of drains in the air.

Remaking A Home

We are in our new home. We experience a whole mixture of feelings as we pass from room to room. Firstly there is the shock of boxes everywhere. There are towers of them rising up from the floor and one or two almost touch the ceiling.

Yesterday we drove to Surbition, to collect the rest of our things. So everything we have is now held within these walls. On one level I feel whole again and complete. On another everything is out of place, disordered and unfamiliar – the walls are bare.

Coming home takes time even when you are there.

Yet Another One Hundred Waiting Words

I’m sitting at my desk at work, waiting for a meeting to start. We come in to college early every year, to enrol students, have meetings, dissecting last years results and plan for this year’s courses. Essentially we are just waiting for the college year to begin.

Next Wednesday I meet my new tutor group for the first time and next Thursday I start teaching the first year students. There is a relaxed, holiday atmosphere around my colleagues that talk about their summer trips but I'm not listening, I'm waiting.

We move into our new home on Saturday.

Another One Hundred Waiting Words

Every Sunday we were expected to attend Hebrew classes. My dad took us on the bus every week and we made our own way back three hours later. Eventually I decided I did not want to go any more but instead of pleading with my parents as I did every week with no success we decided to skip the classes and make a long slow three hour walk home. We developed a routine, stopped outside shop windows, spent our bus money on sweets and checked out the local cinema, until eventually, cold, full of lies and guilt, we arrived home.