Face hallucination?

Yesterday in Lancaster, I bumped into three separate people from Oxfordshire I know!!! Chris, Salima and Amanda.

I KNOW RIGHT, WEIRD! WHAT A COINCIDENCE! ALL IN ONE DAY!

Only none of it happened. It was my brain was playing tricks on me.

When I saw Chris walk into the Gregson centre, my heart leapt and I got these huge surges of pleasure to see such a familiar face. Someone I could have a proper old chat too. Same surges when I saw Salima sitting in the Brittania pub as I walked past. Same surges when I saw Amanda walking up the hill towards me.

I saw each of their faces vividly, exactly, precisely. I don't mean like a isn't-that-so-and-so type of seeing. I mean my brain actually projected their faces perfectly onto stranger's faces. Each time it lasted for about three full-on seconds and then I realized - with my heart plummeting -  that it was just someone with a similar sort of hairstyle but a very,very different face.

I googled this morning to see if it is a phenomenon: hallucinating familiar people into your life when you're homesick. Couldn't find anything on it.

It has left me wondering though. What does it mean? Am I in such desperate need of familiarity and old friends that I've gone proper mental? Is it a message from my sub-conscious that I should listen to? Or do I just need a really good night's sleep?!

Anyway, another long-term friend coming up to Lancaster this weekend. Lucky old her! Loopy Claire is all hers.

Culture Shock

When I went to live in Japan for a few years in my twenties, I experienced Culture Shock big time. I moved through all four stages of it in textbook style:

Stage 1: The Honeymoon stage - wow everything is amazing here, so much better than at home! - which typically lasts a few weeks.

Stage 2: The Frustration stage - everything is crap here, I'm so homesick! - which typically lasts 6-8 weeks.

Stage 3: The Adjustment stage - I'm kind of getting used to it, I think I can problem-solve the problems - which typically lasts 6 months to a year.

Stage 4: The Acceptance stage - It feels comfortable here now, there are good things and bad things like everywhere else.

Now, while moving from sauf to norf, or Witney to Lancaster, is nowhere near as extreme as moving from the UK to Japan, I am pretty sure I am experiencing culture shock - and that my initial Stage 1 enthusiasm has turned to Stage 2 doldrums.

I am fed up of eco-warriors (even though I know they are a good thing) and grey skies (even though I know I went from summer in the sauf to Autumn in the norf). Everything feels difficult. Yesterday I stubbed my toe and for one angry moment, I blamed Lancaster. Yesterday I woke up in the middle of the night and for one sleepy moment, I got squirts of pleasure from thinking I was 'at home' in Witney.

My head still knows, even appreciates, all the good things about here and why we moved here - but my heart is just not FEELING it right now. My head has even just begun to think of Stage 3 solutions (like get an electric bike for the effin hills).

The question is: Will six months be enough to get me anywhere near Stage 4? Or will I have to make a decision about where to live while still grappling with Stage 3?!

The 10-year letter

When I was a kid, I was captivated by the book and TV series Anne of Green Gables. Favourite scene: when Anne gets Diana accidentally pissed on redcurrant wine. The setting of Prince Edward Island became a faraway, fantasy place in my mind of Lakes of Shining Waters and rocking chairs on verandas. One day, I told myself, One day, I would go there. 

Then I grew up and One day became To day and there I was on PEI, for real, last summer. In some ways it disappointed - Where were the horses and carts? Why were there cars and tarmac roads and McDonalds? - and in other ways it exceeded expectations with its beauty. 




Plus I got to rock myself silly on verandas most evenings. 

I became less interested in Anne and more interested in L.M. Montgomery, the author, and when I got home, I decided to read her biography. When she was 10, I learnt, she had to leave her beloved island with her family to relocate to somewhere else in Canada. In her sadness, she had this idea:

To write and exchange a letter with each of her best friends.....

BUT THE LETTERS COULD NOT BE OPENED FOR 10 YEARS.

I loved this! I was moving from Witney to Lancaster, voluntarily, but all the same I was so sad to leave my close friends. I decided to write a not-to-be-opened-for-10-years letter to one of my ‘kindred spirits’ (as Anne would say!): a snapshot of our lives and our friendship at this time. 




How would things have changed when she finally opened it? 

This weekend, we met up halfway and I handed her the letter. Don’t steam it open with a kettle, read it, and reseal it, I said. She’s a sneaky one, that Sarah. Oh, and just in case I die in the next 10 years, I've sprayed it with my perfume so you can sniff me.

Let there be music.....

This weekend was Lancaster Music Festival.....and the castle, squares, pubs, parks, coffee shops, brewery, book shop, library - pretty much every nook and cranny - had some toons going down. Most of the musicians were home-grown (though Jim saw a fantastic band from Austria).

But the best thing was the atmosphere. The streets were quite literally alive with the sound of music and toddlers dancing alongside teenagers dancing alongside seventy year olds. A vintage bus with buskers was trundling people between venues and the programme said there were barges with music chugging up the canal too - though we couldn't find them. (But then it's all a bit wooly round the edges in Lancaster, I'm realizing.)

Even Jim was roped into playing Klezmer with some new chums at the castle.

"The weather was nice, too, wasn't it?" said a neighbour. I looked confused. It had been grey and gloomy and cold throughout the weekend. "Oh!" I said, suddenly twigging. "You mean it wasn't raining."

Everything is relative, it seems.

Is felting the way forward?

It  all started with Apple Day.

I met a woman there who made me make a felt apple with Lola to bump up the numbers in her workshop. But I enjoyed it beyond my expections. I got to play infinitely with colours and textures and I had no control over the final outcome - a very good thing for an anally-inclined person like myself. Plus the woman had a vibe I really liked but cannot describe.

Next thing I know, I've signed myself up for a felting course with her. Three - whole, playful, vibey - hours on a Tuesday. It's proper fun.



So I told a woman I had coffee with about it yesterday. She said, Felting? That's very Lancaster!

What do you mean? I asked. Well, Lancaster..... it's all very homespun and knitted plaits, isn't it?

Oh blimey. Have I accidentally joined some kind of movement? Will I become vegan? Take a weekly Gong Bath? Make my own soap from llama dung?

Watch this space.

Awkward.....

I went to a Year 7's Parent's information evening at Lola's school.

At the end, I met her form teacher. All went well. Turned out she did her teacher training at Wood Green School, Witney. Small world an' all that! So I know where she's come from, she said in a loaded way though I wasn't entirely sure what the load was.

Then I met the Headteacher. Didn't go so well.

We'd been asked to fill out feedback forms about how well we thought the school had helped our daughters to settle in. As the Head was going round collecting in the forms, she stopped to chat to me. Then she reached out her hand - I thought to shake my hand but actually just to take my form - and we had this excruciating, bumbly, twisted, cack-handed hand-shake where I had hold of only two of her perfectly nail-polished fingers and was moving them up and down vigorously.....until I realized my mistake.

Oh sorry, I blurted. I thought you were trying to shake my hand but you weren't, were you?..... I did think it was a funny sort of handshake! I added, in my best cheeky, chirpy, Cockney voice, trying to lighten things up.

Cool as a cucumber, she smiled a smile that was actually a grimace and walked away.

Lake District Shmake District

I make no bones about the fact that I hate walking up effin hills.

The Lake District is going to be completely wasted on you, said a friend who visited recently.

But it's okay, I said, Apparently there are lots of FLAT walks you can do there too!

So this Sunday, with the sun in the sky and my son at my side (up for the weekend), we set off for our first trip to the Lakes with a photocopy of a gentle, non-hilly walk in hand.

As we hit the hills, it looked real pretty from the car. Weren't we lucky to have the Lake District on our doorstep?

Pah!

Swarms of tourists, overpriced parking and cups of tea, mud that made the walk impassable because of all the rain (we had to turn back in the end) - AND IF THAT'S A 'FLAT' WALK, I'M THE QUEEN OF BLEEDIN' SHEBA.

Give me the cosy, rose-gardened countryside of Oxfordshire any day. I am simply the wrong species for this landscape.

Linguistic observations

In the south, if someone talks to you at the bus stop, you think they're weird. In the north, if someone DOESN'T talk to you at the bus stop, you think they're weird. 

Without a doubt, this is the basic truth. In the past week alone, I have been talked to 'in depth' at a bus stop, in a queue for a public toilet, after accidentally walking into someone in the street, and at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the green man. No opportunity is missed!

But it's not as simple as 'northerners are friendlier than southerners'. There are more subtleties to it than that, I've noticed. These are my observations.

1. People talk more quietly, more softly - at least in Lancashire.
There is almost a murmur of conversation on the train, in a cafe..... I suddenly feel very BOOMY!

2. People start a conversation in a more gentle way.
They don't launch in with an upbeat Hello, how are you? It starts with a soothing Y'arright? and slides smoothly into conversation from there. I suddenly feel very brash.

3. People 'settle into' a conversation.
In fact, if you ask someone for directions in the street, they very often stop and lean on something, like they've arrived at the pub with a mate for a beer. They may also involve several other strangers in the street in the conversation if they're not entirely sure of the best way to go. I suddenly feel very 'transient'.

4. A gap in the conversation does not mean it's over.
It's not a cue that the person wants to or has to go. The amount of times I've walked away from a conversation that wasn't finished! I suddenly feel very abrupt. (Though I've now started overcompensating and hanging around longer than they want me!)

5. People do not look for an appropriate 'ice-breaker' to initiate a conversation.
They just say whatever's on their mind. Which can lead you straight into some very juicy conversations. Topics have included the story of when they fell in the canal to ashes (dead people's). I suddenly feel very 'careful'.

And the question that I'm left wondering is: Does any of this friendliness really make any difference - in the end?  I was talking to a woman from Essex in the pub who had lived here for 25 years. She said, It's all superficial. It doesn't mean anything. They're not nicer underneath. And it's not like they're your friends. My gut feeling is that it does make a difference. If humans are in the presence of other humans, even for 0.37 seconds at a pedestrian crossing, it is healthier and happier to talk to each other.

We'll see.

The skirt with a surprise!

I met a photographer yesterday. We had a chat and then he said:

Gotta rush. I'm off to do a photo shoot.

Anything interesting? I asked.

Yes, actually, he said. It's promotional pictures for a woman who has made a giant skirt. She's going to travel round Britain and invite people to come to an afternoon tea party underneath it.

Bloody. Love. It.

It's 'Screaming Day'

My Morecambe friend told me this:

"My mum has done a lot of change in her adult life. She said the best thing to do when you arrive in a new place is to mark the day on the calendar exactly one month into the future. She called it 'Screaming Day'. During that first month, you should not try to assess, judge, compare or even process the new place you are in. You should just 'be' in it, allowing everything that you see and do to wash over you. Then, when you get to Screaming Day, you can scream, cry, break down - FEEL - in any way you wish!" 

Her mum said this method really, really helped her. Unfortunately, my friend told me this a bit too late. I was already deep in assessment, judgement, comparison and processing.

All the same, today is my Screaming Day. October 4th. Exactly one month since I arrivcd. How am I feeling? Frankly, rubbish. Homesick as hell. The weather is end-of-Novembery and my initial oompf has disappeared.

So I came to the Hive today to be amongst the buzz but there were almost no people and no lunch at all (cafe woman gone to a funeral - actually maybe it was a wedding, but I heard 'funeral'!). Instead, I walked to the village chip shop and sat on a bench in the wind watching the sitting-down cows all ready for the rain.

Yep, I'm living the life!

Ugliness can make you cry

In Witney, my walk to town and back was across a field, through kissing gates, over two babbling rivers with ducks and swans, past pretty Cotswold walls and trees. Every thing was aesthetically pleasing, perfectly maintained. Perhaps too perfect? I wished the council would spend money on the arts instead of trimming the effin foliage.

But every time I walked that way, I tried to appreciate it. Told myself to enjoy it. Take something from it. Of course, it was impossible. You get desensitised. Even to prettiness.

Today, I walked to town and back via a shortcut someone told me about which avoided the steep hill. I passed boarded-up shops, aggressive graffiti, dirty stone buildings, dreary terraces, broken fences. I told myself  to ignore it. That it didn't matter. To think about other things.

But I couldn't. My heart was sinking. My the time I got home, I felt proper gloomy. I had a little cry.

So I'm left wondering:

Has Witney made me a complete and utter snob?

Will I get desensitised to ugliness too?

And is prettiness in your walk to town and back important anyway?

Discuss.