I don’t know when the end begins. For many years of our lives, most of us are, apparently, immortal. My generation knows only too well that there will be early demises – Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Ian Drury, John Lennon: characters, stars; call them what you will. I remember being particularly saddened a couple of years ago, just when I thought I’d got used to it all, by the death of James Gandalfini – a particularly nasty trick when I’d been such a late convert to The Sopranos.

And, talking about my generation, we’ve experienced first-hand those other shocking wake-up calls: Jack and Robert Kennedy, when one was not yet old enough to read American politics; Diana, when we were of an age to hate the financial unfairness of royalty, but not yet mature enough to deal with innate sadness that made the whole country be nicer to each other for a week.

Unexpectedly, when we hit sixtyish, our personal friends start dying. These are not folk who’ve passed a lifetime of indulgent excess. There’s no lesson to be learned and this is a terrible shock. How very inconsiderate of them to notify us that, despite being children of the sixties, and thus not only up there with the game changers, that the game is, after all ,not infinite. What a nerve these people have with their strokes and their heart attacks and their cancers. Get a life!

Bowie never warned anybody about anything – he just did it. No surprise then that we didn’t know he was ill. What would we have done with that information anyway? We wouldn’t have rushed out and purchased his new album – we were doing that anyway. His death was as his life’s work: unexpected and shocking.

A couple of years ago, we went to the Bowie retrospective at the V & A. How wonderful to write that sentence. How amazingly different from all the other modern deaths that the V & A chose to commemorate this icon. How brilliant that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the first to offer his plaudit on Radio 4 this morning.

When we speak of Bowie, we speak not of small or temporal things. The world mourns.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 670 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 11 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Miller’s lived in New Zealand for around 25 years now which is probably nearly as long as he lived in Dorset. I was surprised when I discovered he’d left. When I first met Miller, I was a seasonal worker and he was a local. I was transient; Miller was grounded. There were people on that part of the Dorset coast who had never left the Purbecks. Those who did rarely went far and always returned after a short interlude.

I’d imagined Miller to be one of those. It was a woman, of course. Tried to get her to stay on in Dorset but there were problems: visas and suchlike; so Miller went home with her to New Zealand. He didn’t come back. In some respects though, he never left.

I see him quite often on social media. I suppose writing letters used to be a form of social media before we’d ever heard of it. Not such a big audience though. Unless someone else was reading your mail. Funny: now you want the world to read your post. And it’s much easier to check in every now and then to see what’s happening in the lives of those who’ve become ‘others’.

Miller isn’t really living the life of ‘other’. Miller’s still in Dorset. He doesn’t really fit elsewhere. Mind you, there’s no such thing as a Dorset diaspora. Well, not since that business over at Tolpuddle and even that crowd eventually became homeward bound. Miller, meanwhile, posts photographs of snow and sun to illustrate the extremes of available temperatures, compared to those on offer in Dorset.

It’s important to have a sense of difference. What would otherwise be the point in moving so far away? Miller also comments on all the news and sport and politics. That would be the news and sport and politics of England. Of Dorset. Come on you Cherries! Many people in Dorset respond. You Cherries!

Miller posts photographs of himself and his friends as children; as adolescents; as young adults. Miller’s friends in Dorset reply: that was a great day; that was a great life. Hey, Miller – have you moved? There’s nothing referring to Miller’s current life. From Miller’s frequent appearances on social media, I have learned nothing about what it means to live in New Zealand today. I don’t know what sport he follows, how he votes, his interest in public affairs or who his friends are. There are no images of the woman he left home for. There are no children in evidence. Occasionally, there’s a photo of a long dead dog. Nothing to tempt those left in Dorset to move along the line of Hardy-like territorialism. It’s as if he never left.

Against foreign inclines, Miller has wrapped himself in a diaspora of one.

A seasonal taster of the forthcoming sequel

Christmas passes almost before anyone has noticed its arrival. However, it would be foolish of your narrator to allow this opportunity for consolidation to wend its merry way into history without comment. Let’s face it, Christmas is a time to relax and gently mull over the preceding year’s events before commencing anew. Pardon? Madame Martin feels there’s little opportunity to relax in her ever-shrinking, increasingly dilapidated kitchen: a kitchen constantly full of all and sundry bringing their emotional baggage à table to which we will return shortly.

At home, any home, one is often expected to pass the season of goodwill with those family members to whom the least amount of goodwill is voluntarily expended during other times of the year. It’s a bit different for the ex-pats in Provence who have made a new life in distant climes. For a start, they wouldn’t have moved to the South if they had any desire to be in regular contact with many of their biological relatives. They certainly wouldn’t have chosen to live along the road that runs between Noves and Cabannes if they wanted to be easily found. But, for most of them, there’s an ingrained debt to this cultural business of sharing seasonal bonhomie. It’s true that the partner who cannot be named has little interest in stories linked to stars and stables. Neither has he much of an appetite for the giving of expensive gifts, or cheap ones. The partner has been a little grumpy of late owing to the onset of a tediously dull pain in his lower back. Phyllida has taken him to Noves where Dr Giraud was unable to determine the reason; largely because wooden chaise longues were absent from any account of possible causal activities. He has advised a course of yoga. Phyllida is extremely happy with this prescription as the partner will now be able to accompany her to the centre culturel once a week. The partner is less than happy.

In the meantime, they have shared a festive dinner with Louise, Louise’s visiting (and welcome) mother and Louise’s lawn-mowing husband. Myrtle and Richard Meades were also in attendance. The appearance of these extra guests was also a source of dismay to the partner who cannot be named as, in his opinion, far too much conversation was exhausted on the subject of cricket. Nonetheless, there may have been a geographical resolution of sorts. Louise’s husband has offered to mow a wicket in their parkland in order that the ex-pat team has a practice venue. Apart from the minor irritation of the sports interlude, which was easily managed with a few extra aperitifs, the celebrations were enjoyable.

Louise, as everyone agrees, is an excellent chef. She has managed to secure a large goose on the table whilst simultaneously producing a succulent nut roast for her vegetarian neighbours. To aid her culinary expertise, she has, of course, the advantage of owning the best available in the departments of kitchen equipment and utensils. The Norwegian Blues, meanwhile, have been left at home with platefuls of gourmet goodies fit for their delicate palates. Nanette, however, being the pampered lady of Mas Saint Antoine when guest dogs are absent, is resplendent in her self-contained exhibitionism. She lies on her back in front of the fire, legs stuck at various angles, displaying a rather distended tummy. She looks full of goose. Louise tries hard not to look at Nanette. Louise knows only too well that it’s not a goose which lurks inside her beloved lady dog. Like the spring flowers that currently lie dormant beneath the gardens of Provence, the thing that is not a goose waits to make an appearance. Unlike the golden crocuses, the not-a-goose-in-waiting has more to do with a wolf dog than floral adornments that might have been planted for the delight of early holiday makers.

Over at chez Martin, the celebrations have also been in full swing but were not undertaken with the advantages of an avante garde kitchen. The last thing that Madame Martin thinks about is the potential paternal responsibilities of Clovis. Of these, she has no idea as she batters her tiny route around the kitchen of despair. Was it so long ago, she wonders, that she accompanied Monsieur Villiers to see the santons in the crèche at Frigolet? How she would have loved to see the seasonal display in the town hall of Tarasçon. Poor Tarasçon: vilified throughout the year for its nerve to sit adjacent to smelly Beaucaire, suddenly redeems itself each Christmastide with the most extraordinary account of Provençal social history. The miniscule clay visitors wend their supplicating way up the stairs of the Hôtel de Ville, round the corner to the epicentre of the nativity and yet again celebrate the arrival of Jesus in Provence.

Madame Lapin has been celebrating the arrival of, amongst others, Jean-Pierre Lucard. In this, she has imbibed more than one aperitif as she considers that, had Daudet been alive and present chez elle this Christmastide, he almost certainly would have felt obliged to write a prominent paella purveyor into correspondence from his windmill. There are, of course, others: Christophe, Netty and her father who has travelled from the Camargue, Monsieur Martin, Sophie, Dr Giraud and the obligatory goose. Nut roasts, however, do not comprise an element of this gathering. Nut roasts comprise an unknown concept at the bottom of the lane that runs from the road between Noves and Cabannes.

Since the errant Jean-Pierre Lucard returned to the fold, Madame Lapin is a changed woman from the one who attended that distressing interview earlier in the month. Mascara, for example, now accentuates a pair of bright eyes rather than running in lava-like rivulets down red, puffy cheeks. Hair has been piled high with deliberately falling wisps shaping that not-really-enigmatic face. Of course, clothing has been chosen with care: the right parts of the body are accentuated and the not-so-good quarters are pleasantly disguised. And everything has been dressed with a variety of sparkling and seasonal adornments: earrings, necklaces and a bracelet that proudly sits below Madame Lapin’s sleeve, next to the place where she wears her heart.

Jean-Pierre Lucard is still wearing his summer ensemble. Come hell or high wind, both of which have made more than one appearance during the preceding autumn, the paella purveyor, immune to meteorological inconsistencies, can be depended upon in the department of sartorial. The pale pink shirt is currently replaced by one in a pleasant shade of grey. Naturally, in the winter warmth of the kitchen chez Martin, he’s been able to open a few buttons and his golden medallion shines like a gift from a passing king. Actually, in this part of the world, the kings don’t pass this way until epiphany at which point vast amounts of gateaux will be eaten; and numerous admissions to the Henri Duffaut hospital in Avignon will witness mass choking on miniature cartoon characters hidden in the depths of the epiphany cakes. In the meantime, Jean-Pierre Lucard also sports a glinting wrist. The person who once dared to call herself a feminist has given her lover an identity bracelet with her own name engraved upon.

Amongst other gifts, Madame Lapin has donated an enormous bunch of mistletoe which now hangs on a handy nail above the kitchen table. Each time someone stands up, they are knocked sideways by the foliage and berries fall like poisonous snowflakes into the food below. ‘Putain’, thinks Madame Martin although, secretly, she’s delighted to have her friend and business partner back on board. What’s really annoying her, however, is the continuous talk of cricket. How times change. Let’s be clear, this is Provence. People flock to Provence precisely because things don’t change. Generally. When was the last time someone suggested holding a cricket match in a bull-ring?

From the clear winter skies above chez Martin, the faintest of passing bells might be heard by anyone who is not busy celebrating . And in his secret grotto under the festive table Clovis lifts a quizzical ear and whines.

I remember, I remember … walking across a field in Warwick with my father towards the house where he was born. It was a long time ago but he must have been having a similar moment to the one I’m experiencing this evening for he said to me, ‘I don’t really understand what it’s all about’. By ‘it’, he meant life, the universe, anything that we’re brought up to believe are our terms of reference.

I had a wake-up call today – in itself a misnomer as I’m rarely asleep. A missive arrived to say I’d have a winter fuel allowance imminently. Surely they’re for old folk? Well, 200 unexpected smackers in the bank are quite handy for the festive season, but still… it’s tricky.

By coincidence, I was looking for a photo of an errant husband tonight for daughter number two. And whilst searching, I found the snap above. It’s me with Spencer Thomas Alan Havelock-Allan – a direct descendant of the baronets and latter-day famous film director. He was working in Keymarkets at the time on the yoghurt counter. In this photo, we’d just come back from the fair in Trowbridge. I can’t imagine who took this picture or why. People didn’t have the instant access to cameras that they do now. We had no notion of digitalisation so we must have paid someone to take it. And the ‘someone’ must’ve sent it to us. But how did that happen? We had no money. Did we forfeit a turn on the Waltzers in order to have a piece of memorabilia of life in Trowbridge? Was it a special occasion?

More importantly, where is Spencer Thomas Alan Havelock-Allen today? Has he discarded his leather jacket? Is he, too, in receipt of old person’s heating allowance and a senior railcard? Is he also moaning about having to still go to work despite all these formal recognitions of advanced age? Is he dead?

I’m hoping he’s living in the back of beyond listening to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, riding a Royal Enfield Constellation, and keeping warm (courtesy of Cameron’s heating allowance). Here’s two fingers to old age.

It’s National Poetry Day today and I’m minded of that spooky little poem, Antigonish. You’re probably thinking you’ve never heard of it, but you have. It’s the one that starts:

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there…

I met a man upon the stairs today. To be precise, the stairs in the Dolphin Shopping Centre car park which is where he lives with a grey Staffordshire Bull Terrier. I don’t normally give to homeless people who aren’t selling the Big Issue. Is that bad of me? Anyway, I’ve been a bit under the weather this week: confined to quarters, climbing up walls and a plethora of other metaphors that will surely render this post completely meaningless to anyone of some alternative nationality. Today, I felt well enough to take a quiet trip into town and having accomplished this without falling over, and having purchased a haunch of venison and five inviting nectarines from an unexpected market stall, I was positively bursting with bonhomie. Returning to my car, I accosted said homeless person:

Me: would you like a nectarine?

Him: what’s that?

Me (proudly brandishing a juicy fruit): a nectarine

Him (suspiciously regarding it as though ’twas the poisoned chalice): what is it?

Me: it’s a nectarine

Him: I can’t eat it

Me: why not?

Him: I haven’t got any teeth

Me: but it’s soft

Dog: grrrrrrrrrr

I left to buy a few back copies of the Daily Mail.

Later, enthused by having escaped the confines of the sick bay and having taken a small restorative nap, I went to Wimborne. I wasn’t wandering aimlessly – I was aiming for a specific shop but on the way I passed another. If you click on the picture, you’ll be steps ahead of me as I hadn’t even bothered to look upwards to see what kind of place this might be. It was just that, out of the corner of my beady eye, I noticed a cookery book of sorts in the crowded window: From field to table – how to cook venison.

I pushed open the ancient, creaking door and was immediately overcome by the stench of wet spaniel. Inside, there were dogs everywhere. I greeted one or two of them but they were clearly exhausted from earlier activities. A Springer who had collapsed in a green leather arm chair beat his tail with great vigour but never managed to open his eyes.There were two or three people of indeterminate, but advanced, age in this emporium having a conversation about country-type things. I like to think I’m a woman of the countryside. Wrong. No idea whatsoever about the content of their discussion.

The place was jammed to the rafters with guns but it also contained really interesting potential Christmas presents – a walking stick with a hare’s head, a silken tie on which pheasants had landed and so on. Trouble is, I don’t know anyone who might be able to make use of such things. And, as an intruder, I was clearly under close scrutiny. This, sadly, is not a shop in which browsing is anticipated or condoned.

An ancient being retrieved the one and only venison cook book from the window and immediately replaced it with a small volume on ferrets. There were no credit card facilities and no mention of any of that paper bag nonsense. I was sold the book that had been in the window for eons and sent on my way.

Earlier this week, before the Heebie-jeebies struck, I took mother shopping at Castlepoint. Every time I take her shopping she, understanding the rules, comes home laden down with baggage whilst I have nothing. Somehow, most shopping I undertake results only in purchases that can be eaten or plane tickets to France. In M & S, I hover near the ‘pay here’ point as mum happily pays for yet more goodies. A woman arrives and is confused by my pointless proximity to the tills:

Woman: are you in the queue?

Me: no, I’m waiting for my mum

Woman: I wish I was waiting for my mum

Me: gulp

Like this unfortunate sense of standing outside my own body as it travels along its path, this tiny, tiny comment has remained with me all week.

This is what’s left of Holyrood Church which is down towards the water in Southampton. I would’ve taken my own photo but, when we were there last Friday, there was a couple of people who, despite a few tourists looking for a picture opportunity, insisted on spending a good fifteen minutes sucking each other’s faces. It’s not really what one expects. As B commented, she’ll have a very nasty rash around her mouth later.

Holyrood Church, built in 1320, was once, like Friday’s female, in better shape . Not so good though according to Sir Henry Englefield who commented that ‘it does not seem to have ever been of elegant architecture’. Things got a lot worse in November 1940 when it fell foul of allied bombers during the blitz. What makes it worth a visit are the many memorials within to various elements of the crew of the Titanic.

Of course, one invariably trips over the multitude of Titanic memorabilia in this most superficially unattractive of cities. There are lots of other unexpected stories to discover, however, if you look between the awful mish-mash of the place. November doesn’t seem to have been a great month for the city: witness this plaque on the exterior of Holyrood. At 11.15pm on 7 November, 1837, fire broke out in the stables of local merchants. Horses may have been housed within – what wasn’t known was that the building also contained 150 pounds of gunpowder along with thousands of gallons of oil, turpentine and varnish. Local workmen and passers-by, in an act of selfless citizenship, rushed in to try to thwart the spread of the flames. Sadly, and regardless of valiant and magnanimous attempts, explosions began just after midnight and most were burnt beyond recognition. Despite the close proximity to the sea, the shortage of water and the lack of fire fighting equipment contributed to the inquest jury’s condemnation of the city’s complete unreadiness for such an occasion.

Continuing our pre-dinner stroll, we came upon this memorial raised by relatives of those who sailed on the Mayflower.  Walking around this part of Southampton is a bit like being on an unexpected treasure hunt: poking through pubs and restaurants to locate who knows what. There are lots of stories engraved on this tower, placed by those who could afford to do so, but my favourite was on an unattractive drinking fountain just out of the frame.

Mary Ann Rogers was the senior stewardess on The Stella – a passenger steamer that left port on Maundy Thursday, 1899. Her husband had already drowned in 1883 and Mary Ann was working to provide for her children. When the Stella went down in fog off the Isle of Wight with the loss of 105 lives, she gave her life jacket to a child and gave up her place on a life boat, thus saving many women and children. Hoorah for someone who acknowledged a woman.

Here’s the view from my hotel window on Friday night before we set sail. It’s not that attractive but to have such wonderful weather and a sunset like this was totally unexpected in these days of berried hedgerows and indecisive mornings. The following day we went to the Isle of Wight. Despite living on the south coast for so many years of my life, I’ve only ever been once. Hendrix was present – huge yawns from my children at this point.

Here they are. And here we are in Bembridge having purchased all things smelly from the delightful garlic farm. Lovely countryside, a seafood lunch, the welcome but unanticipated autumn sunshine and so on and so on. But my over-riding memory will be coming down a hill, round a corner and confronting the development of a new retirement home where the agent’s sign declared, to the aged folk who had not considered they might be abandoned by their families on an island, ‘not what you expected’.

Trying to avoid the gloomy autumnal view through my sitting room window, and looking through folders for something which remains lost, I found a piece I wrote in the depths of despair whilst living in Cornwall a few desperate winters ago. It goes without saying that I am not a poet. Nonetheless, it’s a timely reminder of the joys of living in Dorset:

Condemnation

Those were not the days of our lives.

Neither were they days like these. They were THE DARK DAYS:

Stumbling around the back of that angel infested graveyard on the way to

The Seven Stars, Stithians!

My saving grace; the light of my night,

Where sea shanties were sung to celebrate

St Pirran who had arrived on a stone,

Cast upon the wasteland of poor excuses for roads.

The coldest place in the universe where,

Like Wesley, I had fallen off the map.

Afraid to venture further than third gear in case I met

A horse

OR someone with a number of Labradors

OR skidded on ice

OR a pile of shit

OR worse still, arrived at my destination with water running down its walls

And chickens in the kitchen leaving behind

Another pile of shit

OR snow that stopped me escaping to Tremough

On a hill where the rain waited to seep into my bones on what was supposed to have been

A literary adventure.

I took tea with Mollie.

I listened to Josh sat on his damp bed

Playing his acoustic guitar.

I cooked aubergines and averted my eyes from the man

Strapped to cylinders of oxygen in the front room and thought

My life might not be as bad as his.

I craved the A30. I resorted to pasties and chocolate raisins.

I stood by a gate smoking and looked at the best of night skies holding

Too many stars that hung over a disaster called

Redruth.

Talk about poverty. Talk about desolation.

A woman purporting to be a gypsy

Accosted me in the car park on my way to look for

Otherwise unheard of tapestries that reflected

CULTURE (in a place where no-one had heard of the word).

Buy my shell she said.

I’ve spent my last two pounds parking the car in

A place I don’t want to stay in I said.

I see you in a cottage she said

Is it in Cornwall? I said

Yes, she said thinking

That would be worth three quid.

Wrong.

I didn’t go to the beach.

(I prefer the beach in Dorset; it can’t be beaten.

No choughs though.

But buzzards floating on air currents and mingling with hang gliders.)

I went to the Falmouth Beach Hotel

To swim and it burnt down.

Good job too and

I went on the mine trails and it was as near to beautiful as

Cornwall can manage if you’re stuck there and

I went to the Seven Stars, Stithians! again and again and

I claimed my free Sunday lunch with

Lindsay and Ian and Josh; it was small compensation.

I searched, desperately, for

Some redeeming features and there were none because

Cornwall is a poetic and artistic

Lie.

Take St. Ives, for example.

Please take it,

Away, along with its galleries full of dismal pictures and its

Sculptures and its men dragging boats and its men

Swearing at bus stops.

You want to be a lifeboat man he said

Then you’d know what Cornwall’s about.

He got away with pushing in front of the queue being,

As he was, on business of the highest importance.

You don’t argue with a man with RNLI

On his jumper even if he’s

Waiting for a bus and not running for a boat.

And now they’ve told the folk of Helston to leave.

They say it’s because of

The floods.

If I lived in Helston you wouldn’t have to evacuate me.

I’d have left when the sun was still shining.