Year: 2025

I’ve recently pulled out the poems of Edna St Vincent Millay, a poet I enjoy for her unconventionality – she insisted from a young age that her name was Vincent and wouldn’t answer to Edna, even at school – and her joyfully sardonic tone. Even if you know nothing about her, you may know this:

My candle burns at both ends;/it will not last the night;

But ah, my foes and oh, my friends – it gives a lovely light.

That’s Vincent for you, a woman who had a taxing childhood, a young adulthood at a time that wasn’t kind to ambitious women, but never the less refused to either conform or be cowed. Her poem, ‘The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge’ has inspired me to start another novel – about people psychologically trapped by events in their childhoods. 

With him for a sire and her for a dam/ What should I be but just what I am? writes Millay. What, indeed?

There’s been a lot going on here: play readings, concerts, a stand-up comedy evening (which was rolling about funny) and two very different films at the lovely cosy Towner cinema. If you haven’t yet seen The Choral with Ralph Feines and Roger Allam, do. It’s great fun in an edgy sort of way (well, the screen play’s written by Allen Bennett). You just need to suspend your disbelief when it comes to the final production of The Dream of Gerontius, something that, in real life, would probably have had them all arrested on the grounds of treason.

Talking of disbelief, I was astonished recently to meet a woman – having coffee across the road – who actually knew a choreographer I worked with in Melbourne. Jonathan Taylor was commissioned by Ballet Victoria to choreograph a new modern ballet for us in 1975. Before his eventual move to Australia, he had lived around the corner from this woman, Carol, in Surrey and their children all went to school together. So she knew him well. Usually when a stranger says, ‘Oh, you used to be a dancer? You’ll probably know . . .’, I know very well I won’t. But, Jonathan? What a blast from the past.

Our Glyndebourne Christmas treat this year was Handel’s Messiah, a piece of music we first saw performed in Malvern with Emma Kirkby taking the soprano part. It was an evening memorable for both the wonderful quality of the singing and also for the stress of watching Emma appear to fall asleep between her solos. The gaps between soprano parts are many and long. Adrian and I were lucky enough to score front row seats for this particular performance from a colleague who couldn’t be there. So we had a perfect view of Emma’s score sitting on her lap and gradually sliding off her knee. It never quit fell to the ground with the whump we anticipated but, my goodness, it gave us some tense moments. The Glyndebourne performance was brilliant, by the way. Nobody fell asleep and we drove home feeling uplifted and content.

We’ve been visiting our old friends, Jillie and Nick. They’ve moved to the Cotswolds so it’s an easy drive for a weekend. Jillie has been teaching in Portugal and we’ve been travelling around Australia and New Zealand so we might have lost touch, but no, we pick up just where we left off and for a moment I can believe we’re still those young parents whose children romped together while we talked as if the words in our heads would never run dry. I’m so much more silent now. But not with Jillie.

But the silence in the cinema after watching the film, Souleymane’s Story, is so thick it pins the audience to their seats. It is a tour de force, one of the most grippingly tense films I’ve ever seen. And what’s it about? A man from Guinea fretting about his upcoming interview with France’s Ministry of the Interior, spanning two days of his desperate search for the secret; the key to getting asylum. What does he need to say? How does he need to look? What does he need to know?

 His life is exhausting, working around the clock, bicycling food around Paris, to earn the money to pay the people who have turned the desperation of refugees into an enterprise; spending nights in a hostel where there’s no privacy or peace; everyday dealing with casual abuse and unthinking indifference. It’s heart breaking. And yet, through it all there’s also kindness: Souleymane’s towards an old man, a shopkeeper towards him, refugees towards each other. Not for one moment can you question the authenticity of this story. There’s only one professional actor in the film; the rest are all immigrants and the script and the direction are shaped by their stories. I wasn’t the only one wiping my eyes as the credits rolled. There are so many people I think should see this film and yet, deep down in my boots, I know that, on those people, it would have no impact whatsoever. The world is unfair and the greedy and nasty are winning. Get over it. 

Daily I read about the appeasement of the far right; Trump and his cronies shaping the politics of Europe. And we’re doing nothing except enabling it; giving them the space to drip their poison and destroy our world. As Edna St Vincent Millay might say: What should they be but just what they are? 

My mother has ‘had a fall’. She’s alright. Nothing broken; just rather bruised and sore. But why is it that once over a certain age, one ceases to slip over or catch ones toe and, instead, ‘has a fall’? I find it intensely irritating. Historically, I’ve had three rather spectacular falls while out running, damaging ribs, hip and once, rather stupidly, my chin, and I can think of at least one trip on a rock that had Adrian sliding down a scree on his stomach – to the detriment of the skin on his hands and knees. But no-one ever suggested that either of us had ‘had a fall.’  I sometimes wonder, now, as we run over the disastrously uneven pavements in Eastbourne whether we’ve reached that age where one of our children will say, ‘Oh dear, Mum’s had a fall.’ I sincerely hope not!

Talking of feet pounding over rock and root, we’ve just had a wonderfully energetic weekend with our friends from Devon, Simon and Christel. On Saturday, we take to the Downs, walking for hours from East Dean, over the Seven Sisters, to Birling Gap, and then from Eastbourne to Beachy Head lighthouse in the afternoon. Simon was at prep school in Seaford and is keen to visit old haunts but there’s also a very lively Labrador to keep satisfied. The weather is crazily mild – is this really November? – and the walking is a joy.

On Sunday, Christel heads back to Devon and Simon and I visit the pier where, as a boy, he and his brother climbed down to the iron latticed and strutted underbelly of the far end of the construction. Today, the signs are insistent: No unauthorised entry. No public access. No . . . well, you get the picture. When we were children, we both comment, we were given the freedom to risk our lives whenever the whim took us.

Simon is a Devon for Europe friend, already an established committee member when I joined in 2016. For three years we campaigned and marched and wrote to our MPs, to the local rags, feeling so strongly that Brexit was a gigantic mistake – and so it has proved to be – that we had to do something. Seeing Simon again, brings back the memory of that bond we all felt in finding ourself working alongside like-minded people, in facing together the verbal hostility, in celebrating the wins, in sharing the hope. A far more optimistic person than me, I often relied on Simon to blow away the gloom, to keep the West Devon volunteers motivated. 

But, more than that, he and his wife, Christel, became good friends. We visited each other’s houses for meals and shared interests beyond politics. That friendship truly began, I think, when I discovered Simon’s love of Bach’s B minor Mass. We sit in the Victorian tea rooms on Eastbourne’s pier and remember another cafe in Plymouth to where, soaking wet, we’d retreated to steam dry. It was the day of the Pride march and the skies had literally rained on our parade. 

But we carried on our campaigning in all weathers and some persist still. For me, the end came with the announcement of the election of 2019. At the time, I felt as if we’d been thrown under the big red bus and any further resistance would be futile. Which it was. Now I think the whole country’s been thrown under a bus. 

‘We want our sovereignty back!’ was the rallying cry of the Brexit campaign. Now, with our own  precious institutions under attack from the blimp across the Atlantic – the BBC for goodness sake – whatever bit of sovereignty that amounted to is being summarily thrown away, revoked by the very people who yelled so loudly for it. And who will intervene? Who will stop the rot? Our government seems to have no will to resist anything; to stand up for anything. One day, in the not too distant future, I can imagine the decent silent people of Britain watching in disbelief as their country slowly slides over the white cliffs. 

‘Oh, dear,’ someone will murmur tragically, impotently, far too late, ‘the poor old country has had a fall.’

Getting to Arthur’s Seat is a bit of a clamber. We’re not dressed for it, of course. We’ve come to Edinburgh to visit art galleries and the Scottish Parliament. But there it is, rising above the city, an extinct volcano with a 250 metre peak, an end point, a destination. It calls and so, in our city shoes and our city jackets, we set off. 

We’ve just spent three days with friends, Angie and Nick, at their stunning manor house in Fife. I used to work with Angie and we lived relatively close to each other, but now the intervals between visits have expanded. When we arrive, Nick is in the process of laying slates over yet another roof leak at a height that gives me vertigo even on the ground, and Angie is in full tilt, organising events for the Franco-Scottish Society. These two don’t know the meaning of retirement. 

We take a walk in the Maspie Den woods at Falkland, familiar from our visit three years earlier – see https://joannaharperwrites.com/hell-is-canned-music/  and, in the afternoon, walk the beach at St Andrews and the ruins of the monastery. There’s a bitter wind and, once we’ve located Nick and left Angie at a lecture, we gratefully slink into the Students Union cafe for a hot pot of tea. We’ve arranged to all meet up at a ‘pop up’ Thai restaurant which popped up two years earlier and never popped back. It’s extremely popular and the food, although only vaguely Thai (or perhaps Scottish Thai), is none the less delicious. 

On Friday, we all drive to Perth to see a Millais exhibition and I’m introduced to the Scottish painter John Duncan Ferguson, one of the most prominent artists of the Scottish Colourist Movement. His portraits are more stylised than representational and, although he spent many years with the Paris impressionists, Matisse and Picasso, this influence is only vaguely there, overlayed by his smooth strokes of colour. I’m captivated. While we wander the gallery, Angie uses this visit to organise two lectures for the FSS in conjunction with the Sorbonne.

So, it’s our last day north of the border and we’re stripping off any layer we can as we sweat our way up to the peak of Arthur’s Seat. The final fifty yards is a literally rock climb and, blinded by the low afternoon sun, we guess rather than judge where our feet should go. Then we’re there, with a 360 degree view and a piper heightening the feeling that we’re part of some historic pilgrimage. It’s very very windy, and that adds to the sense of some primeval connection with nature; like the urge to climb, to be at the top of a hill, out in the elements, is built into the human DNA. 

Before flying off to Scotland, we have a flying visit from our daughter, Kate. She’s now settled into life in Copenhagen and, with her residency finalised, can leave and return without the convoluted process of visas. We spend a warm, chatty couple of days together and then she’s off again. It was always thus and probably forever shall be. But there’s an exciting plan afoot to gather again at Alex and Lia’s London house for Christmas and we respond to this plan with enthusiasm.

Since returning from Australia, life has settled into a new rhythm; a bit like the old one but with a difference. I feel more at ease, more relaxed, no longer so driven to achieve. It’s as if I’ve found an old part of myself, like a hole has been filled in, and yet, I can’t say exactly how that happened. Only that I think it has something to do with my mother – the reduction of my relationship with her to some core visceral level. The loosening of the tie that is bound up with memories she no longer has. Is it a release? Possibly. 

But it’s also to do with those letters she kept (see  https://joannaharperwrites.com/searching-for-ghosts/). A realisation that the stranger who wrote them is also me. As if I’m a Ferguson painting that he never got round to finishing, with that bit in the middle of my torso left blank. Until now. Would it be too much of a cliché to claim that in losing part of my mother, I’ve gained something of myself? . . . Probably. So all in all and for the sake of the reader’s sensibilities, it’s best if I leave it unsaid. 

If my mother has changed identity, then so too has the city where our son was born. We left Brisbane for the UK in 1987 when he was just a year old and, at the time, I was fond of saying: ‘If we still lived in Sydney, it would be much harder to leave.’ But leaving Brisbane, which was not much more than a sprawling suburb on a muddy river, was easy. Today, that dull suburbia is all but buried. Or at least pushed out to the periphery of this rapidly growing city.

In truth, the transformation was already underway as we left. The South Bank was being re-created for the World Expo of 1988. We returned in the ‘90s to find children’s swimming pools on the banks of the river, complete with beaches, playgrounds and lush green spaces. There were cafes, theatre, an art gallery exhibiting Matisse; walkways with views across the water to the city. In 2025, there are no less than three huge galleries and the free River Cat to transport you from one part of the river to another. A footbridge links the CBD to all of this culture, reminiscent of the Millennium bridge in London.

And on the north east side, the old docks have been turned into trendy bars and restaurants linked by the New Farm Riverwalk. On Sunday evening I walk this elongated wharf with Sue and Kate who has recently returned from London.

As we take our seats at a bustling open air bistro, we look towards the Story Bridge draped in strings of green lights. Across the river, the South Bank glows with its own nightlife. I’m overwhelmed by how glamorous it all is.

But before I arrive in Brisbane, I treat myself to a couple of quiet days in Kingscliff, two hours’ drive north of Yamba. By the time I check into my apartment, I realise just how tired and strung out I am, just how much I need to unwind, to process what has happened to my mother. I plan to write, but I’m only semi-functional and spend the first day walking, walking, unable to do anything else. 

Returning along the beach in the late afternoon, I see the damage caused by cyclone Alfred earlier in the year.

Trees lie across the sand and, as the tide has already reached their crowns, I find myself crawling and climbing through the nobbled, scratchy limbs of fallen Pandanus. Here,  the access paths have been washed away leaving a high crumbling cliff of sand – unscalable. There’s no choice but to go on. Later, I examine skinned toes and sore, blotchy hands, but I feel a great deal better for the walking; tired in a way that I know how to deal with.

And so, by the time I arrive at Judy’s, I’m almost myself again. On the way to the Gold Coast, I can’t resist revisiting the Tweed Regional Gallery, home to the wonderfully vivid artwork of Margaret Olley and a surprisingly upmarket cafe with a view across the valley. In the evening, Judy takes me to a stylish restaurant in Surfers Paradise with an elevated vantage point over the seafront. The pedestrian area is alive with coloured lights, market stalls and street performers; the beach side path back to her apartment almost as busy as daytime. It’s a fun, enjoyable evening and I’ve eaten tooth fish for the first time.

Next day in Brisbane, I return my hire car, have lunch with my younger sister, Jeana, and her husband and we talk about the history of christianity, something my sister and I are both interested in from completely different perspectives. They drop me at Sue’s house for my final night in Australia and the following day, I catch up with her husband, Greg, and then Sue and I hit the South Bank with its galleries and cafes. At 6pm, I walk through the looking glass and lo! I find myself in the wonderland that is home. But unlike Alice, it takes me twenty six tedious hours to get to the other side. 

When does a person cease to be that person? Is it at the moment memory goes? When it becomes impossible to retain conversations and ideas from one minute to the next; to recall the knowledge and experience that makes up an individual? Something like that. Whatever the exact process, this is what has happened to my mother during the two years or so since I last spent time with her. I’m in Australia with her and she is no longer the mother I know. 

It was only back in 2023 that we talked about music, ballet, the novels we were reading. We laughed at the same jokes. Mum’s always had a sharp sense of humour, an appreciation of the absurd but, with the loss of memory, she no longer has a template, a check list, nothing by which to make the judgements which enable her to find things funny. The only time I saw a spark of that previous person was when I played her music from various operas. In 2023, she’d have named both the aria or chorus and the opera it was from. Today, she can sing along but has no idea what it is she’s singing. And, anyway, half an hour later, it’s all forgotten.

All the while, I have the support of friends. Sue collects me from Brisbane and we drive to the Gold Coast to spend two nights with Judy. Back in 1985, the three of us were pregnant with our first babies and, by the middle of January, ’86, we’d produced four boys between us (work it out). There were others too – Cindy and Kate – who made up this gang of nursing mothers. Some of us moved away but all five have stayed in touch. There’s something very bonding about disturbed nights and leaky breasts!

Sue comes with me to Yamba and we rent an apartment overlooking Pippi Beach. My sister, Jorel, lives with her husband on a gorgeous property thirty minutes drive inland and, although I spend time with them, it makes sense for me to be closer to our mother’s care home, where I visit daily. After a few seconds of blankness, she looks at me, astonished. ‘Jo!’ she says and hugs me. She knows who I am but is confused about why I’m there. 

I take her out for short walks, for coffee or lunch and, on Sunday, to an open air concert performed by the students of Grafton Conservatorium of Music. I’m looking forward to sharing this experience with her, perhaps finding a connection to that self of the past, and feel thoroughly cheated when I arrive to pick her up and am told that (yet again) she’s lost her hearing aids. Two care workers and I search her room while she grows increasingly impatient to leave. ‘Stop it, stop it,’ she says. ‘Let’s go, let’s go. I’ve looked. Let’s go.’ And drags me by the arm. 

I carry on with the plan although I know it’s futile. She’s all but deaf. We drive to Grafton, eat some lunch (she eats little) and sit in the park where she watches the students playing instruments she can’t hear. ‘Such a shame,’ she keeps saying and I can’t help but feel irritated. ‘Why lose them today?’ I want to ask, ‘Why not tomorrow or next week?’ But it isn’t her fault: the staff have strict instructions to remove her hearing aids overnight and give them back to her in the morning. But care staff come and go and protocols fall by the wayside. I recognise the patience my sister has to employ on a daily basis. 

Before driving back towards Brisbane, I spend a day and night at Jorel and Phil’s. Our mother has spent years researching the family history and delving into its origins back in Scotland, Ireland and Somerset. There are two large boxes full of paperwork, letters, birth/death certificates, schedules of long dead children, notifications of commissions and medals from WW1. And there are photos. No-one else seems to be interested in this stuff, so I laboriously trawl through it, making rapid decisions about what to stuff into a bag and take back to the UK; what to leave behind. I want to turn all this into a story. I don’t want to lose this connection with what mattered to our mother; the person she used to be.

To my astonishment, I also find a box full of letters and postcards, most of them from me and dating back to 1974, when I first left home to take my place with the State Dance Company of Victoria. It’s like looking at an autobiography that I’d forgotten I’d written. It’s a map of my life on tour – in Australia, New Zealand and, later, in Europe. It’s the memory of a person I no longer am. There are other letters too. From my sisters, from other relatives. I’m itching to read them, but that feels too much like an intrusion. They’re not mine to read and besides, I don’t have the time. 

The next morning, I take a walk through my sister’s lovely woods, listen to the bird song, say hello to the cats, the dog, the chickens and then pack up and drive back to Yamba – with several kilos of extra luggage. I’m preparing to say my last good-bye to my mother, wondering how she’ll respond. Jorel and Phil are there too, so she won’t feel abandoned when I leave. But we needn’t have worried. On seeing me walk into the room, her reaction is: ‘Are you still here?’ as if, for her, I’ve already gone. 

And then I am gone. Heading north. On my way home. 

I’m packing for Australia . . . although obviously I’m not. I’m writing this blog. What I’m supposed to be doing is packing for Australia. I don’t know what it is about cramming stuff into a suitcase that just makes me want to run a mile. Or four, which is what I’ll be doing when I finish writing this. Sitting still in the cramped space of a plane is not good, but I figure it’ll be a bit easier to take if I’ve already had some exercise. 

Oh dear. I can’t believe I’m complaining about this when I know that thousands, if not millions, of people would love to be getting on a plane to Australia or anywhere else that wasn’t the hell on earth they’re currently living in; to escape the bombs and the snipers, the destruction and starvation and be somewhere they can live in peace. But where is that? The right wing protests in this country are turning the UK into yet another nasty, regressive, intolerant state that is happy to persecute the victims and treat them like criminals. And our Labour government seems only too happy to support the far right. 

A friend of ours is going to Calais to volunteer in an organisation that gives support to the most vulnerable asylum seekers. They are now denied the basics of shelter and warmth in a push to deter them. Only they’re not deterred – where else can they go? – they’re just living in desperate conditions, getting thin and ill. Volunteering is the thing to do, I think, to help alleviate the plight of those people, but also, if I’m honest, to help alleviate my own awful frustration and guilt and the depressive effects of the anti-immigrant rhetoric that is dominating our press. I’ve tried the not-reading-the-news thing, but I still know what’s going on. And want to.

We’ve been to a Proms concert in London. It was a wonderfully uplifting experience – my goodness how music lifts the gloom! The programme began with an exhilarating ten minute piece by the Mexican composer, Gabriela Ortiz. There were seven percussionists and they created the most wonderful urban atmosphere and the sort of rhythm that makes you want to leap up and dance. This was followed by brilliant performances of Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky but it’s the Ortiz we’re still talking about. 

While in London, we visited Alex and Lia in their new house, met their puppy and the builders constructing Lia’s studio in the garden. We take a walk and eat some lunch in a quirky cafe by a park. Apparently, it’s run by an Australian and the following day we take in the exhibition of the Australian artist, Emily Kam Kngwarray, at the Tate. The art is both beautiful and puzzling. It invites in the mind and then confuses it. One has to look through the paintings to appreciate them and I find myself doing just that. But then I hit a level of understanding that I can’t quite access. 

Well, I finally managed to pack my bag. Adrian has delivered me to the airport and I’m now engaged in the lengthy business of waiting. I’ve stepped through the painting into the surreal world of 21st century international travel and hope that at some point in the next 24 hours I’ll get spewed out again. In Brisbane. In Australia.

We’ve been listening to Zadie Smith reading a series of her essays, one of which muses on the pros and cons of growing up in a family that has few prospects and fewer expectations. It has its drawbacks. But, on the positive side, this lack of expectation, she says, gave her and her siblings the freedom to be what they wanted to be: in her case, a best-selling and award-winning author. As I listen to Zadie’s carefully considered analysis, I feel an instant connection. She might be talking about my own family, although mine was infinitely poorer and even less functional than Zadie Smith’s. 

As a child, I was a bit of a loner, subdued by the endless worries of and fights between my parents. The insensitivity, the stupidity, the constant whiff of disappointment was stifling. To escape, I read anything I could get my hands on – Dickens when I was six because there was nothing else. I did well at school and, in another family, I might have gone to university. But, in mine, there was no precedent. Everyone left school at the first possible opportunity. Instead, my mother encouraged music and dancing (she would have liked to be a singer herself), and she spent sweaty hours sewing in a factory to pay for lessons. And maybe ballet school was for the best. Working as a professional dancer gave me the opportunity to travel and put thousands of miles (both geographically and psychologically) between me and my upbringing. It allowed me to stop being that person in that family.

But it has its price. As Zadie Smith says, the successful excision of a childhood from an adult life can produce an identity with a fault line that is always on the verge of slipping. And, anyway, being a ballet dancer wasn’t my ambition; it was my mother’s. The identity cracked and began to fall apart. It wasn’t until years later, sitting in a lecture theatre, working towards a degree that I finally began to feel at home in my own head. 

Enough! 

Adrian’s siblings and their spouses have been visiting – a very different family. The weather’s gorgeous, so we tramp the Downs and, at A’s insistence, attempt croquet on our tiny, undulating and very weedy lawn. There are also long spells of talking, mostly about the shared memories of Adrian’s family’s twelve years spent in Malaysia. Their mother was a great story teller and, in my mind, her life runs as a series of vivid pictures. But I never met their father and know little about him. It’s only while having lunch with cousins in Chichester, that I discover that he did something mysterious during the second world war. ‘When we were children,’ says Pam, ‘he’d arrive on our doorstep without warning. In uniform and back from Germany.’ But what he did there, no-one seems to know. And now there’s no-one to ask.

Our final South Downs Summer concert gives us the music of the Danish String Quartet – a favourite – and Grieg’s piano concerto: not as it’s usually played, but with five string players standing in for the orchestra. It works remarkably well.

Better than the film we watch. I’m looking forward to a refreshing and surprising French take on the traditional romcom, but ‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’ is neither. The clichés are all there, right down to the Hugh Grant lookalike love interest. And then there’s the glaring inauthenticities, gratuitous woodland/lama scenes and non sequitur closeups. Adrian quite enjoyed it, but for me, it clunked.

The words ‘surprising’ and ‘refreshing’ are perhaps not generally associated with the town of Newhaven, but on discovering that one of my fellow writing group members is performing poetry there with Henry Normal, I suggest to Adrian and a friend that we take a trip. (If you don’t know about Henry Normal, click here: https://henrynormal.com/) We discover a recently opened Middle Eastern cafe on the riverside right next to a vast open spaced art gallery and enjoy an absolutely delicious lunch. After exploring the gallery, we head across the water to the Newhaven Library and spend a wonderfully entertaining hour listening to two masterly performing poets. Henry and Tim are on a tour of the Sussex libraries, trying to stem the flow of closures. Henry claims the library as his salvation: his escape, his journey into a world that was far away from the noise and grind of home. How I relate to that. And hoorah for books!

Do you ever get the feeling that a jackhammer is drilling straight through your peace of mind? If so, then you probably live close to our neighbouring property. A deceased estate, it has been bought by a developer who is currently trying to maximise his investment by turning the garage into a second house. Not satisfied with removing the roof and most of the walls, the builders are now using a pneumatic drill to hammer through the concrete floor. I don’t know why they don’t just drop a bomb on it and be done with it. Who knew maximising an investment could make so much noise?

Fortunately we have ample reasons for being somewhere else. We have the beach and the sea; we have the Downs.

We also have a very interesting Icelandic film to watch. The Towner cinema frequently shows unusual, independent, foreign language films, sometimes introduced by the wonderful Mansel Stimpson – a fascinating, highly articulate man with a long career as a film critic. He always manages to pull out just the right nuggets of background detail to heighten our interest and sharpen our observations. And we’ve learnt to trust his choices: if Mansel has chosen the film, we know we’re going to love it.

And then there’s the South Downs Music Festival. The opening concert consists entirely of British composers and, for this reason, Adrian is happy to give it a miss while I go along with a friend. Not that Adrian objects to the Britishness; he just isn’t a fan of the particular composers. I’m ambivalent about Elgar and always have been, but I love Britten’s Simple Symphony, while the pieces by Coleridge Taylor and Malcolm Arnold are new to me and striking. 

The venue is also an interesting one. The 14th Century St Andrews Church in Alfriston is built in the shape of a Greek cross with its bell tower set in the centre. This means that, unusually, the bell ropes hang down into the chancel. It also means that if your seat is at the extreme end of the transept, your view of the performers is likely to be restricted. Georgia and I tuck ourselves into a dusty pew, not designated as seating but better than where we’re meant to be. Oddly, the acoustics of the church are just a bit dodgy. While the music makes it to the four corners of the cross, the pre-concert announcements are completely absorbed into the structure. I sit through the concert with absolutely no idea whether that pointing finger indicated the loo, the fire exit or possibly some important architectural feature. It makes me wonder if the local worshippers ever hear their preacher’s sermon. 

Talking of the beach, on a hot Friday afternoon, we take ourselves to the seafront for a swim, only to find the production of a Bollywood film in full ‘action’ mode. There’s a cast of thousands and a crew of equal number. There’s also an array of fake food stalls and a group of young men playing music with no sound. We watch as the crew hold up huge sail-like panels and extras walk across the scene, talking and flicking their hair. We see a token white man lying on a massage table set up on the shingle in front of them. As no-one takes the slightest notice of him, I assume he’s simply a prop – a prop that’s getting slowly sunburnt. 

Further along the prom, we find some crew members constructing a stage and something that looks like a bar. Across the top of this is flung a fake body. It’s impossible to fathom the narrative, but we guess it might involve a drowning. Neither of us has brought a phone, but below is a link to the local rag that shows a bit of the action. There’s no indication of what the film is or when it might be released. Nor do we have any idea if we’ve inadvertently got ourselves on camera. https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/people/watch-as-bollywood-crew-films-on-eastbourne-seafront-5229762

I know it’s really summer when tennis balls start being whacked about with serious intent. We can hear the thwack thwack in our garden, nets being cleared by millimetres at high speed. Meads tennis club at the end of our road provides additional practice grass courts for competitors in the Eastbourne Open. We pause on our way to a fundraising garden party to watch. That’s another indication of summer: fundraisers. Those and the abundance of music in the small surrounding villages. 

We hold a party on our brand new terrace. It’s the hottest day of the year so far – really baking – so we fetch the gazebo out of the roof space to provide some shade. I don’t know why it is, when we’re usually so nice to each other, that Adrian and I almost come to blows over putting up a gazebo. It’s one of those concertina types that shrink back into something like an H G Wells’ alien whenever you let go of a leg. ‘Pull that leg!’ ‘I can’t; you’re holding the wrong bit!’ ‘You’re not doing it right!’ ‘It’s got to go there, not there!’ etc etc.

Finally, it’s up, the party gets underway and all is well. Afterwards, once the clearing up is finished, we head to the beach for a swim. It helps enormously with both the heat and the after-party slump.

Adrian isn’t much into watching tennis, so I head down the road on my own. I pick the one day of the week when it isn’t blowing a hoolie. After the bright still day of our party, the wind sets in and doesn’t let up for a week. I watch two great doubles matches and a disappointing men’s single, but all the while, we can hear the crowd on Centre Court as the young Australian, Maya Joint, beats Emma Radacanu. We don’t need to check the score; the collective ‘Oh’s of the crowd say it all. Joint eventually wins the tournament in a nail biting tie break against Alexandra Eata. It’s one of those matches that neither player deserves to lose. 

The wind dies away and we finish the week with a tramp on the Downs and a choral concert in the village of Berwick. The little Saxon church with its rather bright contemporary murals is one of those rare creatures: a church that has had loads of money thrown into its restoration and modernisation. The clear glass in many of its mullioned windows, lets in the light and views of the tree lined churchyard. It makes the perfect setting for the sixteen strong choir. They sing a variety of folk and religious songs – with some very pleasing harmonies – while birdsong occasionally drifts in through the open doors. After the concert, we walk along a lane in the evening sun, admiring a row of multicoloured hollyhocks fostered by some community minded resident. I notice the grass of the churchyard and neighbouring field is turning brown from lack of rain. At home, we take a drink out onto the terrace. A blackbird runs through his repertoire. The ‘past’ might be ‘another country’, but so too is the British summer. Sipping white wine in the warmth of our garden, I can barely imagine the far away world of winter.

Submitting one’s work to literary agents is enough to turn a person into an emotional Janus – looking forwards to the promise of publication while at the same time looking back at the growing heap of rejection emails. It can be exhausting: one minute feeling elated because of a request for one’s full manuscript and the next utterly dejected at the thought that it, too, is bound to be rejected. Why do we do it to ourselves? It’s not as if writers are particularly thick skinned. And I personally have an eversion to gambling in all its forms and yet isn’t that exactly what I’m involved in here? The rewards can be great but the odds are painfully, negatively stacked. And, yet, I keep trying.

Hey ho. I remind myself that there is more to my life than an illusive promise and this is wonderfully affirmed by the visit of one of my oldest UK friends and her husband. Having not met up for nearly two years, we seamlessly pick up where we last left off and spend the whole visit talking and laughing – rare for me, who can be completely talked out within an hour. With old friends, it’s all so effortless. Their visit happens to coincide with my birthday and Adrian books a meal at our favourite pub. At the end of the meal, three waiters appear at our table with a birthday pudding and candle and sing to me. In harmony. It rounds off the evening perfectly. 

Kate is spending the weekend in Jutland and sends gorgeous photos of the night sky over the fjord by which she’s camping. She now has her Danish residency so we’ll soon have a request to ship her possessions across the channel. We realise, with a little shock, that she means to live there. Alex and friends are putting on a joint 40th birthday music festival in rural Hampshire and he sends photos of the setting up – lots of hay bails, marquees and beer kegs. It’s a far cry from my own 40th birthday with young children and a degree to get through. I’m glad that my children are doing things in the right order or not at all – university in their late teens and no offspring. 

It’s a lovely bright day, so I’m closing up my Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and joining Adrian on a tramp to Birling Gap. I love the Downs, the wide openness of them with the sea beyond reaching to the horizon; the constant promise of something new and different. An antidote. There’s so much I hate about the world right now, the way in which progressive creative thought is being gradually closed down, the way that humanness is being distilled into a battle for power and money, while blind eyes are turned to injustice and suffering, corruption and sheer bloody nastiness. Yes, I know it was always thus, but the means to achieve it, to spread it world wide, to make it seem normal, is now so much greater than it ever was before. 

Recently we listened to a documentary by Jill Lepore about the Simulmatics Corporation. No, I’d never heard of them either. But their story is both fascinating and creepy. Founded in 1959, Simulmatics was at the forefront of the new computer era, crunching social data to conduct large scale behaviour analysis. By feeding in a number of human variables, they could predict future behaviour, including consumer and political behaviour, and you don’t have to be a genius to work out that once you can predict behaviour, it’s a short step to influencing it and this exactly what they did. Simulmatics claimed that they were instrumental in John F Kennedy winning the Presidency in the 1960 election. Jill Lepore claims that they were also largely responsible for prolonging the Vietnam war. This is where social influencing began. Where the genie got out of the bottle and never went back.

If you’re interested, you can hear about it on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002cb38

And so to the antidote: the Downs, the sea and the blue sky (and not a little wind) and the soothing rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other. Walking the Seven Sisters can feel like being on the brink of something and I want to believe that the something is positive; the sort of something that will bring surprise and delight and relief. Take away the bad stuff and save humanity from the jaws of self-destructive populism.

The trouble is, when I look around the world right now, I can’t think where on earth it’s going to come from.