Even more hate but also some glory.

 The British people, especially those around Broxbourne because more appalling by the minute. I find myself not wanting to go out.  The haters online continue to try and argue it is okay to protest outside the 'home' of the children, some people deny their presence, indicating they are not local or in the know.  

The good news is the counter protest has emerged. I am getting almost as many messages of support and a large counter protest happened on Friday, with a big police presence and a Green in the lead, so that was something. Though I still felt those in the hotel might not be able to tell the difference between the noise coming from the haters or the others.   

I have been obsessed with challenging people on Facebook, not because I am better than the people online, but working with refugees I am better informed, but how to speak to out and out racists and those who also seem to be slightly informed but even more anti despite being former refugees themselves. It was ever thus.  Racism breeds racism.  I just think kindness is safer and more a form of self interest.  

I had something though the last week with which to totally distract myself.  Sondheim, or a mini production of Sondheim, with an organisation called Ross, where professional directors and conductors work with amateurs to put on a theatre production in one week.  A nod to Judy Garland put on a summer show.  At first I was upset that I was the only person to not have a part and then I was relieved when I realised how hard the music was, but I styled it out the best I could, albeit it in a borrowed dress and hat and jacket.   It was also lovely to see the whole process from start to finish and my brain has not work that hard for ages, but we did it, I did forget some of the song lines, but I entered and exited in more or less the right places. I did have the least of anyone on the stage to do, but just being there and getting through the week was my challenge.   On the whole people were very kind, and I mostly really enjoyed it.  Would I go again. I do not know.  I should have done it of course when I was younger, and I am just wondering where have all those years gone.  But if not next year then at least one more time. Some people go every year.  It depends on how well these limbs stand up and they will face an even bigger challenge elsewhere. The haters have made me very sad, depressed, concerned. I really do not want to live here any more. If I could just pick myself up and put myself elsewhere I would, but where? They are everywhere and even more and more.   

One of the other participants, the only other person to have Googled, putting on a summer show,  was a lovely young woman all the way from Ukraine, for a week, she departed the war and now she is back under the bombs in Kiev.   She inspired us all.   And so did the other young partipants, who seemed to embody their parts in the adapation of Spelling Bee.  I enjoyed just watching everyone's performances. 

I also added another garden to my repetoire,  visiting RHS Bridgewater, I would like to go back and see the canal route, but the actual gardens are really lovely. It was a stunning day and everyone was having fun.  

British bullies. .

 I am a white British 70 year old.  Yesterday, standing in support of the families in the local asylym hotel I was verbally abused and called a pr....k by a man who is more of a threat to me than any future citizens waiting for their legal asylum claim will ever be.   He wasn't alone.  About 10 Labour party, Green party and other locals who knew that the residents were no trouble were celebrating the diverse history of this land, while white, mostly male, opponents of asylum seekers swaggered across the road with their ignornance and aggression.   If the police had not been there blood would have been shed.  They claimed only 1 child was in the hotel, which suggests that they were not local or informed   So they were there for trumped up reasons and just wanted shout and show off and cause trouble -just like the Taliban and other brutes who have forced so many people to seek aylum.  

The presence of theese avowed Tommy Robinson supporters was threatening enough, but what was additionally depressing was the seeing so many young children being brought out to learn hate and hearing so many beeping motorists spilling out that hate, that xenophobia.   In addition, our local MP, Lewis Cocking is fueling that hatred with his speeches in and out of parliament.  Shame on him.   

I have long known that Broxbourne is a racist area, the hidden tension mostly lie beneath the surface but sometimes they erupt.  The tiny group of pro refugee supporters were completely outnumbered by the bullies so retreated to avoid being hurt but that meant leaving the poor aylum seerks stuck in the hotel will a threatening mob outside, which must have felt awful.   

At home I turned into the Proms, famous of course for being the bastion of Britishness, but actually it was a celebration internationalism with performers from north and south America.   That an the allotment has reduced how stressed I feel bbut if an hour facing these thugs has left me feeling so bereft how must it feel to constantly face them.  

Plum Sake

This lovely empty bottle is all that is left of the holiday.   I bought it on the site of the brewery, with no expectation of liking it,  but it turned out to be lovely.  It also turned out, it was one of those rare drinks that needs to be consumed immediately, so it has been used in puddings and with fish and then the last drop drained with a meal for three . 

After every holiday it is nice to wallow and waft around in a sort of dozy state of bliss recalling all one has done.  And that is what I wanted to do with Japan, but it has been full power since getting back.  Trips to Dad's, helping out a little with Refugee Tales, or really more dancing too much and then paying the price, and reeling from shocks to the two gardens I am involved with.  Today, the photo book from Japan should arrive, the planning for the next trip is underway,  the photo book will be put on the shelf and the memories only taken down every so often, the photos help with the memories, but nothing we do can hold them, not fully.  And that is not because of the Sake, but the bottle will stay here till one day even that gets chucked out.   Life, I spend all my time planning trips or doing them and then can't even remember half of them, so life is a very strange thing.  

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I was supposed to be finalising a visa last night, but got caught up in the England V Sweden game.   

Osaka, Hiroshima, and Hakone.

 Staying at at a traditional Ryokan is a great way to end a Japanese holiday.  Osaka, a modern port and business district, was a good way to start.   

Once acclimatized to the heat, the humidity and the legendary toilets, I was able to move onto Hiroshima, one of the most powerful places I have ever visited. 

 Two years ago in Thailand I saw how the terrible the conditions were on the Burma railway and the brutal conditions the Japanese imposed.  In Hiroshima I saw our terrible retribution.     It is hard to reconcile the version of Japan I saw with the version of Japan I experienced in the country today.   It is good to experience both sides of the story and to have a more nuanced understanding of the country. 

Hiroshima Peace Park

CND rose Hiroshima

Japan, initial thoughts

 Sitting in a bar in Kamakura, I told my host, that I had always wanted to visit the country, to which she replied what took you so long.  A good question,  how is that I have got so old before fulfilling this dream. With more time and more money, I would go back,  but sadly this really is probably a once in a lifetime's dream fulfilled.  And at my age I was happy to cheat rather than the fantasies of my youth staying all over the place and staying long,  I just had a fortnight's organised visit.  But I am feeling more than blessed that I finally got there and I think I saw a really good range of places: Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Kanakawa ,Tokyo, Hakone and, on a day trip from the capital Kamakura.  I have been on I hate to think how many fast trains, how many local trains, I have even been on a pretend pirate ship and what the Japanese call a ropeway.  Travel does not fully ease the demons, but every day Japan put a smile on my face. 

Japanese entertainment - a rainy Sunday in Kanagawa

It turned out to be a very easy to visit, though that might be because the company I went with made travelling there very easy.  They booked the flights, they organised my JR pass, gave me the card which I could use on buses and tubes, already loaded up with credit, and they booked my hotels.  Each new town I got to someone met me, showed me around, and then let me lose on the town.  I enjoyed everything from the adventures, trying to work out the fancy loos, to the use of the lifts, to using an onsen. When I paused to try and work out what I was doing, someone would often come forward to ask if I was okay, when I actually really was lost and feeling a bit frazzled, I was instructed how to unpick the situation.  When I did not want to go up really high towers on my official tour, I was accomodated.   And when I got too tired to walk another step, I was happy to sit on a bench in a warm street and watch the mothers on bicycles cycle by me. 

Ice and heat.

 I feel like I am ice, except it is my memory that slides away from under me, rather than, my feet. 

If I just do, I am fine, I can get on a train, or I can go and have fun at a craft fair for a day, I can even produce a jolly tea towel, but all the years leading up to this point are a jumble of whispers. I try to catch what they are saying, I try and search the memory banks, but they are like tapes wiped clear.  There is just this faint echo, that something once happened. Of course it could be dementia, or does the body protect the living being within, from all that has happened to it.  Just focus on today, it says. Or at least I hope it does,  cos otherwise it is dementia and I am stuffed

Living Craft Hatfield.

Meanwhile the election has come and gone, despite the long sustained period here without rain, but of flood elsewhere, Reform has captured the hearts and minds of people ready to dance whilst the earth burns.    Us vaguely woke people though are almost always clobbered by our own desires and made hypocrites by the way we live our lives.   I am trying to sort out pictures from years back, but nothing seems to work, the technology just as intransigent as my mind, and still I take more pictures.  All these attempts to hold the memory,  and for a moment it works, but what about all the pictures I did not take.   More whispers. 

Anyway, one day it will all be gone and hopefully N will find this record if nothing else, and that might help him remember if not what I was like but some of the things I did. 

I went to a Buddhist meeting recently, with a friend from the Harmony Gardens, it disturbed me oddly, avoiding the truth or a recognition, that truth had not been in the room. Anyway it had nice consquences as I have messaged J and C in Bhutan to discuss their thoughts.  Sometimes I chant with the friend, it helps us both, but to her is embedded in the Buddism she practices, whereas I am now having to read up on things to understand what I have been chanting. 

Very importantly, N has taken this huge leap in being.  I will do some publicity for his new tattoo and mediation place tomorrow, through him life has taken on yet another adventure.   I am going to go on a workshop there, so will experience it for myself.   

The Lighthouse, sponsorship. 

Talking to potential customers.

Sentimental journey

 Around the time I knew my step dad really was passing I booked a cruise, I thought it was going last year, and would be a time to reflect on his life but I got it all wrong and instead I went this year and in many ways the trip became a route for me from work to retirement! It was also fun.  

Tulips of Amsterdam

If you were to look at the pictures of the trip you would say it was all about the flowers, flowers in The Netherlands, flowers on Scillly Isles and flowers in Monet's Garden and all of that would be true, it was partly the range of outings that sold the cruise to me (apart from the connection to my step dad/dad)  However, in reality the thing that also makes a cruise is ship board life and whilst I couldn't do what some people do, go from cruise to cruise, I really enjoy that process of dashing around the ship, trying to work out where one is,  looking out of the window and seeing the sea stretch away in the distance or land ahoy,  chatting to people fleetingly in the lifts or at lunch and then there are the opportunties for excerise and luxury. I did not finish my book, but I did watch 4 movies, go to four shows, join in with about 5 quizzes and even won one on musicals.  I swam a few times, did three art classes,  did three exercise classes, joined in with the line dancing and even on the last day was one of about a dozen people up dancing to New York, New York with some of the cast.    So it was pretty full on, and then there was the fun of dinning each night with the other solo travellers and the joy of eating by the pool or in a fancy restaurant.  Out of 8 days,  4 were at sea, I was in the spa this time when we passed by Guernsey,  last time we were going up a fjord.  So there is something about the process of cruising that appeals to me, there is a silliness to it, a kitchness and a joy to it.  Though I have not had experience of bad weather so that might shift my perspective. Also having no wifi it is wonderful to be away from the world, though news of the Pope's death was of course on the TV. 

Wildflowers on St. Mary's Scilly Isles.

But I was also lucky because the trips were glorious. I was in heaven up to my eyes in tulips after tulips at the Kuenkenhof, then on St. Mary's I sat on a wonderful beach, my back against a huge granite boulder and spent some time with dad, before walking through flower covered fields to the grave of Harold Wilson and back.  And then Monet's garden, a stupid distance from the ship, just shimmered in the sun, just like one of his paintings, except that there were no water lilies! About 30 years ago my sister and I had peered over the walls, because we had gone on the day it was shut!,  but now I have been. Entry is very reasonable, but not if you go from a cruise ship and have to have a meal en route, and everything there is much more touristy than when I last tried to get there, and I have learned of course how much is a recreation rather than exactly how he left it, but it was still worth it as it was spectacually beautiful. 

Giverny

So having hesitated and felt silly to cruise to such nearby places instead I am very very grateful for a lovely time in the sun, seeing great places and meeting lovely people   And as a bonus, before hand I got to the Roman Wall near what was Sycamore Gap,  climbing the hill ,was hard work especially in the cold and the rain and then I visited the roman fort of Vinlanda.  

                                              

Hadrian'sWall, near The Sill, Northumberland.

Tomorrow it is polling day, online everyone is saying Reform, but let's hope the people of Hertfordshire turn out to be better than that and keep the Green Party councillors in power.