Stalled. At least in writing. Good things are happening in the world, 'Perseverance' has landed safely on Mars and will go hunting for the 'slime' of life that may have once existed in the lake of the crater. A sponge like form of life has been found clinging to a boulder in the Artic Sea, hundred of metres below the ice. And then we are going to share our surplus of vaccines with the rest of the world.
The weather is grey as usual, but instinct tells us as it grows lighter that spring and then roses are just round the corner. I have to make decisions for the year and the car needs it tyres pumped up. Lucy is living off sausages just now and I shall make her some meatballs later on. She is slowly getting worse, walked into the back door this morning before I opened it and then ended up in the cloakroom in a corner but she is better now.
Knitting a very fine jumper probably for one of the girls, though my efforts are not always appreciated, it has frilly edges which required an enormous amount of stitches but looks pretty.
Sent off for 'Frostquake' by Juliet Nicholson on Sunday and got it on Monday. It covers in each chapter, the problems we are still experiencing today. It is like a historic timeline, names that we once knew pop up. Gender displacement, not sure what to call it was beginning to happen. My thoughts on it allow the children to grow into adults and then let them decide which sex they want to be. It seems that everyone is an emotional wreck for one reason or another, but in the 60s chemical solutions to homosexuality was a terrible tool to use.
There was interesting chapters on Juliet Nicholson's family. Her grandparents were Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicholson, her parents Phillipa and Nigel Nicholson. Her brother, who also writes as well Adam Nicholson. So Juliet had been brought up at Sissinghurst. If you have been to Sissinghurst, there is the famous tower in which Vita wrote her gardening articles, and several cottages. Apparently the family lived in two or three of the cottages, going to bed in one and meals in another. Obviously gardening does not bring in the money but now it is National Trust property, it is exploited to full advantage.
I am reading the book slowly, but here are a few photos (30 years old) of a visit we once did. They are rather blurred, but the cascades of flowers and climbers that clung to the brick walls was sumptuous to say the least.
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ReplyDeleteThe blurriness adds to the sense of distance in time - like a magical land to which one can never return. I agree with you about people facing questions of their sexuality when they are adults. There's far too much premature pandering going onthese days though I would make special allowances for the very few children who are intersex. It is estimated that one in 1500 babies born are of indeterminate sex. They are few in number but they still matter.
ReplyDeleteBeing down South I remember the day as being very hot, we went with by sister-in-law at the time. It was a time when the strings of society started to break down in what we think of as the 60s. It made people like me more aware of the wrongs in the world. It also introduced us to the realms of the sexual world which were different. Today everyone has an opinion, in those days we only learnt through the media.
DeleteI never got to Sissinghurst - always lived much North of it. But I love her gardening books and love reading about the Bloomsbury Group. Your photographs capture the magic perfectly.
ReplyDeleteYes Pat a delight of flowers blooming exuberantly and untidily over every surface. Vita always had little pots of flowers on her desk when she wrote.
DeleteThat's somewhere I've always wanted to go, but hey-ho, it's unlikely now. Stunning gardens - wish I could grow Hollyhocks like that - mine always got rust. Too wet in Wales I think.
ReplyDeleteI know I also envy anyone who can grow hollyhocks, they will grow in a handful of dirt on a dusty road and be quite happy. There is the 'white garden' at Sissinghurst much fussed over but I have often wondered how you can make white flowers grow altogether at the same time.
DeleteBeing a bit of a Bloomsbury nut myself that book sounds interesting! Just read the review of it in the Guardian. The review suggests the book claims the weather led to the permissive society which sounds a bit tenuous. It sounds like a good read nevertheless! I'd have thought Nicholson's grandparents and their circle had quite a lot more to do with it. Woolf's Orlando, for example.
ReplyDeleteRegarding gender, having a son who's a non-binary trans man has really opened my eyes to gender fluidity. You're right, 'treating' gay people is very wrong. Also, the journey from childhood to adulthood is hard enough for young gay and transgender people without misguided adults trying to impose their ideas of 'normality' on them.
Why can't we just let people be (and enable them to be) themselves?
Went to Sissinghurst, Charleston and Monks House a few years ago. We were just thinking of revisiting them when Covid struck.
Reading about Frostquake made me think, have you ever seen Three Swings on a Pendulum?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00rzw31/three-swings-on-a-pendulum
"claims the weather led to the permissive society which sounds a bit tenuous" Yes, though is there not a similar argument that when the people are confined to their houses more babies will be produced? All through the ages there have been different ways of being a human, in the 60s they began to talk about it. But, an important but, the patriarchs, or the old white men as we now call them had the upper hand and dictated social mores. Their authority was unimpeachable sadly.
ReplyDeleteDear Thelma,
ReplyDeleteThis is a most interesting post and we shall certainly look out the 'Frostquake' book as we are most intrigued by this era and the Nicolsons particularly.
Sissinghurst is a National Treasure in our view and we did know the garden [just] when Vita was still alive. Thereafter we were friends with the two women who gardened there and kept the garden looking fabulous. Such an immense amount of work but, also, always with a spirit of renewal as new plant varieties were constantly being added.
And, the Nicolsons' marriage in which other relationships, including same sex relationships, were not only present but tolerated represented a turning point in many ways of a sexual revolution. Amongst Harold Nicolson's lovers was Guy Burgess and so there is much intrigue within MI5 and MI6 as well as in the garden at Sissinghurst. Such a tangled web.....
Thank you for all that further information, things we never get to learn. History in the making so to speak, the Nicholson's creating an unusual family set-up. Of course the biographers loved the detail of scandal and yet the family from the outside looking in were warm and loving, accepting of other relationships.
DeleteI haven't been back to Sissinghurst for well over 25 years...I remember the beautiful borders full of Aquilegia in all sorts of colours. Arilx
ReplyDeleteI love aquilegia as well Aril and used to grow a whole area of them in Bath but they are not so happy up North ;) Very promiscuous you would know what popped up the following year.
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