Author: joannahw

The unthinkable has happened: the lush green of Devon has turned brown. When we lived there, we often found the constant threat of rain or drizzle a little trying. It was as if a permanent blanket of damp grey cloud hung over the countryside. But as we approach the south coast at the end of July, we find ourselves exclaiming, not only about the deep blue of the sky and sea, but also the parched straw-coloured state of the fields. This could be Australia, we say. It feels serious.

In the weeks before our trip, several things happen to me. I don’t mean actual physical things, although those things happen too. I’m talking about little mental leaps that, in the greater scheme of life (whatever that means) are probably trivial, but that nonetheless feel important. At our regular play reading evening, we read Oedipus at Colonus and, as the Messenger reports the miraculous vision of Oedipus being called to the afterlife, it strikes me that here is the foundation of the Christian practice of ‘bearing witness’. 

The language of awe is there, as is the verbatim reporting of speech. No-one but the Messenger has seen this extraordinary event, or heard what the participants actually said, but as the sole witness, his words are taken as . . . well, as gospel. I know that the seeds of the biblical ten commandments can be found in Aristotles rules of good citizenship, but this is a new connection for me. 

My second insight – I can’t call it a revelation exactly – comes on our visit with friends, Marianna and Ray, to Farleys House. This is the Sussex home of the war photographer, Lee Miller, and her husband, the surrealist, Roland Penrose. It’s an extraordinary place, full of strange images and artefacts and our forty five minute tour simply isn’t long enough to take it all in. But, in viewing Lee Miller’s self-portraits, one sees in graphic terms the connection between surreal art and the unconscious. 

As the first photographer at the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald, it is unsurprising that she suffered what we now call post traumatic stress disorder, but to see this quite shocking connection between her suppressed, untreated trauma and her disturbingly surreal self depictions brings the theory of surrealism into the all too real.

My third little mental leap comes at a coffee morning with new friends. Over breakfast, Adrian and I routinely listen to Radio 3. Music goes so much better with poached eggs than the latest antics of Trump, care of Radio 4, or the platitudinous gestures of politicians towards Ukraine or Gaza or . . . well, you know the rest. Anyway, one morning Hannah French is talking about Bach and ‘The Well Tempered Clavier’ (Bach or Farage? See what I mean?) and drops the little gem that this was about Bach inventing a revolutionary way of tuning a keyboard so that he could play in more keys than the customary five or so. In other words, his retuning made the keyboard ‘well tempered’. (Well, derrr, I hear you say. Yes, I know I should have understood the ‘well tempered’ thing years ago, but I’m not a musician and am sometimes a bit slow to pick up on the obvious). 

Anyway, while having coffee with our new friends, I learn a bit more. Carol, a retired opera singer, teaches singing; Ian, her husband, sings baritone in various choirs, while Brian plays, amongst other things, the piano. It has all the ingredients of a mini recital and Ian and Brian duly treat us to some songs – fabulous! Afterwards, the chat turns to pianos (Carol’s is a rare one) and then I ask Brian about piano tuning. 

Several weeks before, he intrigued me by suggesting that tuning two pianos so that they play together in key is a very tricky business (we’d recently been to a recital of works for two pianos). And now he tells me this is because tuning one piano alone is also a very tricky business. Stop me if you know this, but apparently the tuning intervals that work at the lower end of the piano simply don’t work at the higher pitches. Consequently, a perfectly tuned piano sounds wrong. 

What Bach showed was that if you make some notes slightly flat and others slightly sharp – a big fat compromise – the keyboard will sound right in many more keys than the accepted small number of the time. Genius! Pianists now play in twenty four. But getting it right on one piano, let alone two together is, to use the technical terminology, a VERY TRICKY BUSINESS.

Before driving off to Devon, we contact old friends and arrange to visit. Happily, they will all be home and, even better, agree to see us. We even manage to see friends who don’t live in Devon at all. We break our journey near Wells and visit David, an art historian who’s writing can be viewed on this website: https://joannaharperwrites.com/articles-from-friends/ He’s one of the first friends we made in the west country. His and his wife’s move from Devon has taken them to the foothills of the Mendips and their gorgeous tudor house is backed by a charming terraced garden that climbs the hill in imaginative layers of colour and scents. We sit in the shade of lime trees to drink tea and chat. 

As we arrive at Hope Cove, the brown fields do nothing to diminish the beauty of the South Hams coastline with its dramatic rock formations and charming little bays. We spend three nights in a small guest house a minute’s walk from the sea and, after swimming, are fed the best breakfasts I’ve ever had. Friends, Simon and Christel (and dog, Topaz) show us their favourite walk from Salcombe around Bolt Head and back to our digs. We pause at Soar Mill Cove to have lunch and swim in the little bay which is like something out of a children’s adventure story – all craggy rocks and caves, a stream across the sand and hidden pools of water. The sea is bracing and the swim sets us up for the rest of the walk. 

We take a day’s walk to Bigbury-on-Sea, which involves crossing the Avon Estuary via a ferry man whom we hail by ringing a bell. At Bigbury we remove our shoes and socks and cross to Burgh Island, the scene of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, with it’s bizarre sea tractor (for high tide crossings) and its gorgeous Art Deco hotel. It feels like another world. I could spend many more days here exploring this section of the coastal path, one of the few bits we’ve never walked before, but we need to back in Eastbourne and spend our final day visiting old friends who live in the southern part of this vast county. 

We have tea in Anita’s charming garden, drinks with Joan and Bruce who live across the valley, catching up with people who feel significant in ways that are hard to articulate. We even see lovely Simon and Ros who live in Rugby, serendipitously in Salcombe on holiday. On Thursday we call on Carol and Eddie and are delighted to also see their daughter and granddaughter, who are now farming the family land. We were all last together in Tobago in the winter of 2025 and we chat as if that was yesterday. 

Carol gives us a delicious lunch and then we head home. As we hit the A30, I feel as if I’ve been re-tuned: my good notes slightly sharpened, the bad ones made to lie flat, bits of me somehow filled out and expanded, fed by the warmth and wit of friends. As the car points east, the term ‘well-tempered’ takes on a new meaning.

Elif Shafak’s fig tree narrates the recent history of Cyprus through its own life and the lives of two star-crossed lovers (The Island of Missing Trees). The tree thinks, it experiences, it talks. The gumtree we plant for my mother says absolutely nothing. As yet, it has no history. It’s life, unlike my mother’s, has barely begun. 

At Adrian’s insistence, we create a ceremony around the planting. I’m a little reluctant, feeling self-conscious in front of our children who – as I like to believe – understand me as an unsentimental person. But he’s right about this and they both embrace the importance of the moment and step up to the plate, making little speeches as we shovel dirt and compost around the roots. We look at old photos, we talk and, all too quickly, the weekend is over.

Eucalyptus trees are, of course, Australian and, since its planting, the temperatures have been high enough to make it feel at home. Not ideal conditions for a newly planted sapling. We keep it well watered, but, with no rain, the water butts have emptied and now there’s a hose-pipe ban in place. For the first time, we open up all the windows and doors in the house and I wonder what it must be like for people living in high rise flats in London. The planet is heating up and, as far as I can tell, not a lot is being done about it. The problem, like Shafak’s tree, is being buried and the more pressing concern seems to be how to get the oil out of the Middle East. 

Oil is still occupying Trump when Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by election with a land slide and within days is set up to be the next Prime Minister – our seventh in ten years. ‘I don’t think he’ll open up the North Sea,’ says Trump, the octogenarian toddler, and we all know what he’s talking about. I think the man must drink the stuff. Should we hope for better things with Burnham as PM? In truth, I’ve given up hoping, just to save myself that sinking feeling when the disappointment sets in; when the nasties continue to get their own way and humanity gets just a bit uglier. 

Oh, what cynicism. Is this an age thing or is this era just as crap as it seems to be?

Back home, though, we have a very pleasant visit from our niece, Anabelle. We take her on walks, chat a lot and she fits into our routine seamlessly. We invite our new neighbours over for tea and cake. Matt’s wife, Eileen, has finally arrived from California, having sold and packed up their house there. She is great fun. Retired from a career as a costume designer, she has worked with some of the most famous directors in the world. We lap up the stories and laugh a great deal and I realise how much I miss theatre folk. 

As the weather heats up, we head to the sea, thankful that we have that option. It’s what everyone’s talking about: the heatwave. I grew up in Australia where temperatures in the high twenties/low thirties were normal, where our school wouldn’t close unless the thermometer hit a hundred degrees Fahrenheit (35C). Inside. But in Europe, we really don’t cope with heat; we’re never prepared for it and it’s always a crisis. And now we know it’s only going to get worse.

Meanwhile the overgrown toddler and his billionaire cronies add more fuel to the fire. 

In Venice, a group of protesters are planning to disrupt the US ambassador’s forthcoming visit. Tilman Fertitta (really?) will arrive in his six story super yacht, and park it in the lagoon right where we recently stayed, where it would block our view (and everyone else’s) of the sea. A great big blot on the Venetian landscape. It’s arrogant and utterly vulgar. I hope the protesters make his visit very unpleasant. 

It’s 3am and Venice is quiet and cool. I stumble out of bed, pull a t-shirt over my head and grab for my macbook. Propped against pillows, I search for the link, my eyes squinting and unfocussed despite thick lensed glasses. I’m not a morning person, never have been, and three o’clock is just about as morning as you can get. Beside me, Adrian offers help – ‘Do you want me to get my laptop?’ – while I click and open up the live-streaming page of the Riverview Funeral Home. ‘S’OK,’ I manage to mutter, but it isn’t. It’s two minutes to eleven in Australia, but nothing is happening on my screen. Did I miscalculate the time difference? 

‘No, I double-checked,’ says Adrian. Of course he did. He’s an arch double-checker, never quite trusting his more haphazard wife. So why am I still staring at an empty page? My heart races, my brain is a fog. And then, suddenly, we’re in and I watch the unreal, slightly gut-wrenching spectacle of my sisters, one by one, filing into the chapel for my mother’s memorial service. They’re smiling, chatting, laughing, enjoying the rare and novel experience of actually being in the same place at the same time. The service is about to begin and I’m not there.

I tell people about the conscious decision I made last October to visit my mother while she still knew who I was, while she was still on her feet, while we could still do things together. Pointless to wait until she’s dead or dying, I said, but still, the temptation to book a flight and join my sisters has been great. In the end the choice isn’t mine. I simply can’t afford the consequences of Trump’s stupid bombing of Iran. 

Our trip to Venice has been booked since autumn last year, so we go ahead. We’re there for the Biennale Art Festival, the one that the critics love to hate. We spend three days taking it in. It’s vast, covering most of Venice and the two main sites of the Giardini and the Arsenale are packed with innovative, immersive installations that sometimes grab hold of the senses and mess with them. Around a hundred countries take part and, as modern artists typically like to challenge or subvert aspects of their own cultures, these exhibitions give a unique insight into national stereotypes and norms as viewed from the inside. Some of the art is simply beautiful, clever or shocking and easy to grasp. The wow factor is high. Other exhibits are just baffling, or so bizarre I find myself laughing at the absurdity. But it’s never boring, always surprising. What else can keep you entertained for six hours at a stretch?

And Venice is such a gorgeous city to be in. Our second floor flat is in a relatively quiet area between the Giardini and Arsenale vaporetto stops, overlooking the spot where the Grand Canal becomes a lagoon. I say ‘relatively quiet’ because there’s a woman with a foghorn voice living somewhere behind us and she seems to come to life around midnight. We know some other people from Eastbourne, also there for the Biennale, and we meet for dinner on Friday night to exchange views and stories.

‘Sorry to intrude,’ says a woman at the next table, ‘but have you seen the Austrian exhibition?’ It’s the one everyone is talking about: the one with the naked woman upside down inside a bell and another swimming in urine. Our friends shrug. What can you say? It’s closed when we visit, ‘due to illness’ and we’re not surprised. The bell woman causes herself physical pain whenever she does the donging and goodness knows what lurks in the urine. I’m relieved. But we’re sorry to miss the Netherlands Pavilion. Only a few people are allowed in at a time and the queue is endless. ‘We’ll come back,’ we say. But when we do, it too is closed.

On our way from Venice to Verona, we stop off in Padua to take in the Scrovegni Chapel covered floor to ceiling in Giotto paintings. These, so the historians say, mark the beginning of European realism in art or, rather, a rediscovery of the realism of the classical era. Interestingly, Giotto’s everyday scenes of Mary and Joseph’s life seem real enough and quite genuine, whereas the religious scenes e.g. Jesus ascending into heaven, look forced and false. 

Verona captures our hearts and senses immediately with its architecture ranging across two thousand years. We walk and walk, climb steps and towers, visit the art collection in the Castelvecchio, eat in charming restaurants and listen to opera in a palace. Our accommodation is pokey and hosted by a large young man who doesn’t much like getting up to deliver breakfast, but it’s very central and we spend little time there. 

For my birthday, Adrian intended surprising me with a Rossini opera in Pesaro (R’s birthplace) but there isn’t one to be had until later in the month. So, instead, we come home to Sussex and see the perfect Rossini opera at Glyndebourne – the laugh-out-loud-funny Il Turco – on the one dry day of the week. Sometimes, things just fall into place. 

And now we have a eucalyptus tree in our garden waiting to fall into place for my mother. Alex and Kate will join us at the weekend and in the ground it will go. I couldn’t sleep after the live streaming of her memorial service. It was just too weird watching my family watching me in a video recording of my eulogy, hearing their own reflections on the woman we all feel so differently about, wondering about the conversations that took place afterwards in the mild winter of Yamba while I lay in bed in Venice’s summer. It was days before I could stop the live stream in my head. 

But, somehow, having the tree in our garden, knowing it will soon be planted, knowing we can mark the death of my mother in a way that’s physical and real, has brought calm. I keep thinking: ‘Mum would love this’, can’t get past the idea that she’d still want to be here. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, finally, after almost ninety eight years, she was too tired to keep going, worn out, happy to rest. And maybe, it’s selfish to still want her to want life. My own fear of the inevitable. 

This week, I discover that have not been long-listed for the Curtis Brown Discoveries award. Surprise, surprise. There were over 3,000 entries so what were the odds? And, anyway, rejection is beginning to feel almost comfortable. I see the subject title in an email – your submission . . . – and can barely be bothered to open it. I feel a familiar dull thud in my stomach and then put it out of my mind; get on with something else. Still, I suppose I should question my continued pursuit of publication in the face of failure. ‘You have to be thick skinned,’ I agree with a writer friend of mine. But of course, I’m anything but.

I mention this because it’s easier to talk about the frustration of trying to get the attention of publishers than to talk about the thing that has been taking up most of my headspace over the last ten days. After a rapid decline, my mother died this week at the age of 97. My own emotional reaction has left me drained, slightly unhinged and just a bit bewildered. Because of this, I keep putting it out of my mind (like all those rejections). But I know, at some point, I’m going to have to deal with it.

Our usual rhythm of life has been interrupted lately by the renovation of our bathroom and the subsequent redecoration of the bedroom. I’d forgotten just how exhausting sanding and painting can be. We do these things ourselves because we don’t like having other people in the house and, anyway, we know we can do the job better than they can. And at less expense. I’d like to say we work particularly well together, but we don’t. We’re both of us rather exacting and it means several days of two tired grumpy people struggling to be polite to each other. 

However, we’re also sensible enough to take time out, walk the downs and remember that there’s a whole world outside of that one disrupted room. We meet the new resident of the recently converted art studio on the development site next door. He’s the subject of a conspiracy theory circulating about the developer’s tendency to develop by stealth. The conspiracy, like so many, turns out to be founded on a piece of misinterpreted information. We like our new neighbour – he’s a pleasant academic and keen cyclist – and Adrian offers to take him on some of his favourite cycling routes. 

Then our neighbours take us on an eight and a half mile walk that they particularly enjoy. It starts in the pretty village of Alfriston, carries on around the winery of Rathfinny, then descends to the Cuckmere River valley and back to our starting point. It’s a perfect day for it and the best of distractions. Spring has definitely sprung and brought with it clear blue skies without a sign of rain. Our water butts empty and our new plants look forlorn. The evergreen climbers we planted to cover an uninspiring fence refuse to raise so much as a new leaf. “Until it rains,” they say, “we’re on strike.” The terrace pots look like chicks that have fledged too soon. But later in the afternoon, we finally get the soaking we’ve been waiting for. Not just a bit of drizzle, but a proper downpour. 

The middle of Kent is a long way to go for a short play, but this is what we do on the evening I have news that my mother is semi-conscious and failing fast. I quickly respond to the message and return my attention to the toga-ed Pontius Pilate, performing on the tiny stage in the medieval Ellen Terry Barn. The one-act drama by Michael Punter is an imagining of the man’s recall to Rome; his explanation of why he did what he did and why he is what he is. 

All the while, my brain flicks back to my mother being what she is: a very old woman, single-minded and always determined, who has finally lost her fight. “I’m not giving up,” she tells me on the phone, a few months before she dies. But then she loses the language to articulate the feeling and the decline is rapid. It’s as if, without constant repetition, the story no longer exists and nor does she. After all, what are we, if not the stories we tell? 

It’s probably why I keep writing. 

Our last few days in La Palma bring a change in the weather : high winds that threaten to blow the washing off the room terrace and damp cloud over the mountains. Adrian is keen to do a walk from the hikers’s refuge of El Pillar, a meeting point of several paths high up in the mountains. A place where intrepid long distance walkers can cook a meal and spend the night. By the time we park the car, the temperature has dropped by thirteen degrees and wisps of cloud are falling (yes, falling) through the trees to the ground. 

We’re in a forest, largely protected from the weather, so when we climb out of the tree shield and hit the open path, we’re not prepared for what comes. We round a corner and walk into the full force of a strong biting wind that lashes cold rain into our faces. Ahead, a young couple pause, consult and then walk on, but after another half an hour, they stop. We exchange grimaces and, by unspoken consent, the four of us head back down the hill to the refuge where we huddle in a shelter to eat our picnic.

Our final walks are in my favourite place of Cubo de la Galga. I love the ravine with its tall trees strung with weeping vines, its laurel forest and meandering path that finally emerges onto the Mirador de Somada Alta.

We take the shorter pathway up and find ourselves clambering up a slippery stone slope with a gradient like a steep staircase; a staircase with no treads. It’s a tricky climb up and, if the apprehension on the faces of the descenders is anything to go by, an even trickier climb down. 

Despite the change in the weather, I’m not glad to be leaving. The island has a relaxed joyous quality that slows the pulse and puts a smile on your face. Back in Eastbourne we’re greeting with fog so thick that when I run along the promenade, I can see nothing beyond 25 meters. People loom eerily out of the mist and the sea hisses invisibly over the shingle, like a soundtrack without the film. It’s cold and wet, but, happily, there are plenty of distractions. 

At my writers group, I attend a lecture on script-writing given by the playwright, Michael Punter. It’s both enlightening and inspiring, full of tips and amusing anecdotes. He sets us the challenge of writing a one act drama based on a well-known character. Then there’s an Arts Society lecture on the history of opera, another truly uplifting afternoon. Later in the week, we join in the play reading of Ibsen’s ‘The Wild Duck’, which we make an absolute mash of, not understanding the Norwegian culture, or Ibsen’s satirical take on it. 

This chimes with a point made by Michael about the early performances of Chekhov’s plays in Britain. They fell flat, never raising so much as a smile. It wasn’t until a puzzled director watched the plays performed in Russia, that he understood what was missing: the English translations missed the subtleties of Russian social status. This is something I talk to a translator about – a university friend of our son who translates from Spanish and Portuguese into English. She pays us a visit with her delightful two year old and, in between games involving pots, spoons and uncooked pasta, we talk a little about the challenges of translating not only a language, but a culture that makes sense to the reader or viewer who knows nothing about it. It needs to be made relevant, so that the audience can not only see it, but feel it.

While we enjoy all these distractions, the sun comes out and we find ourselves having pre-lunch drinks with friends on the terrace. Adrian even gets out the sun umbrella. Of course, it’s still very early spring and we’re at the mercy of the wind. From the north and it’s cold again. From the west and we get the rain. After living in Britain for almost forty years, you wouldn’t think I’d get caught out. But I do. While the sun shines, I liberate the geraniums from the green house only to watch them being battered by an onslaught of cold wind and hail. A South African friend of my mother-in-law (long gone) once told me how puzzled she was by the British obsession with weather. 

‘It’s always the first topic of conversation,’ she said, ‘and sometimes the only one. They complain about it, they joke about it, they argue about it. They seem to find it endlessly fascinating.’ And then she lives here for several years and she gets it. Now, she not only hears those conversations, she feels them. Deeply.

 

With no forethought, we manage to perfectly coincide our trip to La Palma with the Santa Cruz de La Palma Carnival. It begins on our arrival and continues for the next ten days. It’s pretty crazy. We walk downhill into town – and it is very downhill (there are only two directions on this island: up and down) – and take in the marching families, percussion bands, brass bands and bizarre array of costumes. Each day brings a different spectacle.

One of our favourites is the day of the wigs. Thousands of people crowd the narrow cobbled streets wearing enormous wigs in green, pink, red, colours you may never have thought of, or otherwise balancing carparks, beehives, colour televisions or metre high palm trees on their heads. Everywhere the music plays; everywhere people sing, dance, laugh and have a thoroughly good time.

The highlight of the carnival is Los Indianos day. This celebrates the return of Canary islanders from South America (mostly from Cuba) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Why are they celebrated? Because, so the story goes, they brought back great wealth to the island. How they made this money is difficult to discover and nor is it, apparently, the point. The point is to dress up in white and cream – period outfits with loads of lace, linen and jewels – put on your best hat and have one big noisy joyous party. 

Oh, and of course sprinkle everyone you meet with talcum powder. Don’t ask me. We just go along with the vibe and have a whole lot of talced up fun. 

In a very un-PC touch, various folk appear with blacked up faces, padded bosoms and bottoms and brightly coloured, full-skirted dresses. And if that isn’t bizarre enough, these overtly buxom costumes are mostly worn by men. Apparently this is all about celebrating the emancipation of the African slaves of the Americas, but if any of them ever came to the island with the Indianos, there is little sign of them now. 

But there’s more to La Palma than the carnival. There are endless bi-directional hiking paths, the two directions being (you guessed it) up and down. And when I say ‘up’, I mean a gradient that falls little short of mountain climbing. The island is one big cluster of volcanoes rising straight out of the Atlantic Ocean. And not all of them are extinct. The last one erupted in 2021, lasting for 85 days and wiping out an entire town and two villages. 7,000 people were evacuated and the lava flow covered an area of 3.5 by 6.2 kilometres. Today, the area is a black wasteland.

The plethora of hiking ways look innocuous on a map but none of them is a stroll in the park. The easy woodland walk of Cubo de Galga – a gorgeous trek through a tree covered gorge – has us gaining 300m in height in just over an hour. The highest point on the island is the Roque de Los Muchachos at 2,500m above sea level and, yes, some crazy people hike all the way up. We pick up the path towards the top where we climb just 400m in elevation along the 4kilometre ridge. On route, we pass one of the largest collections of astronomical telescopes in the world – pristine white domes mushrooming incongruously out of the black basalt. 

We drive the endless hairpin bends around the north of the island, walk down into the valley of Fuente de Caldera, complete with ancient carvings. Sitting on a terrace, we eat scampi and salad in the charming remote village of Garafia, famous for its tea wines – not made of tea but aged in the wood the local tea pines. We find the best mirador on the island high up on a mountain just north of Tazacorte. Mirador de Time. Cheerful staff serve good food on the terrace and we have a spectacular view of the most recent of La Palma’s volcanic craters. 

Back in Santa Cruz on Sunday, the town is all but deserted. There is little reminder of the Carnival apart from the unnerving downhill walk on cobbles and flagstones still covered in talcum powder. They might as well be covered in ice for all the grip they give us. But without the crowds, we discover the town anew, taking in the charm of the winding streets, the impressive architecture of the plazas, the churches, the traditional houses with their pretty wooden balconies. We also discover a rarity, just on the edge of town: a path that travels neither up nor down but follows the edge of the ocean and continues for the duration, amazingly marvellously flat. An old coast road.

Of course, we’re not supposed to be here. There’s a barrier and a fence (already breeched) to keep the public away and we soon discover why. On one side the path is eroded by the sea; on the other it’s strewn with large chunks of rock that have fallen from the towering cliff. We look above our heads and note how easily one might be squished. And then we carry on. The novelty of walking on the level is too good to be resisted. And we’re not the only people there. We round a corner and find a series of ad-hoc dwellings, all tucked into the cliff and made of salvaged wood, metal and . . . old car tyres. We stare at a roof of tyres for several seconds and then give each other a look of recognition. What better protection from a fall of rocks than a thick layer of rubber? 

In an open cave, lies an old man in a bed. We don’t want to stare but this isn’t a sight one sees every day. We assume he’s asleep, but as we return, there beside him is a man placing food onto a table. The old man is too ill to get up and this person has come to feed him. Or so it seems. Several cats have also appeared and they sit by the bed waiting. This good samaritan is expected. 

As we climb back up the hill to our house, I think about the juxtaposition of the Carnival and the old man prostrate in his cave. A few hundred metres away, he’d have heard the music playing, he’d have heard the voices of thousands of people dancing, singing, partying. What would he have been thinking? And what on earth is he doing there? Suddenly being covered in talcum powder seems like one of the least bizarre elements of life on La Palma. 

World events have become so dispiriting and, let’s face it, just a bit scary, that I don’t even want to write about life right now. Bury myself in fiction. That seems to be the answer.

Or a podcast interview with George Monbiot reiterating his values of justice, kindness and respect. A and I listen to it over lunch and we both cry: Yes! This is what the world needs but . . . but . . . well, you know the rest. Even if you read the news with one eye closed or through the gaps between your fingers (like I often do), you can’t escape the fact that it’s greed and brute force that are running the show. 

‘So how was your Christmas?’ The standard question as we attend various social functions at the end of the season. Ours was rather dominated by a dog and a balloon – not necessarily problematic in themselves, but when one gets inside the other on Christmas morning, the solution is going to be protracted and expensive. The dog returns from the vet, temporarily subdued by drugs, and the hungry humans tuck into a delicious brunch cooked by our son, Alex. 

Some of us, with adolescent brains, like to put cryptic clues on the tags of our presents to each other. I’m pretty pleased with a reference I make to a 1984 Bjork shampoo commercial on my musical daughter-in-law’s card. ‘But I was only two years old in 1984!’ she protests when I explain what it refers to. Not that I saw it myself back then. It was probably only shown in Iceland at the time but, by now, someone has posted it on Youtube. Have a look. It’s pretty funny and the reference to roadkill has to be the weirdest selling point for shampoo ever. We carry on opening presents and my son gets his own back with a clue to a biography of Tom Stoppard – his present to me. If you breakdown Tom’s surname into ‘stop ard’ it makes sense but I fail miserably to join the dots. 

After a chilly walk, it’s tea and mince pies and then Alex cooks paella with wonderfully inventive and very tasty accompaniments. Our visit has prompted the ordering of their new house into cosy liveable spaces and, most importantly for us, a very comfortable guest bedroom. Having last seen it packed to the ceiling with boxes, I’m amazed at how roomy it actually is.

Our next family event is the annual lunch hosted by Adrian’s sister. It’s become a bit of an institution, this day in January, and everyone in the immediate family is there (apart from our daughter in Copenhagen). Three generations crowd into the house and we all talk for Britain. For some of us, this is the only chance to catch up face-to-face and we’d be lost without it. We also find ourselves unusually busy with social events in Eastbourne. It feels like we’re gradually becoming a mark on the map. 

So, there’s much to be grateful for in a world that gives the impression of disintegrating. And we always have Australia if the far-right take over Britain. I know that sounds paranoid, and I’ve always dissed the doom-mongers, but at the start of 2026, I feel like I need a backup, even if it’s only a psychological one. 

“For earth’s days and nights are breaking over me

The tides and sands are running through me,

And I have only two hands and a heart to hold the desert and the sea.

What can I contain of it? It escapes and eludes me

The tides wash me away

The desert shifts under my feet.”

(The Moment, Kathleen Raine.) 

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.