A Quick Bath

... with my very dear Jan Lane, potter and philosopher. No one in Bath knowing where anything in Bath is.  And the city its usual elegant, yellowy self in the wintry sun. 

Death: The Human Experience Bristol City Museum

So, I finally made it there and this is a review I wrote.

In a week which saw the death of not just the most influential musician and cultural icon of the last 45 years, but also one of our greatest, best-loved actors, it felt like an appropriate time to visit the current exhibition at Bristol City Museum, entitled Death: The Human Experience.

This comprehensive exhibition features five sections based on key human experiences of death - symbols of death; stages of death; attitudes to death; human remains; and science and ethics – and includes hundreds of objects and images relating to each aspect from different cultures around the world.  These range from the familiarity of a stuffed crow, a wreath of lilies, and a porcelain mortuary table from the former Bristol General Hospital, to a reconstruction of a mediaeval plague doctor’s mask, a Ghanaian fantasy coffin in the shape of a rather fearsome-looking tiger, a 1900 watercolour copy by archaeologist Adela Breton of a Mayan temple wall painting featuring human sacrifice, and mummified body parts.

These are presented alongside interactive features, such as the (variable) point at which one might be considered dead, and a series of quotes, including Mark Twain’s rather jaunty assertion, ‘I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.’

Rather surprisingly, given the breadth of objects on display, the item that had the most effect on me was the first I saw: an X-ray of a (living) skull by Mariele Neudecker, entitled Truth is an Overrated Virtue, which was startling in its fragility. 

I was also intrigued by another exhibit, entitled An Affidavit Certificate, dated April 21st, 1707, Proving that Thomas Mathew was Buried in Wool, which shows the said Bristolian Thomas's burial preference, as follows:

'These are to certifie that the body of Thomas Matthews lately de interred in the parifhe of St Nicolas was not put in, wrapt, wound up or in any shurt, shift, sheet or shroud, made or mingled with flax, hemp, silk, hair, gold, silver or other then what is made of sheeps woll only, or in any coffin lined or faced with any cloth stuff or any other thing what so ever made or mingled with flax, hemp, silk, hair, gold or silver or any other material but sheeps woll only The truth where of attefted by ………… as well by their hands and seals herunto selt and subfcribed as by their refpective oaths taken before me.. one of.... majifties Iuftices of the peace for the.. a fore faid

As witness my hand the 21st day of the April in the 6th year of the reign of the.... over England and c....'

The only minor criticism I have is the tone of some of the information boards which, in their exhortation to visitors to reflect upon their own journey to death, come across as slightly patronising at times.  As it is, I left with an enhanced grasp of the sheer normality of death as the end to which we are all progressing, which shapes our lives and gives them meaning.

The entrance fee for Death: The Human Experience, which runs until 13^th March, has been waived, with visitors being encouraged instead to pay what they think it is worth. I hope very much that the museum makes some money out of this excellent and well-attended exhibition. 

All photos ©Bristol City Museum website

So I Picked On You

I was still sitting in bed, drinking tea, when Son the Younger phoned. 

'I've just got into work,' he said. 'Mum, have you seen the news?'

'No. What's up? Has someone died?'

'Yes.' He paused. 'You're not going to like it.'

'Oh no,' I wailed, 'not Leonard!'

'No. Leonard's OK.'  

And then I knew. I phoned Liz, my friend of 51 years' standing, and got her voicemail. 

'Have you heard the news? God, I can't believe it. I just - I had to phone someone - '

The next words, unthought-of until that moment, came out in a croaky lump.

' - soIpickedonyou.'

Thank you, David Bowie.  Thank you so very much.

Ghost Stories for a January Night

Mindful of my friend Annette's grandfather, who was married to a medium and swore it was all a load of bollocks until the day he walked slap-bang into his wife's Native American spirit guide by the newel post at the foot of the stairs, I keep an open mind on the various phenomena that get lumped together under the heading of ghosts. There's much still to learn about the passage of time and the nature of memory, and even more about death and where all that energy goes.  As it happens, I've been reading and writing a fair bit about graveyards and ghosts lately, and it made me realise that I hadn't actually documented my several possibly paranormal encounters over the years and could be in danger, as old age encroaches, of forgetting them. So here they are.

That some places have a particularly eerie atmosphere is beyond question. Mostly, though, that slightly shivery feeling doesn't stop me wandering around them quite happily. There is, however, something unspeakably bad in the ruins of Berry Pomeroy Castle near Paignton.  I know this, partly because of well-documented apparitions, but mainly because each time I've been there, I've felt it.  

And then there's Lidwell Chapel on Haldon Moor, also in Devon and the site of the first documented serial killings in the British Isles.  The first time I went there, I was so shaken I vowed never to return.  I've since been back twice, each time with friends who heard me say I was never going back and persuaded me otherwise.  Both visits were as chilling as before. It doesn't help that the eponymous well - or spring - turns the red earth to what looks like blood under your feet, or that both collies who have accompanied me - in their individual times - were decidedly reluctant to go inside the ruins - and let's face it, what collie doesn't like thickets, water and sticky, sticky mud? All told, I shudder just driving past on the B3192 and even sunlit photos of the beautiful surrounding countryside make me anxious.

Closer to home is somewhere I've been very often, namely, the Frome valley in Bristol. The area known as Snuff Mills is in quite a deep gorge - though on nothing like the scale of the celebrated Avon Gorge - and in winter, it's as if the darkness seeps up from the ground as the afternoons dwindle. There's something about the atmosphere here that makes me think of it as a place of ghosts. I grew up with the story of two children, June Sheasby (aged 7) and her brother, Royston (5), who left home to visit a horse that was grazing in Wickham Glen one summer day in 1957, and who never returned home. Their bodies were discovered twelve days later, when a police constable noticed a small hand poking out of the undergrowth. (We're told thousands of people joined in the search for the children, and you have to wonder how it took so long for their bodies to be found.)  Their murderer was never caught and brought to justice, and it's impossible to know whether that dark episode - especially alarming for an over-sensitive, pony-mad little girl growing up nearby just a few years later - coloured my impression of the place, but whatever the cause, it's somewhere that makes me shiver.

Another disturbing atmosphere caught me off-guard during my visit to Canterbury Cathedral in 2011.  Time was tight - I had to drive back to Maidstone to pick up my son and I'd lingered rather too long at the spot where an eternal flame burns in memory of the murdered Archbishop, Thomas Becket, so I wasn't surprised to feel anxious as I hurried, head down, towards the north-west transept.  Except that suddenly I was very very anxious, to the point where I could barely breathe; my mouth was dry, my heart was hammering and I looked up to see an altar with a sculpture of three fearsomely jagged swords above it.  This, I then realised, was the spot where the Archbishop's murder had happened, not the site of the flame which merely marks where his shrine stood before it was destroyed in 1538 on the orders of Henry VIII. But I'd felt the actual location and its atmosphere of murderous intent before I'd learnt its significance.  

Now let's head to Langford Budville in Somerset.  Back in 2009, my sceptical friend Cathy and I were whiling away a cold January afternoon visiting churches in the vicinity before going to a gig in the evening.  Around dusk we reached St Peter’s Church in the aforementioned village, and I did what I always do as soon as I step inside a parish church – namely, make for the table where the guide books are sold, as they often have curious stories in them. I never got there, however, as almost immediately I felt such a dark, malevolent presence somewhere up towards the altar that I had to get out, immediately. It wasn't just fear; I also felt a visceral disgust - whatever it was, there was something profoundly obscene about it. 

What was strange, however, was that as I reached the door, I saw my companion dashing towards me.  ‘There’s something evil in here,’ Cathy gasped. ‘Got to get out!’  This from a nurse with years of training in Being Sensible, who'd give me short shrift whenever she caught me watching ‘Most Haunted’.  In fact, the only creepy thing that ever happened to her – though this is seriously creepy – was when Fred and Rose West tried to abduct her from a bus stop in Stokes Croft in the early 70s.  Until we went to Langford Budville, that is.  

Upon our return, I did a bit of research to see if there were any ghost stories associated with the church but found none. I suspect that if this presence were a 'thing', it would have been abandoned long ago.  So what Cathy and I both experienced that day remains a mystery.

At Berry Pomeroy, Lidwell, Snuff Mills, Canterbury Cathedral and Langford Budville, I neither saw nor heard anything specific: there was simply a dark feeling of evil in all four places.  Yet when I have experienced something which could be a ghostly encounter, it hasn't been frightening at all, merely intriguing.  

The Theatre Royal in Bristol has a reputation for being haunted by several different ghosts.  My strange experience happened in the spring of 2007, in the Ladies' toilets. My elder daughter had gone on ahead; I'd finished my drink before following her a couple of minutes later.  As I walked in, I heard a outburst of sobbing in one of the two occupied cubicles.  I turned and exchanged a concerned glance with a woman standing by the sink.  After a while, the door of one of the toilets opened and out walked its occupant.  She showed no sign of distress at all and departed with her waiting friend.  I began to worry.  As I hadn't passed her on the way in, and there was no one else in the toilets, I figured the crying person in the other cubicle had to be my daughter.  She hadn't long split up with her partner and I knew she was pretty miserable, but I hadn't realised just how distraught she must be to wail in public. After a bit I called her name, then tentatively pushed at the door.  To my surprise it swung open to reveal … no one.  I left perplexed, rather than frightened.  I still can't fathom what both I and the waiting woman undoubtedly heard. 

Eighteen months later, in autumn 2008, I visited Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, the thought of hauntings far from my mind as I wandered along the cloisters, taking photos and delighting in this fragment of wall painting and that play of light and shadow. 

In the north-east corner of the cloister we came to a room – well, more of a passage really – known as the Parlour, where visitors to the Abbey were received in mediaeval times.  To the left of the doorway was a rectangle of orange plastic fencing, closing off a section of uneven floor and partially blocking the view into the room.  As I stepped over the threshold I found myself looking over to the light-filled Warming Room on the right.  Through the open door I could see pillars and a massive cauldron, and I remember thinking how familiar they looked, as both room and its contents make an appearance in one of the early Harry Potter films.  Then I stopped dead and heard myself say 'Whoa!'  It was as if I'd come up hard against an invisible barrier or obstruction, or received a mild electric shock – or someone or something had walked through me.  At which point I looked towards the window at the back of the Parlour and saw three stone coffins along each of the three stone walls.

Again it wasn't scary, just a bit surprising.  When I got home I did a bit of googling.  There was no mention of a ghost specifically in that room in any of the official literature I read, but I did come across a photo of the interior complete with coffins and a vague, misty sort of blur that the person who posted it claimed was a ghost.  It's accompanied by a caption saying 'this is where I felt the presence of Anne Trubelle, a lady in her early 30s'.  But who Anne Trubelle was, when she lived, and where this information comes from wasn't stated.

Then there's the personal: the sensation, back in 1996, of sinking irrevocably under the stress of my then-life and suddenly feeling a distinct lightening of the weight on my shoulders, as if someone had walked up to me and physically lifted a burden from them.  

Later that year, I moved house with my now ex-husband and four young children.  My grandmother, Hilda Hill, was almost five years dead and I remember thinking, as I was packing up, that our new house would be the first she'd never visited.  I wondered if she'd know where we'd gone.  But I wasn't thinking of her a few weeks later as I walked from the kitchen of the new place into the hall and sensed her standing in the corner behind me.  So strong was this feeling that I stopped in my tracks and looked around.  I could see nothing apart from the understairs cupboard door and kitchen door and the short stretch of wall running between them, but I was so convinced she was there that I greeted her out loud and told her how happy I was that she'd come after all, that she'd found me. 

About six weeks ago, there was an echo of this on the day I moved to my new home.  Resting for a moment on a handy cardboard box and chatting with my son and his girlfriend, I was suddenly aware of sunlight, a feeling of warmth and my grandmother's laughter - Hilda all around me in my new life.     

My grandmother was the cornerstone of my childhood and my first three years of motherhood.   Almost 25 years after her death she still shapes the way I am.  A psychologist might say her constant presence in my mind would explain why occasionally I've imagined her present - except that both times I've been absorbed in what I was doing, yet have suddenly known, with all my wit and reason, that she is with me, as palpably as any other member of my family.  

A Visit from Old Scritch

Having brought the little apple tree grown from seed from the last apples harvested from my grandmother's garden after her death almost 25 years ago with me when I moved house recently, I've been keeping a close eye on it in its new location to maximise its chance of survival.  

In this respect, the very mild weather we've been having this winter has been helpful. However, on New Year's Eve, my friends turned up to help me celebrate and reported that it was forecast to get very cold out, and a frost was already forming.  I immediately shuffled down the garden path to put a nice thick mulch of straw, bought for this very purpose, around the roots of my precious tree, but no sooner had I put one foot on the grass than I slipped and fell flat on my back.  

Sitting on the sodden lawn with wet mud seeping through my clothes, I decided I might as well spread the straw anyway before struggling to my feet and lumbering back into the house like the creature from the black lagoon.  It was hardly a propitious start to my celebrations or a good omen with regard to the tree's survival, and I hadn't drunk a drop at that point.  Plus, it didn't get any colder and there was no frost. Gah.

Today I glanced out of my bedroom window and caught a flash of buff, white and blue in garden. Horace's 'chattering jay, ill omen'd', one on the grass, one perched on my tree. Except I'm taking this wonderful visitation as the best of signs.  

Salt on the Wind : Poetry in response to Ruth Stone

I've been so busy moving house, I haven't had the chance to post about this book, an anthology of poems written in response to the startling, funny, fierce work of the late American poet Ruth Stone, whose centenary was in 2015.  

The collection has been put together by North Somerset-based poets and poetry film makers, Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbury, and includes a foreword by Ruth's granddaughter, Bianca Stone.  I'm honoured that three of my poems are included among the thoughtful and thought-provoking contributions collected here.

'Salt on the Wind' is available to buy from Elephant's Footprint, or from any of the following readings that have been planned for the coming months, as follows:

Tuesday 26th January     Berkeley Square Club, Bristol                    8.30pm

Friday 5th February         Can Openers, Steam Cafe Bar, Bristol      Noon 

Thursday 12th May           Cheltenham Poetry Festival

Sunday 24th July              Buzzwords, Cheltenham                             8pm

Thursday 25th August      Words and Ears, Bradford on Avon        7.30pm

Thursday 6th October      Swindon Poetry Festival