Vast landscape, tiny worlds at the Stiperstones

I've been working in my new part time role with Enable Employment Services for a few months now and it's transformed my life. As an Expert by Experience (my life of dealing with depression, anxiety and 'everything else'), I contribute my pennyworth to meetings and other areas. For the first time since moving here, twelve years ago when it all went so terribly, awfully wrong, I feel I have a place and purpose in Shropshire and lovely work colleagues. I'm less isolated and it's having a positive effect on my art and mental health, neither of which have been right for all the time I've lived here.

A couple of days ago I was able to take part in a volunteering/team building day with Shropshire Wild Teams and we all headed over to the Stiperstones Nature Reserve for a tree clearing session. Enjoy this short video, taken from the cab of the minibus and accept my apologies for the wobbles and bad light; a proper video camera is still sadly a pipe dream, but you get the general sweep of the area.

The narrow roads leading up to the Stones are long and winding, gradually rising until you are many miles above sea level. There are scatterings of houses along the way - most too small to be called a village - and it is a wide, windswept landscape with views across to the Long Mynd and beyond. It was a cool, overcast day and the rain held off, though huge grey clouds marched along the skyline. 

 

I had a bit of bother scrambling up the scrubby gorse covered slope, as my legs are quite arthritic now. But several of my younger colleagues kindly gave me a helping hand and eventually I borrowed a stout stick, which was so handy that I had become quite attached to it by the end and was sad to return it. While everyone else began chopping down the invasive young conifers that are choking up the natural habitat, I wandered slowly up the hill, marvelling at the rich flora underfoot. I had anticipated having to sit the activity out and had brought along some art materials. The surrounding landscape was majestic, however I couldn’t have done it justice. So I focussed on the wonders at my feet; the tiny worlds of lichen and mosses which were sprouting on dead wood and old stumps. 

        

        

So easily overlooked and yet on closer inspection, so exquisite in their form and colour, resembling an underwater coral reef, with scuttering beetles and bugs for 'fish'. 

                 

I spent some time searching for the elusive perfect patch, eventually settling down on my blanket for a happy hour of drawing. 

                                         

I had a big sketch pad with me, and rather than fiddle about with a fussy, intricate study, I swept my pastels across the page, enlarging the diminutive stalks to giant size. Chunky little Unison pastels (a  gift from long ago) created the swoop and sway of the dancing stalks.

                                         

I was completely lost in my work, adding bright accents of colour, darker areas of negative space and later, thinner, more fragile suggestions of outlines with pastel pencils, another kind gift from a friend and a nice reminder of them as I worked. 

    

                                        

I did have a ‘moment’,  thinking about how Andy loved this area, in his brief time here. I had brought his Swiss Army knife with me, which I used to trim a pencil and I huddled into the waxed jacket I was wearing, which used to be his. 

        

        

I was so lost in my work that I completely missed the sandwich break and didn’t eat my packed lunch until I eventually got home and then promptly fell asleep after a marvellous day out.

       

Eggs

 

It’s been nine years since Andy died and while I try to avoid public wallowing, this year it has been particularly difficult. I’ve made my latest Patreon post public for anyone who is interested. Otherwise, I’ll see you next month for a hopefully more cheerful post. Link below. 

READ ‘EGGS’ HERE

Andy's tree

  

Yesterday we made a pilgrimage to see Andy's tree. Brian-next-door kindly drove us over, as it is some distance away in the heart of the Shropshire hills. Set in ancient woodland, the South Shropshire Remembrance Park is the most peaceful and tranquil place - beautiful even in the rain.

It's been just over three years since Andy's ashes were laid to rest under a silver birch tree sapling. It has grown considerably since them, which considering how tall Andy was, is appropriate. The little glade where his tree is situated is up on a wooded hill. Joe and I made our way there while Brian waited in the car park, to give us some privacy.

 

I'd brought some things to tidy up with and the first thing I did was to give his stone a good scrubbing, and remove the moss which grows so quickly. On my hands and knees, in the muddy grass, in the rain. Because it is the only and last thing I can do for him. And it still doesn't feel like enough. I don't think it ever will.

We'd brought a bottle of his favourite beer.

Which I poured on his tree roots, with a little salutation to 'the big man'. 

It was Joe's first visit and although it was sad, we both found it less painful than anticipated. And will be coming back again, soon.

Then the heavens really opened up to a deluge. We headed back as quickly as possible, to the car, soaked to the skin.

Brian took us home via the 'scenic route'.  Little twisty Shropshire lanes, which, as we found, were flash flooded. This is why a 4x4 is useful in the countryside. 

With Brian's careful driving, we negotiated the small rivers that covered the lanes for long stretches.

Some readers may wonder how I could take photographs during such a difficult and personal time, and share it so publicly. Well, Andy was always part of this blog. Taking photos, writing about it, and recording it helps me to sort things out in my head and makes it all seem a little less weird and messed up. Just a little.

Memoriam

Three year ago, my darling Andy passed out of my life and out of so many others. Always missed, always loved, never forgotten. Wherever you are my love, I hope you're dancing.

Remembering Andy today

Two years ago today, my lovely Andy chose to leave this life. Today, I and all his many friends and family remember him with love. It is a bleak, rainy winter's day and the trees are bare, but I have picked all the colour in the garden for him and hold his memory close in my heart. Always.

A New Year dawning

Many of my lovely friends and readers will know that at the beginning of 2012, soon after moving into our new home - this little cottage from which I write - my beloved partner Andy tragically died. So many of you supported me in those lonely, heartbroken and dark times. Even though I may not have replied to every email or message, their presence helped me work my way through the excruciating period of grief which followed. Thank you seems hardly enough.

I cannot deny that it has been a long, solitary journey since then, despite finding odd fragments of joy. The constant battle to endure the loneliness, the worry of finances and trying as best I can to make some sort of business. For whom? Because life alone for me, is not a life at all. And so this poor blog has been often neglected. I have had little to write about, save work and more work. But now it is a New Year and a fresh beginning for me. And for another person.

Immeasurable joy has danced into my life and I have a reason for living again. A loved one to care for, to cook for and to hold. My bleak life has been transformed and I remember yet again the poem quoted to me in the early days, by a dear friend and soul sister. 

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

(Mary Oliver)

At the time, it seemed a horrendous mockery. Now I read it with a sense of blessedness and newly opened eyes. Welcome Joe; welcome to my life, my heart and my many dear friends, wherever in the world they may be.

My book and a giveaway

Last year, the most terrible of my life, also saw one of my life ambitions fulfilled. With ghastly irony, the offer from Harper Collins to commission my first needle felt book came just two days after Andy died, in January 2013. What should have been a joyous occasion was like ashes in my mouth. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered any more.

Yet this book was part of my future survival; I was left rudderless and precariously positioned financially. Somehow the mortgage had to be paid, the electric bill, the water rates, the council tax and now it was all down to me. So having been given a deadline extension and much sympathy from my publishers, I began designing the first patterns in March.

Believe me, when you have lived through your worst nightmare, when you have howled into the snowy night for your love to come back to you,  dreaming up cute toys seems like a monstrous irrelevance. And so the years of professional working kicked in and I immersed myself in making the best book I could, under the circumstances.  

Somehow I found the strength to get this book finished by summer last year, despite having to take a break to organise Andy's woodland burial. I worked seven days a week, 8-10 hours a day. I often found myself crying as I sat alone in my studio, just me and my felting needle. But I did it. And in the end, I rediscovered my love of toys, as I surrounded myself with more and more of them.

Most of the designs were new.

Some were old favourites, like the Roly Poly robin, who I've made many, many times.

And I was able to include a good section on techniques, including how to sew in eyes and how I get that firm, smooth finish people are always asking me about.

I also wanted to produce a book which had more challenging  patterns in - there are plenty of 'simple' needle felting books out there, and while I do have some very easy 'roll it up and stab' patterns, such as the Rainbow Mice, there are some more tricky designs for seasoned needle felters to get their teeth into. Over the space of four months, I produced a heck of a lot of creatures.

Although it is great to finally have my own needle felt book out, the person I wanted to do it for is no longer here. So these two lines are, for me,  the most precious part of it.

"This book is dedicated to the life and dear memory of Andy Macauley, 1971 - 2013. My Forever Love."

I have three signed copies of my book to give away - if you'd like to have the chance to win one, leave a comment here so that I know who you are, and I'll do the draw next week, when I return from my workshop at Oxford Fibreworks. I'll also pay the shipping costs to wherever the winners are in the world. so all you have to do is enter and keep your fingers crossed!

If you don't want to leave it to chance, then it seems to be available in major book shops all over the place, as well as  Amazon UK and Amazon.com. It's also available as a Kindle edition and iTunes. Harper books in the USA have also published it, so my American friends should have no problem in sourcing a copy. I do hope that people like it.

*GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED NOW!*

Time out at Cinderhill Farm

This Tuesday was the day of darling Andy's inquest. I did not go, but my dear friend Debs was there in my place; what a friend - amongst so many cherished friends - to have. It was a gruelling day for both of us, but it was the final link in a long bureaucratic chain. That is it. And at last I have what I believe is called 'closure', albeit with much heartache. I have also come to the end of a very large job which has occupied almost every day of the last two months, so Debs whisked me off to the comforting bosom of Cinderhill Farm, in the beautiful Forest of Dean, where I am spending a few days resting my tired body and bruised spirit.

The day after arrival my holiday began with a visit to the vet's. Not for me of course, but for poor Autumn, a pure bred Black Welsh Mountain ewe, with suspected mastitis.  She behaved beautifully, despite her discomfort.  

Only a small protest when having her injections.

My job, as assistant shepherd, was to feed her young ivy shoots - which she loves.

Then  - already feeling more sprightly - she was released in her field, to enjoy the summer day and grass. After some judicious cleaning and 'stuff' to keep the flies off. 

 

I am enjoying a little gentle sketching. What better subject than chickens?

To be a Pilgrim

Unusual as it may seem, I would like to share the service for Andy's Celebration Day with my friends and blog readers. Andy was a big part of this blog, though I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be blogging his memorial service. It was held on April 27th, a week after what would have been his 42nd birthday. The site was the South Shropshire Remembrance Park, a natural woodland burial site and the perfect place to lay Andy's ashes to rest. That, and organising the event has been very gruelling, so I have been fairly quiet online. I had so much help from many dear friends and Andy's company, Asda. If there is anything blessing in all this, it is that I have such strong support from so many sources. Frank, Andy's beloved friend, built the beautiful wooden casket from which he poured Andy's ashes into the hole with the tree roots. True friends and family came from all corners of the country to say farewell to Andy and prop me up as I grieved all over again. The Asda colleagues from both his old and new store,  came in droves to weep from their loved and valued colleague. The young cricketers from our old village, who also wept for a lost friend and hero. Two of them poured beer in with the ashes, and a chunk of the last cake I will ever bake for my darling, along with a fossil shell that Andy found on one of our many Cotswolds walks. 

Andy's younger brother filled in the earth around the young birch sapling, chosen because it was Andy's favourite tree. His ashes (not to mention the beer and cake) will nourish the young birch and will become part of the tree itself in time, something he would have totally approved of.

The perfect non-religious service was composed and written by our stalwart friend Debs (the host for my recent workshop) and read by her. Such love as was shown at that peaceful glade in the Shropshire Hills, I will never forget. 

The service

Welcome 
Finding the Still Centre.

From love we came; In love we live and move and have our being; To love we shall return. Source of all love, the oneness of all things, You are the silence at the heart of all that is. You are the stillness when the rains have gone. You are the ebb and flow of calm waters, you are the crashing waves of storm. You are the long dark night and you are the first light of dawn. You are the mystery at our beginning before breath is drawn. You are the quiet at our endings when all is said and done. You are the sacredness of letting be when nothing more can come. You are the solitude after the cling of love’s embrace. You are the risk of love that we take, for all that we might lose. And though the loss of Andy was unchosen and we have no strength of our own, Give us grace when the time is right, To leave him in the fold of your care And let go into your peace Where all is one And only love remains.
Short silence

Be alive to us as our hearts are opened with sadness, For a man so full of love and life has been taken. In our sorrow, contain us; In our shock and grief, comfort us. Meet us in our anger, Hear the questions that have no answers, And in our dark and lonely times, bring hope. May we have the courage To leave Andy’s ashes here, wrapped in the earth, And when we are ready, the grace to move on into new life.

                                   'He Who Would Valiant Be'

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy follow the Master. There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round with dismal stories

Do but themselves confound - his strength the more is. No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight, He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit, We know we at the end, shall life inherit. Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say, I’ll labour night and day to be a pilgrim.

Reading by Gretel, quoting the art critic Max Wykes-Joyce, an art critic writing in a catalogue of the artist Dora Carrington and her  love for Lytton Strachey. 

'True love, and how fortunate are those few who experience it, is all embracing, all encompassing. It allows of every aberration and eccentricity, of every folly and all manner of wisdom and remains immovable and inviolable, the perfect still centre of the two who love.'

At the Planting of the Tree As we let go of Andy, held in a box made by the hands of a man he loved and called friend, we return his body to the goodness of the earth, to grow again, to become an element of the birch itself: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Andy’s ashes are poured out into the earth, along with a bottle of his favourite beer and some of Gretel’s homemade cake, which he loved.

There will be a time of silence to follow when those who wish to may pass by the tree, place some earth in the hole – or not, as preferred  – pause a moment, and then go back to their place in the glade.  The tree will then be planted. 

Andy, we have laid you down now in the warm, dark ground Where life and death and new life are woven deep. May you rise in light, and rest in bright peace, This day and always. (Amen)

Cold blows the wind, now your love is in the earth, But though Andy is taken from your eyes, may you find him in the heaven all about you. May you see him in the light-streaked skies and the company of trees. May you hear him in birdsong and down by the sea. May you feel him in dreams and places you have been, And know him with you always now his spirit dances free. 

‘And did those feet’

And did those feet in ancient time. Walk upon England’s mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold; Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In England’s green and pleasant Land

Irish Blessing: May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. May the rains fall soft upon your fields And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand. Amen.

At the end, when tears mingled with hugs, introductions and hellos to new and old friends, a mass picnic was held. So many happy blog posts have I written of walks we enjoyed, with little picnics being the high point, that it was the only thing to do and everyone entered into the spirit of it. 

 

And so after the sadness, came friendship, chat and food, eaten in the bosom of Shropshire, with a young birch sapling finding it's roots in a site of ancient woodland. Afterwards, many came to the Bottle and Glass, Andy's favourite pub and where we had our last really happy day together at the folk singing day. Beer (and more food) was consumed in quantity.

 

Now the beer is drunk, the talk is silent and I face up to the rest of my life without Andy, though he is in my heart forever. I will try to make it a good life.