I went for my second run in ages this morning. Early sun lifting mist off the nature reserve, leaving naked branches in silhouette against the whitewashed vegetation. The first shoots of daffodils poking up from the brown of last year’s fallen leaves.
Birds singing obscenities to each other.
And I thought to myself – I like this, why haven’t I run for so long?
For a while it was anaemia (I couldn’t understand why I was getting so out of breath). But, I guess it was mostly despondency. I didn’t feel like I was fast enough. Didn’t think I was losing any weight.
I’d lost my mojo.
And with most high-street retailers not selling fitness gear for plus size women and some running apps not acknowledging someone seriously runs at my speed, it’s no wonder.
Am I just too fat and slow to be a serious runner? Does running do my overweight body any good, or am I just slogging my lumbering guts out for nothing?
Sound familiar? From talking to people on Facebook, my friends and from what I’ve read, I’m relieved to know it’s a common thing.
So, consider this.
A US study into women’s heart health found that lack of strenuous exercise was more likely to lead to heart disease and heart attack than being overweight alone (read my ramblings about it here).
Think about it.
If the numbers on the scale or the stopwatch are an impediment to my body getting more efficient at pumping life-giving blood around itself, are they helpful?
I think not.
So, scales and running app back in the cupboard of sadness where they belong, I put my running shoes on this morning and enjoyed a bit of spring sunshine.
And I got thinking about the mate of mine who I met in the supermarket the other day. She’s a plus-size honey and she’s been working with a personal trainer. Oh my, she looks sweet.
“But I’ve fallen off the wagon” she said.
“Doesn’t matter, just as long as you get back on it” I replied. I think I was talking to myself.
Weight, speed, whatever – all to one side for now. They’re not helping.
It’s the New Year and although we chinked glasses and wished everyone the best over a week ago, it’s taken for the normal routine to kick back in for me to get back to my computer and write about the subject that’s been burning away for days. In fact, it’s been burning away for years and no more so than at this time of year.
To kick this off, these are a few of the comments I have read on social media over the past few days:
“I’m overweight, I have no confidence.”
“I feel so fat, I don’t want to go out on a date with my boyfriend.”
“I lost 5 stone last year and put half of it back on, I’m such a slob. How could I let this happen?”
The diet industry has this brand of self-loathing well stitched up. Join our club, pay the fee and we’ll turn this all around for you.
Now, I’m not knocking diets. They work for some – I know plenty of people who have lost weight and kept it off. But they don’t work for everyone and I think in this case, it has less to do with the body and more to do with the mind: in particular, self-worth.
So, for everyone who’s ever felt like a big, fat, lazy failure, let me tell you something:
You are already amazing.
Do you know why?
Your liver performs over 500 vital functions, scientists don’t know about everything it does – you’d not live a day without it. Supplying glucose, fighting infections, storing nutrients, recycling waste and detoxifying your body it is a chemical powerhouse that gets on with its job without your knowledge.
Your skin spans 21 square feet, weighs nine pounds and contains more than eleven miles of blood vessels and 45 miles of nerves. Home to 1,000 bacteria (most of which are vital to its health) it rejuvenates itself every 28 days.
Your stomach produces hydrochloric acid (up to 3 litres a day) to digest your food – an acid so powerful that the stomach also produces its own neutralising agent in the stomach wall to protect itself.
Your strongest muscle? Your tongue. The smallest? Only 1mm in length in your ear, holding in place the smallest bone in your body. The hardest working? Your heart – 115,200 beats a day, 42 million beats a year, over 3 billion in a lifetime. It’s mind boggling.
And your brain? The only organ in your body to feel no pain, it contains 100 billion neurons (and there are 10,000 types of brain cell), weighs 3 pounds and contains 400 miles of blood vessels. Laughing at something uses at least five areas of the brain and it’s estimated that we have 50,000 thoughts a day, 70% of which are negative. The organ is 60% fat and it houses 25% of the body’s cholesterol: and without this, it would not be able to perform the estimated 100,000 chemical reactions a second. Information can travel at 260 mph.
Sit for a moment and think about all this.
Really think.
Granted, sometimes bodies fail but there is still so much to marvel about.
So:
How can a body be devalued because of a number on a scale or a measuring tape?
How does the size of someone’s clothing demean the complexity of the valuable gift they’ve been given?
How can something so vital, so unfathomable so irreplicable end up ready for the rubbish heap when really it’s nothing of the sort?
It’s nonsense.
However you feel today about your body and what it can do, know this: the fact that you are sat reading my blog post means that you are already amazing. The work of heart, the eyes, the brain, the liver, the lungs, the skin, the hormones and the millions of other processes going on have brought my ideas to you.
You love, you live.
Dammit, you rock!
Just breathing makes you amazing.
Consider:
Walking uses over 200 muscles. It is thought that it helps expand the hippocampus area in the brain: concerned with learning about new places, its shrinkage in women over 60 has been linked with dementia. Far from being a passive, ineffective form of exercise, there’s nothing like walking.
A recent American study found that female heart disease is more likely to be caused by inactivity than excess weight.
Swimming requires the rhythmical stretch and relaxation of the skeletal muscles, naturally inducing a restorative, meditative state. It releases endorphins, uses free floating to relieve stress and fight or flight hormones and regulates and strengthens the cardio vascular system without putting undue pressure on joints.
Regular movement like running or sport strengthens the digestive tract, making it more efficient.
So:
What if you didn’t need beast yourself at the gym or nigh-on starve yourself to be a valid human being?
What if you were to rethink the things you’ve been told about size, weight and dieting?
What would happen if you chose to nourish your body because it’s an unbelievably complex, unique, living organism?
And what harm would come from moving your body your way: making it stronger, more able to carry out your dreams, more capable of interacting with the people you love?
What if we found new and helpful ways of linking health and self worth?
Because there are those who will tell you that you need to be a certain shape or size, deny yourself life-giving food or beat yourself up on a daily basis in order to be an acceptable human being.
Ignore this: their thinking is self-defeating and counterproductive.
Because you are already amazing.
Use this as a starting point and allow everything else to follow.
I’m passionate about this subject so check out my other body confidence and plus size fitness blog posts using the tag cloud to the right. And if I’ve motivated you to re-engage with your most marvellous body, then drop me a line and tell me what new reasons you’ve found to love yourself.
The pumpkin season is upon us – they’ve been in the shops for weeks and these plump orange friends, along with the ghoulish outfits and chocolate eyeballs also on the market shelves, herald the fact that the commercially busy time of Halloween is not far away.
Whether you intend to hunker behind tightly closed curtains to escape the trick or treaters, or you’re likely to embrace the evening with a glass of something warm and alcoholic around the barbeque after taking the kids around the neighbourhood, I think it’s way too easy to miss the real value of the season.
Let me explain.
I’ve always disliked autumn.
Or rather I’ve tried to dislike autumn but despite myself, I’ve always found too much to enjoy: iridescent red/brown trees; leaves falling like snowflakes; hidden fungi and bright shiny conkers like gifts in the grass – all pleasures I have reluctantly and even guiltily fallen in love with.
Little shiny gifts in the grass
Now, I really do love summer and I am very open and up front about this. Where do I start? Is it the rosé left to lose its chill on a patio table, or warm sand in between your toes while catching the drips coming down a cornet or the disorientating but quietly pleasing first afternoon of the school holidays? For me, the pleasures of summer are deep seated and long awaited.
And then the year turns and autumn slips in while you’re not looking. New shoes are polished, shirts buttoned and hair pig-tailed for the new term, the warm sunshine always seeming to last a little longer than expected. The green lawn you battled with over the summer has become brown with leaves, the blades of grass stumpy as their growth slows.
Before you know it, October happens, leaves drop in the strengthening winds and one morning you wake to suspect that someone might have tampered with your alarm because suddenly your feet are hitting the floor while it’s pitch black outside.
For me, this is where the wait starts. With every leaf that falls is the latent desire, almost an impatience, for the buds of spring.
That is, until now.
For now I feel I understand a little more of what it’s about and it all started with a conversation about the festival of Samhain.
I will explain at this point that I am not a witch or a Wiccan. I’m pretty happy for most people to go about whatever route to spiritual satisfaction they wish but I’m not one for being persuaded to any particular faith: I’m more of a spiritual tourist, you might say.
A friend of mine mentioned she was having a fire feast for Samhain – which, through many permutations has become what most know as Halloween. I’m no expert, so I’ll offer no comprehensive definitions here (although it is well worth a look up on the web) but what I did glean from our conversation was the notion of fallow: the fire feast being the last of the harvest festivals, the start of a new year and the beginning of a season of rest.
The fire would have served to not only dispose of the by-products of harvest but also to light, celebrate and appease – an opportunity to clear out and hang out after a long period of intense activity and hard work.
This led me to think that we have no sensible concept of rest in our modern 24/7 365 world. Even our sleep has to be discussed, prodded, analysed. Are we getting enough? Is our bed suitable? An article I read the other day asked ‘Have you scheduled down time?’ (Scheduling ‘down time’? Surely a more obvious oxymoron has never existed.)
But fallow season? This denotes a stoppage. The trees will drop their leaves until their branches are bare. The bracken will die back to the earth. Some mammals retreat to their burrows and sleep until spring.
It’s shut down time: the earth has pressed the restart button.
I have decided this is what has always bothered me the most about autumn: the return indoors until spring. During the summer, as long as it is light, I am outside washing the car, the windows or pottering in the garden. I pop out for some shopping or hang washing at four o’clock in the afternoon, safe in the knowledge that it will be dry by ten. I run by the river, ride my bike over to the park with my daughter for a go on the swings before bed or laugh with my friends over wine, while the bees work the flowers in the pub garden.
But up until now I have not understood that the fallow season a necessary rest, not just a reluctant temporary stoppage. That this is not a death: only a sleep and a vital one at that.
It is not a time of inactivity, just a different form of activity.
It is a time to regroup, to learn new skills, to deepen and develop relationships.
Just as, below the ground, the trees will store their nutrients, ready for leaves and fruit the following year, we as human beings need to do the same. I feel like we have lost our concept of rest – light bulbs and televisions illuminating the spaces we used to sleep in during the winter. And as air freight has made it possible to purchase strawberries long beyond autumn, I believe we have lost the concept of harvest and how grateful those who have gone before have been for it.
I’m not suggesting that we go back to the dark ages before electricity and ample food but what I am suggesting is that some of the anxieties we have today (mine being the waste of time retreating indoors presents) arise from our lack of connection with the turning seasons, the cycles of life and the inevitability of death.
We need to remember that we are merely earthly observers and although we have learned to tinker (quite effectively, in some cases) with the outcomes of these turnings, there has to be more than a going with the flow – when it comes to the inevitable changes the year (and indeed life) throws at us, there has to be an active engagement.
So, in a break from what has gone before, I’m going to enjoy the fallow season this year. I’m going to dust off the board games, find my crochet needles scattered around the house and browse awhile my collection of dog-eared food magazines for well-loved recipes.
We’ll pull on walking boots and sweaters to catch the odd, brief, bright day and enjoy the sun’s ingress through the leafless branches.
We’ll laugh as we wipe marmalade muffin crumbs off our hibernation blankets on a Sunday afternoon.
And we’ll talk, reconnect, read, learn and enjoy the fallow season, all rested and ready to re-emerge in spring, ready for a new year.
(If anyone else reading this hasn’t already seen Nicole’s six minutes of insightful commentary on obesity, then don’t bother. Make yourself a cracking cup of tea and watch the clouds passing the window instead, you’ll get more from it. If you’ve already fallen over it on social media, like a fluorescent safety cone in a shopping centre, you’ll either feel cross about someone else’s lack of concern for health and safety or the amusement that us bipeds at the upper end of the evolutionary ladder use to cover embarrassing situations.)
I want to thank you, pretty lady because although your message seems young, funky and ‘out there’ (thanks for showing us your Kesha hair, so we know just how hip you are), it is a latecomer to the fatshaming bandwagon: a bandwagon that having already shakily rambled along a long, bumpy lane with three wheels and a broken axel, now sits rotting gently in the corner of a forgotten barn with only pigpoop and a lonely donkey for company. And the fact that your ranting about something this old, tired and unfit for purpose reminds me of how far we’ve come in our conversation about obesity.
I won’t pretend that this conversation started in my lifetime. But I did used to eat my Weetabix to the Green Goddess shaking her thing on breakfast telly in the eighties. I engaged in the low-fat insanity going around at the time, believed wholeheartedly in pasta as my saviour and like millions of fellow tubbies likely picked up an insulin intolerance along the way. Protein came under fire with the food-combining frenzy of the nineties and now the new century is waging war on carbs.
You’ll be happy to know that the myth of the weight control one-size-fits-all silver bullet now seems to be on the wane. Even a shallow search of the internet throws up issues such as:
Is it a matter of calories in vs. calories out any more?
Is the adage ‘just stop eating’ helpful for long term weight loss and health gain?
What role does exercise play and does the hunger it creates outweigh the benefits?
Is it possible to be fat and fit?
Are obese people more prone to getting diabetes or are people already prone to getting diabetes more likely to develop an obesity problem as well?
What role does mental health play in eating and exercising habits?
What of the multi-million dollar, multinational diet industry? Are they doing a Tyler Durden and selling rich women their own fat arses back to them or providing a valuable service?
I can’t say that I have answers to any of the above questions but you don’t seem to either: you present no credible evidence to support your ‘facts’.
D’oh! Of course you don’t. And this isn’t because you’re a blonde explaining simple stuff to people who should know better, it’s because your video is part of your act.
Of course it is, I hear you say, you’re a writer and comedian. But there are moments when the woman behind the mask apologises for the tripe she’s ranting about – a smile, an apology, an awkward caveat: then the one-woman Punch and Judy show starts again.
And so, for the woman operating the puppet, I’d like to propose a vote of thanks.
Thanks for highlighting all the reasons why the futility of fat-shaming is still a relevant issue.
Thanks for making strong, agile but fat arsed people like me run faster, write harder and shout louder.
Thanks for motivating people to search out body positive sites like Callie Thorpe’s From the Corners of the Curve, organisations who can help with real life obesity issues like the charity Hoop and Facebook pages like blogger Debz Aiken’s plus size life/no weight loss chat page which offers an alternative place to talk about feeling good and living life without the constant hum of yet another diet in the background.
Thanks for encouraging all those women who will be sat in a PCOS clinic this morning to turn their backs on the destructive narrative of fat as a defining verb.
Thanks for creating an environment where the fabulousness that is Tess Holliday can blossom, pushing out the senseless, archaic and quite frankly spent ideas we used to have about size and aesthetics.
Fat shaming is just not on trend anymore – and your video is all about fat shaming, whatever label you choose to use.
I mean, putting a pair of boots into an oven won’t make them biscuits.
(Just imagine the last sentence was cut in black and white and said without the backing track – I’m stood looking into a pretend oven, wide eyed in surprise. It helps people to laugh at poorly thought out jokes, apparently.)
And just indulge me for a moment. Did Frankenstein ever walk like a zombie? Perhaps he did on his more morose days but there are also breath taking moments of Shelley’s book when we follow him at break neck speed across the ice in pursuit of his creation.
Oh, hang on, you’re talking about the creation put together by the doctor Frankenstein.
Perhaps you need this simple, fat, brunette to explain that Mary Shelly’s ground breaking text is a dark and wretched exploration of body and acceptance. Ironic to think you had mistakenly referenced it in a video loaded with empty rhetoric and prejudice about what you see as disfigured, broken bodies.
And yes, for the record, I could catch up with you. I enjoy running as much as I enjoy eating cake and surprisingly, I do the former more often than I do the latter.
Seriously though, I’ve read responses to your video that have ranged from the outraged to the tickled pink. There have been those who’ve passed it off as ill-judged humour and those who have seen it as senseless nonsense dripping from the mouth of an attention seeking idiot. For others, it’s been harmful, very harmful and this has once more raised issues of responsibility and censorship on the internet.
But I still think we need to be grateful to you for highlighting just how tired and one-dimensional #fatshaming is these days.
And I could finish up by saying that I hope you enjoy your five minutes of shame because you’re the kind of bottle blonde that’ll be forgotten about in five minutes – but that would be senselessly rude and I’d have to wander across the screen in black and white.
And I can’t. Because you (and everyone else reading this) are exercising your ability to read, not passively soaking up YouTube content.
And Smarties. Thank you for reminding me of how delightful these little capsules of sugary chocolate joy are. I’m going to squish a few in my mouth this afternoon.
xxx
If this has made you think, please share (the buttons are up on the right hand side).
Has fat shaming ever worked for you or someone you know?
Has Nicole Arbour got a point or am I just taking this all too seriously?
Comment away!
And check out more of my views on taking back ownership of your body:
Big cost to tax payers, massive cost to individuals, not to mention embarrassment for politicians. Clearly, some tough talking is going to have to take place in order to bring the problem under control.
We all know the adage about how much a picture can say, so this is the kind of image the media choose to accompany articles about the obesity crisis. This gem came from the Guardian:
A pie eater? A 24-hour a day carer? Someone who has already lost 4 stone? On his way back from the gym? How could we know?
Now the NHS burden can be placed quite firmly on this chap’s shoulders and there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t turn around and talk to you about why he’s overweight and even if he could move, his head has been chopped off so he physically has no mouth and therefore no voice.
Well, not on this platform anyway.
Being a morbidly obese vegetarian runner, I’m a regular visitor to on-line forums for the overly podgy and let me tell you about the conversations they’re having:
I’ve run out of points this week and I’m panicking about what to have for dinner because I’ve come off a twelve hour shift and I’m hungry – any suggestions?
It’s weigh in tonight, I’m having pizza afterwards and there’s a whole week to make up for it
My diet isn’t working any more. I’m fat/stupid/lazy/a slob/confused (cue reams of suggestions in reply, some genuinely helpful, some shamefully judgemental)
I haven’t lost enough weight for my wedding/my daughter’s wedding/my holiday
My eating has gone so off track since my mother died. It’s been six months and you would have thought I could have pulled it together by now
Some stranger told me today that fat people shouldn’t travel on trains/have tattoos/wear leggings
All paraphrased but all genuinely posted.
And then I came across a group for plus sized ladies with a complete ban on weight loss chat. What do they talk about?
How does this top look with these leggings? Should I wear heels?
Which chaffing shorts work the best?
Which bikinis fit best?
What I’m wearing to work today
My new hair colour
I’m going swimming today! Something I wouldn’t have done without the support of this group!
That’s not to say the other groups don’t have positive posts – they do. And that’s not to say that the weight loss free group doesn’t have posts about keeping healthy – I regularly seek feedback about running as a plus-sizer.
But the environment is so different, so energising, so self-affirming when the focus on how much weight you’re losing and how you’re doing it is taken away. My size is not the most important thing about me – I can write, sing, cook, draw. I make people laugh, I love my charity work and I’d challenge any overweight 40 year old woman to offroad on a bike like I do.
And this is the nub of the matter for me – everything is just so over-simplified and no wonder: do some digging and the advice is all so confusing. Back in the day, fat was to blame and now it’s sugar. We need to move fast food joints away from schools and teach kids how to cook. Even the school holidays are fattening. Measure these ideas against the material I was reading this morning about how the rise in obesity coincided with the rise in the anti-fat movement and a new study suggesting that a high fat diet can impair the function of a hormone that helps you to feel full. The NHS Eatwell plate still promotes ‘plenty of starchy foods’ in the face of the anti-carb movement.
But from what I’ve read recently, the cure to all our obesity problems apparently lies in:
Taxing sugary drinks and snacks
Closing/moving takeaways
Teaching people to cook
Making fat people go to the gym
Think about this for a moment. I’m overweight, so therefore I’m:
Gluttonous and weak minded
Ignorant about food and cooking
Lazy
Weak minded? Ignorant? Lazy?
Really?
Perhaps I’m a one off? I’ve read enough on-line to know that I’m not but let me tell you one thing I do know: I tend not to see fat people any more – I see survivors: survivors of bereavement, illness, depression, domestic violence and post-traumatic stress disorder. Not always but more often than not. I’m training for a 5k charity run in October, I haven’t eaten meat in nearly twenty years and I knock out a home-made from scratch dinner for four on a budget every night. Oh and I’ve survived years of depression.
Everyone has a back story which no one will get to hear if all they ever see is your headless back.
So I propose we start a real conversation – one that will work. Let’s get to the bottom of why people get fat and what they can actually do to reverse this. I’m not speaking about a silver bullet here – do this diet/take this pill/do this exercise. I’m talking about a proper strategy that uses the ingenuity and strength of the human spirit to overcome adversity and acknowledges that we are all individuals with our own metabolisms, hang-ups and personal circumstances.
The aerobics classes I took in my early twenties to lose weight couldn’t finish soon enough but feeling my strong but fat-suit hidden legs doing Zumba at the weekend made me feel completely different
– because what I was doing was utterly relevant. I’m getting fit for my health, not because being fat makes me somehow unworthy of being part of society or having a voice.
I don’t have diabetes, I don’t have any weight related illnesses but because I’m overweight there is this idea going round that I’m going to be expensive later in life, so the UK taxpayer already owns me along with the right to say what they please about me.
But I refuse to be one of The Obese.
I am not a blob with no head, with my back to the camera.
I am full frontal, full throttle and full volume.
I’m not celebrating or promoting obesity, I’m saying we have to completely re-think the way we talk about it because the conversations that are happening on a public and policy making level are not working.
So, yeah, let’s talk about obesity, it’s clear that it needs to happen – but for it to work, it’s got to be two-way. Because that’s what the word conversation means.
An obese person in trainers – a more helpful image?
Do you agree? Have I got it all wrong? How can we make things better? Drop me a line below, let me know. Perhaps I’ve missed something. And drop me a line if you’d like more information about the Facebook groups I visit.
Oregano – aromatic when warm, whether by the sun on a hot day or by stringy mozzarella on a hot pizza
I can always tell when my young daughter has been playing in the Oregano bush in our garden. She makes stories with her small collection of toy reptiles and insects amongst the leaves and when she comes back into the house, the fresh, green fragrance that is Oregano wafts in with her. I found the first flower earlier this week which always makes me think back to when I was pregnant with her, my summer baby.
Summer squash or yellow courgettes – no matter what you call them, big, beautiful flowers and food on the same plant? It’s all win!
Someone once asked me why my favourite colour is yellow “because it’s the colour of sunshine, butter and cheese” I replied. My summer squash is busy growing big, yellow squashes of loveliness but in the meantime it supplies huge, gorgeous, all to quickly gone flowers every morning.
I know what I like to eat. I like fresh, light flavours like coriander, lime and juicy tomatoes in the summer; warm, rich cinnamon and cumin to enrich the bounty of autumn and deep, indulgent, sustaining textures in winter. That’s what I like. Variety.
I spend much of my time buying and cooking food. I choose combinations to sometimes test, sometimes tease and sometimes simply satisfy the palate – but there’s always variety.
What has all this to do with spirituality?
I thrive on variety, choice and exploration. It’s about using my knowledge, experience and skill to find and prepare interesting dishes and then share them with my family and friends. Please don’t mistake my love of pick and mix for insincerity or lack of commitment – I just can’t imagine what it would be like to have the same meal whizzed up and spoon fed to me every day with the expression of choice or complaint not just frowned upon but punished.
This is the kind of theocratic tyranny that I grew up with and why I left prescribed religion behind me a long time ago.
These days, my spiritual exploration is much like a visit to an art gallery. And I’m not talking here about browsing the halls on the way to the coffee shop, I’m talking about really looking, thinking, leaving, reading, perhaps coming back, thinking some more. It’s about my response to what I’m seeing, how it relates to what I already know and what I’d like to experience more of.
Let me explain. I’m not a Buddhist but I’ve read several books written by the Dalai Lama (The Art of Happiness, is well worth a read if you haven’t already) and so when I caught wind that he was coming to Aldershot to open the new Buddhist community centre, I felt compelled to go see if I could catch a glimpse of him.
HH the Dalai Lama blessing the new Buddhist community centre after which he spoke about Buddhism in the 21st century and called for an end to religious division saying “killing in the name of religion is totally wrong”.
I was very nearly disappointed.
I arrived in town on my very easy-to-park bike and after having been asked directions by a very wealthy looking family in a particularly flash car I found myself in what felt like another world. Next to the football stadium, the once rather drab looking social club was painted and beribboned, with red, yellow and blue flags flying high above the road. Fresh from Glastonbury, HH was due to open the centre, lead prayers for the Nepalese lost in the earthquakes and then teach at the stadium.
I don’t know what I was expecting to see but the cacophony was something I’d not experienced before. On the lower side of the road, a large protest against the Dalai Lama by Shugden tradition Buddhists was in full swing. The usually quite pedestrian barriers running along the footpath were festooned with banners declaring their message. Behind this, monks of all nationalities used loud hailers and voices to make as much noise as possible.
I saw one monk amongst the crowd, settled on the pavement in front of a sign for tyres and exhausts, deep in meditation. Behind were the coaches they’d arrived on – I couldn’t help wondering what 50 monks wandering around Heston services would look like.
A contingent of Shugden Buddhists protesting – one later chose to sit and meditate outside Mr Clutch. I like that.So much dancing and singing on both sides of the road: both sides of the Shugden debate
The pro-Dalai Lama camp on the stadium side of the road were also in full swing. There were drums, wide flags flying above. People danced in all colours: emeralds, ochres, saffron, azure blues – from the elderly shuffling to the music to the little babies wide eyed at the spectacle.
I locked my bike to a railing and set off to find out whether I could make sense of what was going on.
According to my watch and the timetable I’d read online, the man I’d come to see would be leaving the community centre sometime soon in order to teach at the ticketed event in the stadium next door.
My phone rang.
My friend, the jammiest of all my friends, had secured a space away from the crowds at the back of the community centre. I smiled.
And so, I found myself with a rack of press, my friend and three Nepalese ladies around the rear of the building where the Dalai Lama was praying inside. A pathway carpeted with ornate rugs ran from a small side door to a huge, black waiting car – the kind you might find carting a celebrity to a premiere. Under the bright colours and intricate paintings of the gateway were a swarm of butch looking security in black suits and high vis jackets. A photographer was making a last minute bargain with one of them to get beyond the wire fence barrier we were stood behind. He won and was allowed in, happily taking up a crouching position beside all the other lenses.
Excitement built as thumbs up were sent out between the security suits, and few people piled out of the side door followed finally by two monks blowing horns.
The moment was arriving. I felt like it was all too much. How disappointed would I be if I didn’t catch glimpse of him? What if the men there to protect him denied me of my once in a lifetime chance? The chants from the road were distant but ever present. The line of attendees for the stadium event filed past the bottom of the steps some way away, unaware of me, my friend and the three Nepalese ladies waiting with baited breath. The drums and the singing rang in my ears.
I felt faint.
And then out he came: small, smiley and utterly untouched by the cacophony around him. I’d had my cameraphone poised for the past five minutes but I calmly put it in my back pocket: I felt compelled to see this one event with my own eyes rather than mediated through a lens.
Did he see me? Probably not. Did he hear my quietly offered Namaste? I hope so. He was ushered into the car and whisked away in a moment.
As we turned from the fence and went to walk down the steps back down to the roadway, my friend commented that I looked like I’d been hit in the eye. It would seem my mascara had gone a little astray.
What did I take from the day?
That even though the spiritual so often has to sit within a secular environment for functional or security reasons it doesn’t mean that all is lost. From what I’ve read of his writings, the Dalai Lama himself is a largely down to earth man. His teachings are as applicable, in principle, to an atheist or a Catholic as they are to a practicing Buddhist.
But I couldn’t help wondering whether he would rather be wandering in the public park up the road where the elderly Nepalese residents of our town like to gather and talk. Or how he felt about all the security around him and whether he felt it was interfering with his work. He talks so much about how powerful an opponent to kindness and real understanding fear is.
My friend and I then did what any good tourist would and went to a coffee shop to ruminate on what we’d seen and heard. The Dalai Lama had radiated a smile that I wore all day.
I think I’m still wearing it now.
And so my tour continues – maybe I’ll find somewhere to call home at some point, maybe I won’t – but it’s not the arrival that’s important to me, it’s the journey.
A colourful welcome from the Buddhist Community Centre UK in Aldershot
Just days after visiting Aldershot, His Holiness the Dalai Lama reacts joyfully to a cake presented by President and Mrs. Bush in honor of his upcoming 80th birthday during a luncheon at the Bush Center in Dallas, Texas, USA on July 1, 2015. Photo/Bush Center
Going home has always been a restorative thing for me. Driving over the Tamar, I take a huge breath of good Cornish air and then another as I circle above my home town of Penryn, where the new Combined Universities in Cornwall has sprung up on the grounds of what was Tremough Convent. Glimpses of the river going out to Falmouth Bay never fail to catch my breath and bring back memories of walking the fields high on the hill with my mother as a child; ripping grass from the verges to feed the horses, fingers stained from blackberry picking. There was less traffic then.
But my story is about Falmouth, where my parents now live. The car park on Fish Strand Quay is one of the best places to see the historic waterfront and it’s one of the first places I head to when I’m home. Half way along is the building that was the Royal British Legion – a building that my Dad has strong links to as did his father before him. It’s now home to the Arwenack Club where my Step Mother is a key player behind the bar. Yes I did spend much time in there with my family over the weekend. Yes, I did drink much beer. Yes I did sing karaoke on Sunday evening. And the quality of music of the Rockabilly band Chrome Deville was matched only by the jivers on the dancefloor. There’s something very special about watching the sunlight fade over the water as the lights of the docks come up – over a pint and some lively banter of course.
This is where WordPress could do with a Smellovision plugin. The lane heading down from where my Dad lives towards Swanpool beach is always vibrant with bluebells at this time of year but it’s the scent of the wild garlic that is overpowering. An evening walk down to the beach with the kids and Buster often involves signet spotting on the pool and a hedgehog ice cream on the Swanpool café decking overlooking the sea. (A hedgehog ice cream involves Cornish ice cream, clotted cream and toasted chopped hazelnuts by the way – it’s heaven’s heart attack in a cone!)
Swanpool beach – St Anthony lighthouse on the other side of the harbour is a pin prick in the distance
Swanpool Beach. This place means much to me. The small specks on the rocks are my son leading his little sister over the rocks – much like my brother used to do with me – and the path leading up on the cliffs towards Gyllingvase was where I used to walk with my Granddad when I was a child and where I sometimes run now. This is also where I used to bring my son after school, many years ago – we’d have tea on the beach and he’d play in the shallows when the heat of the summer day had passed.
Clean, cool air came off the water as I sat and watched the guys fishing off the rocks and the smell of the barbeque their friends had just lit for them just up the beach from me wafted out to sea.
Swanpool beach looking out towards Stack Point
So I did what any girl would do when left alone on a beach in the evening sun – I slipped off my flip flops and buried my toes in the sand.
The next day we drove back. ‘Til August it is then.
I’ve been getting a little hot-headed recently, which can only mean one thing – it’s time to go home to Cornwall for a while.
Time to sit in a pretty tea shop with my pretty Mum and watch the water washing around in the harbour.
Time to take my Dad’s hooligan of a dog out on to the clifftops.
Time to sit in the social club where I used to sit with my Dad when I was a kid and where he used to sit with his father when he was kid and watch the lights of the ships in the harbour come up as the sun goes down.
Where the Queen of Small Things goes to rest (those gulls had better stay away from my pasty)
Time to breathe some good air, catch up with some good friends and enjoy some peace away from the constant noise of the traffic.
Time to run the promenade, eat giant ice creams and have a Rowe’s pasty.
I live on the outskirts of an old military town and since Joanna Lumley’s campaign to improve the lives of ex-Ghurkhas and their families, the area has seen a considerable influx of Nepalese people.
And unlike so many residents who live round here, I have to say I really like these people: they’ve brought a different dimension to the town and I think we have so much to learn from them.
It makes me sad to hear of yet another earthquake in their homeland and I cannot begin to imagine the sadness they must feel, thinking of the communities they’ve left behind. With all the devastating news reports in the media at the moment, I just wanted to say something positive about the people I’ve encountered here, in what must seem like a very foreign land.
Early in the morning, when I’m cycling my daughter to school, I meet small groups of elderly, well wrapped, brightly coloured Nepalese walking in groups along the river path and through the park. “Good morning” they say and in return I offer a “Namaste”. It’s always at this point that they light up and putting their hands together offer many back.
It took me no time at all to notice that this expression conveyed so much more than one of our own English greetings and having never been to Nepal, I thought I’d do a little research.
Just five minutes looking around on the web turned up so much. The phrase literally means “I bow to you”. The small head nod, the hands gently pressing together, the smile that accompanies it, acknowledges the divine spark that resides within us all. It’s more of a prayer than a greeting, so much richer than “good morning”. It’s more involved and wider than just one person acknowledging another. It’s about souls, much older than bodies, passing the time of day.
This made me think about so much I’ve observed recently.
One spring morning about a year ago, I was sat in the car outside my friend’s flat, waiting for him. Next door, a couple of elderly Nepalese ladies stepped out into the sunshine and it was as though the new green leaves and the bright light filled the second woman with something so enlightening, she simply had to place her hands together and say good morning to the sun. My friend is really ill, which I’m finding most distressing at the moment but that one gesture made me smile.
Then there was the time a friend sent me a picture of a small group of elderly Nepalese sat outside his flat in the car park on deckchairs. They were tightly wrapped as it was a cold November day but because the sun was out, so were they. I’ve never been good at hibernating either.
I’ll also mention the elderly Ghurka who I regularly see making his way into town. His slow shuffle speaks of determination despite infirmity or injury. His broad shoulders, muscular physique and strong hand on his walking stick speak of a dignified life at arms for a country far away from the land of his birth.
There seems to be something open and accepting that’s hardwired into the Nepalese people I’ve met. They go outside, explore, find new places – and the library is usually busy with them. On market day, the town is alive with circles of men talking, the women picking over the vegetables on the stalls and in the parks and gardens, they sit and talk in the sunshine.
I don’t pretend to know very much about their land and their diverse culture. I know there are divisions in the country and that it is recovering from a brutal civil war. The town in which I live is groaning under the weight of this sudden population increase (which I believe has more to do with policy than people) and even the local MP has voiced concern over the locals’ inability to find a park bench to use at peak times. I’ve also read about their caste system, their gender roles and their religious and ideological divisions but I can only go on the elderly Nepalese people I’ve seen (I believe the young have their own basket of problems) – and what I’ve seen is a quiet, respectful, considerate people with a great sense of humour and a thirst for human experience.
I’m not a religious person but I think the concept that we all carry a spark of the divine within us is a sensible one. If, just if, the idea that we all harbour the same life force is true, wouldn’t it clear up so many modern-day woes? Wouldn’t so many of our negative emotions like jealousy and fear which cause so much hurt become not just futile but useless?
There are so many souls hurting in Nepal today because the earth shook – again.
