freedformwriter

[freedformwriter]

28 October

I merge my bicycle onto the promenade only to quickly draw up. A small audience is assembled on the bridge with the red ivy that marks the start of the seaside bit of my cycle. It spans a deep car track cut into the cliffs. Below, a band is set up on the boat launch directly in front of the official-font legend ‘Never Stop Dancing’. Four shaggy-haired men hold their guitars in static pretend postures as cameras fuss about them. Behind them, a sky of tiny clouds shifts. They’re from London, two friends tell me, we looked them up. They are impressed. Down from Londons are clearly looked upon more favourably when they come to make a music video.

This is my new thing when I’m cat sitting in Margate: a midday constitutional along the old Victorian promenade that runs the length of the clifftops of Cliftonville. I’m sure the posh nineteenth-century women on health cures once did this stretch in brisk strides while battling a wind-buffeted parasol. But I don’t go for walks anymore, and you can see more by cycle anyway. The western boundary is the Turner Contemporary and the downhill swoop into the Old Town; the eastern boundary, a mite more arbitrary, is the broken sign for the jet ski rentals/café on the far side of the Tidal Pool. I take in the circuit of the disused Lido and the taped off bandstand. Only the plasticated playground is crowded. But many solitary sitters have come out for a lunch break in the semi-sunshine. I can’t see anyone swimming in the Tidal Pool but spot a pale feminine thigh through the window of the adjacent horsebox sauna.

Circuit complete, I return to the red ivy bridge. The band promptly launches into a song. A real one. As might be expected from the presence of one acoustic guitar, two electric guitars, and a bass, it’s got that dreamy, neo-shoegaze, wall of sound vibe. The notes echo off the cliffs as two people with cameras weave about the quintet. The singer tilts his head up, his quietly ecstatic lyrics about the sun bursting through the clouds and the intoxicating quality of music.At this distance, and with their hair growth, it’s hard to age them, but they are certainly young enough to recycle nineties fashions.  The lead guitarist with his half-undone oversized overalls, tan Timberland boots, and a slouchy beanie covering his long hair could be an extra in Clueless.

Pausing pedestrians on the clifftop and the beach walk make an impromptu two-tier audience of dog walkers and strays. I hear someone crack a tin open and look over to see a woman with ultra straight blonde hair and clumpy black lashes filming the band with her phone and smiling between sips. I stop scrutinising the band and watch the gull circling above the low tide while imagining the music is a personal soundtrack for this moment in my life, ‘the heroine looking out to sea’. The song dissolves back into the rock. Free concert, notes the filming woman approvingly. Up close, her lids shine a glittery purple. We agree it’s not a bad little extra. Not bad at all.

See you later, she calls as I cycle off. Like we might do this again tomorrow.

[freedformwriter]

Flattening affect

Book review of an excellent new eco-walking memoir by Noreen Masud. And some inevitable wanderings of my own.

Going for a walk while you process trauma is familiar terrain in the UK publishing world of late. These two-tiered tales give writers a structured way into an as-yet-undefined factor of their life: undiagnosed autism, say, or a degenerative illness. As I’ve written about books containing both scenarios, it’s clear I’m the target audience demographic. The promise of the premise is that when the…

[freedformwriter]

Yeah...not the most coherent. First time I've finished the episode and not felt ready to leave the drawing. (I did.)

Big sundrenched energy though. The selection of Vaughan Williams' Phantasy Quintet ad the perfect elegy for the late British summer struck home.

[freedformwriter]

Sunday, 25 August

It’s not often, outside of a Queen tribute concert, that someone asks if they can rock you. Yes, I answer, you can rock me. I can’t see the rest of class, all slung in our separate hammocks, but they also seem keen. I signed up to this restorative aerial yoga class as part of my mission to get to know Whitstable, my possible future home, beyond the beaches and beachfront eateries. Also, there is no way I could do this yoga at home. The room is filled with potted plants and a moveable-type board declaring that a beautiful day begins with a beautiful mind. Such ambience, should one desire it, is relatively easy to recreate. What’s harder is matching the building’s exposed cooper pipes to the circular ceiling rivets capable of holding, as the instructor started the class by announcing, a weight of up to 1,000 pounds. Comforting, though I doubt anyone here today weighs more than me. So far, the industry-grade hammock has supported me as I’ve slithered into a backbend and wrapped myself into folds. I’ve flown, belly down, arms sweeping around and down. Great fun. Now it’s time for savasana. With an option to be rocked. Why not? Sure, I’m already dizzy. My vestibular imbalance always spikes before my period. I’ve walked around in a world rendered both fuzzy and yet hyperreal all day. (The later effect is caused by the brain frantically storing ever little bit of visual data to compensate for a proprioceptive system on the fritz. I have to remind myself of this many times.) The clinical advice is basically lean into it. Right. I pop on the lavender scented eye pillow for extra disorientation and wriggle into my super-strength textile. The pose is very Egyptian mummy: stretched long with my arms crossed tight across my chest. The hammock is so all enveloping that it’s hard to identify any one point of pressure. Just the experience of held. The occasional warm pressure of my instructor’s hands on my feet is the only outside sensation. Here we are: six grown women being rocked to sleep in our swaddling hammocks.

[freedformwriter]

Unclassified

The theme was NYC, so challenged my curved brain to start with a few big skyscraper straight lines.

But you know what's under big cities? Vast sewer systems.

[freedformwriter]

[freedformwriter]

Sunday, 18 August

Pitched above the incessant cry of seagulls, a child chortles with uncontained glee as they watch a RNLI tractor pull a lifeboat in across the Margate harbour. That’s funny, is it? asks the dad. Yes, obvious. It is a tractor in the sea. Such nonsense. But delightful nonsense. I sit on the shallow steps that ring the harbour and extend the Turner Contemporary – that definitive flagship of coastal regeneration – and watch the combination of the high tide and the high season. It’s a windy morning, so it has to be the sheer ease of access that’s lured people in. They don’t swim but continue standing and chatting with their land-based peers. A woman about my age bumps down the stairs, steering a bike with one hand and holding an ice cream in the other without hesitation or misstep. She radiates physical hardihood from her practical t-shirt – shout out to Brixton cycles – to her sure-footed scandals. A hot flare of jealously goes through me. But the prevailing mood is flip-flop frivolity. A mixed group of a half a dozen friends move through, taking up lots of space and making inexorable for the water. One man hops awkwardly ahead to dip his hands into the sea. His performative splash of one woman is well received by the group. This christening performed, they are off. He trips coming back up the stairs and swears. Polish, I decide. A very slim person arrives wearing full coverage pink fuzzy gloves, along with a pink tank and shorts. Gender is a nonsense, obviously, but in deference to the entirely pink outfit I am going with she/he. She carefully peels off the fuzzy gloves, fishes out her mobile, and starts a conversation about how she’s flushed her other mobile down the toilet. She didn’t even notice until she went looking for it. The brain fog has been that bad. Yes, mate. I’m going to take your advice. I’m going to do it, she promises. Static amid these arrivals and departures, a family sits in front of me, replete with pram and bulging beach bags. The four-year-old poses for a selfie with her mother, pointing to her wide grin with an index finger like a prizefighter.

I’ve finished my tea that I brought out in a keep cup. Walking back down King Street, I pass the medley of boutique restaurants and consignment shops. New Zealand flags festoon the Real Fruit Ice Cream corner shop. It’s real fruit ice cream, an older woman walking in front of me observes, that must mean it’s healthier. And that’s why the owner of this chain now lives in a plush pad in Ramsgate. I push open the door to my borrowed home. The front room is peerless Down From London chic complete with eclectic vintage furniture, a prominently displayed record player with the correct vinyl displayed, and, more of a novelty, a fishbowl full of vegan condoms. It’s this sex positive entrepreneurship that made the move possible. Moving to the player, I lower the needle and dial the volume up. For all its hipster affect, Avalon is a damn good record,

[freedformwriter]

[freedformwriter]

I moment I decided I wanted to be in a choir.

[freedformwriter]

Saturday, 10 August

I’ve recently read Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors, in which she conjures up a French new town’s shopping plaza and commuter culture of the 80s and 90s in the slimmest of vignettes. These looks at new suburbia are both humane and bleak. Obviously, my scenic trips to the seaside are nothing like the neutral canvas on which a titan like Ernaux works, but I like the idea of trying to present each weekend from a single viewpoint.

The vibe on the veranda at the Walpole Bay Hotel is typically English Oasis. Ornamental bushes screen the railings, and their signature red geranium pots complete the gracious greenhouse feel. Usually, I luxuriate in the suntrap with little care for the outside world. Today, if different. I’m Pride spotting. Small groups of friends in their gladdest of rags saunter past. People are not so much sporting rainbows and embodying them. Nobody stops. It’s kick-off time for the parade and I’m alone on the veranda except for one other person wearing matching floral print shorts and button up, working through a cream tea served in the hotel’s florid floral china. I mark them down as an attendee. I’m wearing my most ostentatious Pride outfit to date: a black t-shirt with a thin strip of pink, purple, and blue; black combat boots with a lace in the same colours. Wild, truly.

I cycled up to my friend’s house this morning expecting breakfast only to be bundled immediately into the car and my bike lashed to the boot. No time for food. We don’t want to miss the Seadog Parade, they informed me. The only CDs in the car were Avant Guard or the Jeff Buckley album everyone listened to in college. Now I have Lilac Wine stuck in my head. Owing to the vagaries of google maps, they have absolutely missed the Seadog Parade but ventured off in pursuit nevertheless, while I have pinned all my hopes on the hotel. There’s nothing else but ice cream vans this close to the beach. An oasis indeed. Though my sole goal upon entering the hotel was securing food, I’ve somehow positioned myself perfectly along the parade route. From there, says a man in the high-vis vest standing in the street authoritatively, we’ll enter the high street. Now hopefully we won’t have any trouble getting through the town centre. The security detail for the parade nods. They look like very average humans. What exactly are they going to do if it kicks off?

I’m halfway through my crustless eye mayo sandwich – the closest thing to breakfast you can buy at midday – when the parade appears. Shelly Grotto, the local celebrity, leads out the traditional drag queen front line shouting out greetings. I stand up to watch the parade over the ornamental hedge, a scrolled teacup in one hand and a finger sandwich in the other. Do I look as if I’m standing in solidarity, or just condescending to watch? They definitely cannot see my custom bootlaces from here. My floral two-piece friend stands too, looking flustered. Possibly they were supposed to march. It starts earlier and earlier each year, they mutter. The glamour of the queens gives way to the drumbeats and Palestinian flags. One struggle, one fight; healthcare is a human right! The community choir swells the sound with an invitation to heal the world. I decide to join them next year. Even though my favourite MJ social justice song is obviously Man in the Mirror. By the time we’ve got to the flag-draped ambulance service, I’m ready to go in search of my dog-fancying friends. My fellow customer in the floral ensemble orders a second cream tea. Impressive. The scones here aren’t small.

[freedformwriter]

Mark making and organ music. Classic Sunday combination and, I hope, some kind of neuroplasticity exercise.

Step 1: Cue episode of Unclassified (The oldest available cause you always think you will listen to them all. You won't.)

Step 2: Locate whatever drawing materials are in your current residence. Commence making marks that please you.

Step 3: Wonder why, despite never trying to draw anything specific, you always seem to conjure something aquatic. (Post future results to check if this is accurate.)

[freedformwriter]

Such a level up

[freedformwriter]

So many checks: forecast, tide tides, sewage watchdog. It’s all clear this Tuesday lunchtime as I lock up the bike at the cliff’s edge and walk down the track to Walpole Bay. I’ve done plenty of prep before today too, wrestling my friend’s old bike out of her shed, hosing off the spiders’ webs, taking it to the rail station for a pump. I can’t budget a half hour round-trip walk on top of a swim. Another case of doing more because I can do less. I’ve been coming here for years, but with my still palpable thalassophobia, I’m newly in love with the enormous expanse of tamed seawater on offer. On a good day, you can see the bottom with its tapestry of green algae and gold sand. Lobsters live there. Possibly. You can only swim in the tidal pool for a few hours on either side of low tide. Otherwise, it’s just wild water with the added hazard of being sucked over the barrier.

Because of the time and the almost-sunny skies, I’m expecting the dry-robe brigade in full force. My temporary friends. But the pool is under the sole command of two men in red waterproof trousers power-hosing the barrier. A big job. An interwar leisure intervention, the sheer scale of Walpole Bay impresses me every time. I strip off and start the deceptively long walk along the barrier out to the first ladder. A woman and her child are looking for a lost frisbee in the furry shallows. I thought it would be easy to see, she explains. Water is deceptive like that. The ladders here are a sculptor’s dream, lovely high curved railings of rusted iron giving way to algae-smooth steps. I ease myself down the intervals into the chalky blue water. My body quickly adjusts to the summer cold water, and another world emerges, one of infinitely fluctuating cool colours broken only by a few brilliant pops of colour: a nearby container ship with crisp red and white writing, an angler poised on the water’s edge, and of course the two men with the deafening power hoses. Even they become a photogenic tableau poised between sky and water. I turn back toward the cliffs, their dullness gone to be replaced by a hyperreal glow. Now I can see my would-be tribe, a few laughing women in the carpark suiting up in neoprene and pink accessories. They don’t look ready to enter any time soon,

Half sunning myself on a concrete wall, I eavesdrop on a mother and her adult son as they disrobe. They debate the ecological value of birthday cards. Don’t think it will matter in the grand scheme of things, mum. A bead of water escapes my swim top and rolls down the channel of my backbone. The faffing swimmers are finally descending the ramp. They wear proper cosies and caps, with insulating boots and gloves. They even carry neon dry bags. How long are they preparing to stay in for? Perhaps they’re training for a big wild swim. I’m almost ashamed by my earlier idea of sharing a length with them. With the confidence born of protected feet, they forego the ladder entrance and step out into shallows. For about three steps. Then the shrieking begins. And continues for another ten minutes as they encourage each other on with hoots of laughter and playful splashes. Yeah, not what I was expecting.

[freedformwriter]

English quartet

Wrote this last weekend but was then too non-covid but basically covid to post. It's supposed to be a return to daily micro-blogs but, meh, long format seems to be my energy at the moment.

4th July, 2024

There are things you notice for the first time when you don’t know how to vote: the suppressed hopefulness of the red-rosette pollster, the beatific care with which the volunteers scan down the registry, but mostly it’s the special pencils. I’ve got a lovely hexagonal half stub in my hand. It’s fatter than the average pencil and in a tasteful monochrome. Most alluringly, it’s labelled the property of the UK Government. The urge to untie it from the rickety booth and slide it into my pocket is almost overwhelming. I wonder if there is a black market for these things. I was entirely prepared to vote Green when I sauntered into the Mormon church that doubles as a local polling station. Now I’ve been staring at the same three names for five minutes. And they all belong to one man. Can I really vote for a man with three Christian names? Who keeps such a surplus? It’s suspect. And I’ve absolutely nothing else to base my impression of the candidate upon because I haven’t looked up a single person running in this election beside the incumbent. We were so excited when she won a historic race here in 2017. Now her name is branded with bitter X-fuelled feuds between Terfs and anti-Terfs and she can’t show up for Hustings because of security concerns. Why did I not look up a single freaking other candidate? My government-issued pencil drifts that towards the Labour box. Stop. I close my eyes and do some of those grounding exercises. What truly matters to me in this moment? My friends. My friends’ kids. This second thought sets me off. The sheer helpless terror of being the parent of a trans kid right now is something I cannot even encompass. It’s possible I’m going to cry in the government-approved booth. Fuck this. Mr Three-Christian-Names it is. I’m back out the door, shades on to hide my expression. Thank god it’s a sunny day.

I later learn the Green candidate is a jolly sort who runs the local bike repair charity. And wouldn’t, my friend reasons, the world be a better place if it was made up of people like that?

5th July 

The world has changed and the weather drips from the brim of my walking hat. In my all-black rain ensemble, I feel like a modern-day mourner. I just don’t know whose funeral I’m attending, or even if one is scheduled. The social rupture of the General Election has reopened old fissures. The grief leaked into my friends’ last-night communications, the ones who poured themselves into the Labour movement in the Corbyn years. Their momentum is now officially a stumble, in the same way we minimise the significance an old relationship once we find The One. Crossing the Stour where the picturesque plankton-filled river takes on punts, I hear a man singing. High above the water, a scaffolder in a harness and bright blue quick dry t-shirt belts out a sentimental ballad about finding love at last. Come on! he calls to an unseen man below. It’s unclear whether it’s a call to join in or to hurry up. My mood lifts. Not everyone is miserable today.

When I arrive at my appointment, the craniosacral therapist opens the door looking like the embodiment of fresh English summer: a floral sundress, pink cheeks, and flowing waves of loosely bound hair. You’re dressed for the weather, she declared. I want to be dressed for her weather. I lie on the table in the beautiful old treatment room in the heart of Canterbury, trying to tune out the fluctuating high-pitched hum of the air purified as she moves her hands around the energy centres of my body. How are her hands so warm? She truly exists in another climate. I try not to think of anything negative, or wildly inappropriate, under her touch in case it filters through. It’s time for her assessment. When you first came in and we were talking, you didn’t seem tired at all but – here she tilts her head to a sympathetic angle – but your body is really tired.

Tonight, the football is back. I’m really delighted at how willing my hosting friend is to join me. I’m backing Portugal despite the nausea-inducing presence of Ronaldo at the helm. She is supporting France because she enjoys going on holiday there. I’ve previously signed off on similar claims about the superior charms of Spain and Turkey – better food and more attractive men – but I draw the line at France. Why? They’re the villain, I say. What, as in some kind of ancestral enemy of England? Yes..maybe… I don’t know. My relationship with the technical country of my birth is complicated. The England-France rivalry is not. France plays their role so well: producing grand triumphs followed by epic collapses. They are an incredibly satisfying antagonist and for that reason alone, yes, I will always root against them. Mbappé even obligingly wears a black mask. Whether they are a mustachio-twirling villain, a protesting troubadour, or a stranger in this town, we always need the man in black.

6th July

No problem, I will just read some Cervantes. This is not the response I am looking for when I announce the England game is about to start. Especially as the man speaking is sitting in the very middle of my friend’s sofa. Technically, I am just as much of a visitor as he is, but this is the television facing sofa and why can’t he read classic literature on the other one with the non-optimal angle? But I can already tell tonight’s entertainment will be a hybrid experience. He and my friend are prepping for the open mic she hosts tonight. She has tap shoes and a slide whistle out for a Klaxons style mating dance. He’s got the book open to the passage in which Don Quixote attacks some marionettes. The night’s theme is puppets. Pick a side, I tell him, and slot in prepared to do battle.

Men, particularly older men, always find something comical in my watching football. Tonight is no exception. Oh listen to you, you could be the next Gary Lineker, he says after twenty minutes. I’m not sure if it’s the Americanness or femaleness – probably both – but I get these comments lot. Where is my can of lager? Can they hear my football bellow? I infinitely prefer watching with women who discuss the match, rather than my watching of it. But as the minutes tick on, and England isn’t playing absolutely shit, something a bit special happens. This man has always struck me as an art and music lover for whom London is the centre of the world. Now, through the medium of share viewership, we’re transported back to his boyhood in Middlesbrough. He’s not nostalgic for it – horrible place, god the accents – but is channelling the energy of the rough, mid-century stadium he attended every weekend all the same. I remember a chant we did for the opposing fans, he announces, then changes his voice: you’re going home in a Teesside ambulance – oi!

I traipse into the open mic event late – worth it for that penalty shootout – and watch the mating dance. Then a woman in Birkenstocks works a skeleton puppet through a synth performance (absolute fucking genius). During the inevitable ambient musical interlude, I make the Franz Kafka marionette journey through his own dreams. At the end, we are all instructed how to make a swizzle, the technical term for the bit of card and spit that transforms your voice into Punch. Terrifyingly loud, it would attract attention in even the most raucous stadium.

Do you want to go to a mummers’ play? My friend issues this invitation while I’m still groggily stretching myself out on a Sunday morning. It’s this kind of impromptu invitation that more than makes up for the mental overwhelm I often experience staying here. Camped in her overfilled central living space, my control-obsessed brain has to ignore the old rescue furniture, the new music equipment, and theatrical props accumulating by the door. But the Jack-of-the-Green costume – a sort of burlap cage denuded of its festive vines – is not just an unwieldy obstacle, but a connection to a whole performance community. The sort who revel in arcane folk traditions. I take my porridge with berry compote in the car and we’re off to Sandwich. I forgot what an absurdly charming town it is. We used to ride our bikes here on long summer weekends, stopping at, yes, a sandwich shop attached to a posh deli.

The pageantry is in full force when we arrive at St Peter’s Church. A blonde woman about my age in a white rugby shirt emblazoned with ‘George’ is going several rounds with a fire-breathing dragon. Parking ourselves on the curb, we cheer as George dispatches the dragon with the aid of protective potholders. Next, we have the French knight. Sir Fleur de Lis, with his waxy moustache, withdraws a white handkerchief. George counters. The fight very much resembles the troops of Morris dancers taking over the town for this folk and ale festival. This, I say to my friend, is why we root against France in the football. It’s just another form of pantomime.

The dispatched French knight now lies on the ground, a lance projecting from his body at a 45° angle. An incredibly tall man in a long white doctor’s coat, a top hat, and myopic spectacles seeks help from the audience to remove the weapon. Is there no one in the audience who can help remove the lance? He approaches a little boy who stares up with wide terrified eyes, then a little girl who ducks into her father’s side. Sensing that there are no sufficiently patriotic children to take up England’s Excalibur, the doctor approaches my friend, child height from her position on the pavement. Do you think you can pull it out? She hops up and runs to the fallen French knight with what I can only describe as a scamper.

After she hoists the lance – huzzah! – and the knight is at last resuscitated – ‘When all else fails, drink some Kentish ale’ – we move about taking in the food stalls and more flag-waiving dancers in tabards. Do you remember we saw that one old man perform the ‘The Ladies’ Fancy?’ my friend asks me. It was in Cambridgeshire; and I do. Ribbons were involved. English villages are so weird. Am I really thinking of moving back here?

[freedformwriter]

May the circle be broken

The final morning at Findhorn, I wake from one of my stress dreams. They attack in the light intervals between my mother’s early exit to go walking – often as early as 5.30am - and my definition of morning. A recent one ended with me wandering a desert mall with no tool for escape except some flip phone c.2010. In another, I unrolled a yoga mat, only find it rolled over by other yogis and non-existent when the class started. The theme: under-resourced. My actual yoga mat is on the floor, the only reason I make it there some morning. Today, however, is the grand finale of the trip and I promised to get my aching, cantankerous morning self to an open-air group meditation. Grabbing a blanket, I strike out into the network of wooded paths that connect the community’s various workshops, greenhouses, and eco homes. Quickly disoriented by these meanders, I’m saved by the singing. At the unbroken start of the day, the sound is thin but easy to follow. The door is open, a Hobbit style rounded entranceway with a built-in vestibule full of prayer cushions and music books. Inside, seated on the concentric rings of an earthen amphitheatre, a dozen voices weave in four-part harmony in a prayer that rises without the impediment of a roof.

Though known as a spiritual community, Findhorn wouldn’t exist without the forty-pound cabbages. That’s what our tour guide told us when we first arrived. An American man about my mother’s age, he saw the place through the prism of decades. The land we are on was once a caravan park. Then Peter and Ilene Caddy moved in and they planted a vegetable garden. The couple were spiritualists; they consulted the plants on what they needed. The result? Prodigious cabbages. Peter, with his characteristic savvy, got the British soil association to do a test. The soil was and is sand soil and requires lots of compost. It’s nothing special. With equally characteristic showmanship, Peter broadcast the results. If the soil wasn’t special, something else was. It was a seed planted at the right moment. This was 1969; the boomer generation would soon arrive in droves, done with school and ready to question everything. My mother was among of them, fresh from her California college. She stayed for three years.

The emerging community was a bit like the roundhouse now filled with meditative song. Both started as the vision – literally – of a few individuals, only to catch the eye of outsiders. When the roundhouse ran foul of the new building oversight, the architect simply took the roof off. An old friend of my mother who invited us to the open-air meeting admits attendance varies with the weather. Yet the faithful few sit singing with their umbrellas every morning. I try to imagine starting every day like this, in cross-legged communion with others rather than performing my own private practice. We move from singing to silent meditation; I surreptitiously uncross and recross my legs as my feet alternatively fall asleep. At the end, an older man with a sonorous voice and a knit cap worn in what I can only think of as a hipster style reflects that we have done our bit to steady the world today by steadying ourselves.

The Caddys, who claimed an intentional community was never their intent, were likewise ready to open things up. To a point. Their undisputed leadership of the community and their firm legacy surprises me; it’s so far from the egalitarian instincts I expect from intentional communities. Also, Peter ran off to Australia with a young woman in the late seventies. But then there are those cabbages. Their spiritual heirs, the Findhorn Foundation, are struggling after a long reign. As my mother and I leave the singing circle and cut across the park, she returns to a running theme. Why don’t they do a garden rota, she wonders. With so many people, they’d only have to do a few shifts a year. She’s still trying to sort through the central conundrum of Findhorn today: hundreds of people live in the new experimental eco housing that rings the old community and yet the centre feels hollowed out of life. We pass the old caravans, most screened by a heavy curtain of wild garden. For me, it’s hit just the right level of decay where it feels decadent rather than depressing. But the disuse makes my mother uneasy. Peter Caddy wouldn’t have stood for this, our guide told us. He used to say he’d give fifty pence to anyone who could find a weed in his garden.

A few hours later, I’m circling a new round structure and my new soundtrack is the bagpiper who’s suddenly struck up a tune in the carpark beside the coaches full of well-managed tourists. It’s a stone cairn and its centre too reveals the lip of a long-vanished roof. It wasn’t planning permission that did it in, but extreme old age. The Clava Cairns were built by Neolithic people 4,000 years ago. Three mounds stand in the manicured park, but as many as eighty more lie in the adjacent farmers’ fields. Each narrow entranceway aligns perfectly with the winter solstice sun. My mother bristles at interpretive accounts suggesting they built solstice alignments in the superstitious hope of encouraging the sun’s return. She often drives ridiculous distances in the States to see Neolithic sites I’d never heard of like Serpent Mound and Poverty Point and returns newly amazed by prehistoric people’s acumen and ambition. They weren’t idiots, she says now. The cairns were their calendars. I have a little more sympathy for our contemporary incredulity. Why would people invest so much energy piling up so many stones? Shouldn’t they have been busy, you know, surviving? The Stone Age Highlands cannot have been the easiest place from which to eek an existence. And yet everywhere, the circles. Spaces of commemoration, ceremony, and community.

That's a final snapshot of my Scottish Highland tour, but I have gone down the rabbithole of community history, including a search for the game changing book 'The Magic of Findhorn', and now have so much more I want to write about Findhorn and their emblem the phoenix.

[freedformwriter]

Hippie Cottagecore