Platters
20 February 2020
Hospitality is a tricky thing. I'm not always sure what my motivation is. I love inviting people to my house, 2 or 3 times a year I have a bit of do. I don't really partake in the merriment I love the menu planning and the guest list and seeing people I like gathered around my kitchen table. Most of the time I am standing cooking, revealing plate after plate of food.
One of the best parts for me is when I open my cupboard and decide on which of my ceramic knick knacks I'm going to serve the food. I think for me a party is an invitation for me to show off but in a ostensibly generous kind of way. I'm not sure generosity is quite at the heart of it.
I'd like to meet someone in Harstad who loves cooking for friends.
Time
10 February 2020
The clocks in my Dad's house seem to be in sympathy with his relationship to time.
It started with the clock on the oven, which after a power cut, just flashes 00:00 and I can not find the manual to change it. Then the clock on the kitchen wall stopped. Now the one on the mantelpiece that my son bought for his nanny and grandad has stopped at ten to two.
The only clock that works used to display the day, date and time. Now it simply gives the name of the day and an idea about which bit of the day it might be. But it's floating free from any notion of era, decade, season, exact time just like my Dad.
I would like to meet someone in Harstad who has a parent with Alzheimer's/Dementia.
Garden Centre
3 February 2020
Yesterday morning me and my fella were at the garden centre, we are middle aged. I said to him sometimes I feel fine being in a totally white environment and sometimes I absolutely hate it and all the people around me, like now. He said, I feel exactly the same and not just when I'm with you or with one of my kids. (His kids are mixed race, is that what we say now, dual heritage? children of colour?)
I'm not sure, because I don't know if he feels exactly the same as me because I stopped speaking after that.
I want to meet someone in Harstad who is in a mixed-race relationship.
Anticipating
31st January 2020
I have been anticipating this fissure for a couple of decades.
At my dear, dear cousin's funeral late last year. I realised there were only one or two elders around. They are nearly all gone. My generation are now the elders. I had imagined that that this moment is when we become untethered from our little islands. Set adrift again. But we still knew what to do, digging, singing, lamenting wise. That is there within. I said to my son, all the old folk are gone, me and my generation are at the top of the tree. Yes, he said and you are all English.
I want to meet someone in Harstad who is a child of immigrant.
I want to meet someone in Harstad who is Black.
Our Father
27 January 2020
I haven't been to church for ages, my Dad is too slow in the mornings and seems to have lost interest so we don't go.
A few years back as part of a rehearsal/research process the team all visited an art gallery, a museum and a church. The art gallery was far and away the most dreary. Lifeless paintings on the wall which held no real power. The museum was better, it's quite a thing to stand and stare at a person dead for over a 1000 years displayed in a glass case beside their sarcophagus.
But the church, that held some magic. It was Catholic which gives it a step up, we were all impressed, atheist, Muslim, Rasta. Jesus, barbed wire crown, carrying the cross with Mary his mum looking on, sad of course, both larger than life sculpted figures. The relics of woman who rather than lose her virginity was torn apart by a pack of dogs (I'm making that bit up, but it wasn't far off). The rows of little candles. All the time we silently walked around the church, a man was knelt head bowed, just as we were leaving a shaft of light (I'm not making this up) beams through the top window and covers him and only him in light. Cue choir.
I am looking for someone to meet in Harstad who occasionally goes to church but doesn't believe in God..
About a year ago
26 November 2019
About a year ago, we were standing on top of a hill, not this hill one on the other side of the valley, and I thought it's beautiful here but it has absolutely nothing to do with me.
I was looking down at the canal which runs parallel with the river through the valley. My friend Lizzie had told me that her family from Ireland had walked from the docks of Liverpool looking for work until they settled in the Colne valley. Her family had built the canal. This is not my landscape, I do not belong here.
Then I looked at my fella - but I belong with him and he is here, so this is where I belong.
I want to meet someone who has lived in Utrecht for 3 years or less.
photo by Solomon Hughes