 500 g butter
Eating dad's homemade bread in front of the gas fire in the sitting room. Hot bread and cold, cold butter. 1 cup sugar Using the coffee grinder part of the blender to turn granulated into castor sugar. The sweet scent of the twisted black vanilla pod in the old coffee jar full of sugar for baking. Sugar on buttery toast as a treat. 1 tin condensed milk Dad making condensed milk sandwiches on soft white bread, and us giggling as it dripped down our chins. Scraping out the last scraps of sweet, sticky condensed milk from the bottom of the tin. 5 cups SR flour The pleasing soft thump of flour as mum pours it into the bowl, and the silky coolness of it under my fingers. Mum guiding me as I rub in lard and butter to make pastry, her fingers cold next to mine. Cream butter and sugar Gold turning to white in the old orange mixing bowl, and the sound of the electric beaters on the hard plastic, as mum captures the last scraps of butter and sugar. Dad showing me how if you over-whip cream it turns into tiny golden grains of butter, hard won but tasting so much better than anything from a shop. The strange glass contraption that makes butter into substitute cream. Stir in condensed milk and flour to make a firm dough Scraping the bowl after mum made cakes. Wrapping my tongue around the not quite sharp edges of the rotary whisk, the one with the burgundy Bakelite handle and the crack that pinches an unwary palm. Roll into balls and press with a fork, or freeze in rolls and slice The sound of the knife on the Pyrex plate rim as mum trims the excess pastry, and the indentations left by her first finger and thumb as she crimps the edges to seal the pie tight. Two slits in the centre to let out the steam. Making jam tarts and little pasties with the scraps of pastry left over. Cook at 170-180 degrees for about 12 minutes Mum putting half a Victoria sponge in the freezer and Dad complaining that we only ever got a round cake when we had visitors. The house filling with the smell of warm sweetness on a Saturday afternoon.
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 Three and a half years ago, and four months after Tim died, I wrote this in a blog:
"I'm left in the limbo of Life v3.0. I don't want to be here. I liked Life v2.1. I don't know whether there's ever going to be a Life v3.1. But I've decided that if I could be brave before I'm going to be brave again." And it's not the 'Oh, you are so brave, I don't know how I would cope without [insert name here]'. It's a brave with the stitches showing and the glue not quite set. It's a broken and mended brave. It's a Kintsugi bowl repaired with gold brave, a brave that sees the beauty in the flaws. And while it's a kind of brave that doesn't always withstand a puff of wind, I'm hoping it might be the kind that will stand up to a storm." Last night I made a Kintsugi bowl, to celebrate where I am now. I have a Life v3.1, and she is planning on moving to Tideswell, to be with me. And that's just wonderful. And I know that I am now (and always have been) more than who I live with. I have completed an MA in Writing for Performance. I will have a performance staged next year. My freelance writing career continues apace. I still have the bees. This isn't the life I chose. But it's the life I'm going to celebrate "It's a brave with the stitches showing and the glue not quite set. It's a broken and mended brave. It's a Kintsugi bowl repaired with gold brave, a brave that sees the beauty in the flaws." Not sure why I needed to write this today. But I did.
Tim and I had a fairy story. We met in our early twenties at a youth prayer group. I had other commitments – a boyfriend called Paul – and Tim sighed gently, tucked the candle he held for me in his back pocket, and we became friends. We stayed friends through thick and thin. Through his troubled times. Through his diagnosis with type 2 diabetes and his hospital stay for a rather scary bout of acute pancreatitis. Through my marriage falling apart and my descent into depression. And finally, through my divorce. I was separated for two years, though Paul and I continued to live in the same house, and over this time I fell in love with Tim. With his kindness and his humour, his ability to tell stories, his love for films and books and cars, and of course, his adoration of me. I have never been loved so much. Tim proposed in a motel in France, just as we were going to bed. I think he may have still been in his knickers and socks. I said no, but only because the divorce wasn't yet final. He proposed for the second time as we looked at a beautiful channel-set diamond and white gold ring in the window of a jeweller's shop. It's still on my finger. We married at the church where he was christened, and where his grandparents are buried. It was a day of sun and joy and light and family and friends, and he was my beautiful boy, his face full of happiness. Our honeymoon in Greece was sweet and quiet, with time just the two of us, and time with Tim's wonderful godfather and namesake Tim, and his lovely wife Aphroula. We moved to Tideswell, to the house where I still live, and he created his bookshop downstairs. I worked upstairs in my office, and we would talk many times a day. My favourite moments were getting up early to work and then snuggling back in bed with him before we both started our days for real. I also loved heading downstairs with a cup of coffee for him, and on Wednesdays for Fiona too. We would hug the warm mugs and talk about everything and nothing. Unfortunately, not all fairy stories have a happy ending. Eighteen months before our tenth wedding anniversary, the morning after a wonderful night out, and with no warning at all, Tim breathed for the last time. Despite CPR, and me pumping his chest as I screamed down the line at a wonderful phone handler, and despite work by indefatigable paramedics, he never breathed again. In a broken parody of our mornings together, I curled up next to his still warm body. I tucked my head into his neck. I inhaled his smell, and kissed the soft skin behind his ear. Fiona held my hand. Simon and Gillian, my dear friends, anointed him and sent him on his journey. And then I had to do the hardest thing I have ever done. I had to call his parents. I had to call our friends. I had to call my family. So many calls. Telling the same story so many times. Accepting the kind wishes, the love. Managing their grief as well as mine. The rest is numbness. Sleeping alone that first night. Organising a funeral and burial at the church in Somerset where we were married, with the ceremony carried out both times by the same old friend. Organising a memorial service and wake back here in Tideswell. Accepting a life where he was never going to be back, however hard I wished. It's now two years. I have the same life and a different life. I have my old friends, and I also have the friends I thought I would never have. The friends joined in grief for losing a partner too young. I am at university, studying something new. I am moving forward (I don't say that I move on) and I have travelled, run, written, laughed and learned. But I still grieve. I think I always will. I'm starting to sort out again. The lengthening of the days is bringing back a little of the energy and attention that has been missing for half a year, through a summer of lost purpose and a winter of anniversaries. Memories, dusty as ghosts, come rising out of dented cardboard and crumpled carriers.
My first poems and stories, hand-bound into books with board fronts and backs. Craft projects kept carefully by my parents over many years, and brought home when I cleared out their house for the last time. My parents' wills. Love letters from my ex from before we were married. Evidence of his love in my hand where it once was in both of our hearts. Pictures and paperwork from houses I bought with my ex, including the house in Doncaster that was to be the fresh start for a struggling marriage (I thought) and that turned out to be the step closer to its finish. Divorce paperwork. Condensing 14 years into just a few pages. Startling in black and white. The contract for the house in Litton Mill that was a river-lined retreat from the chaos and became the start of my life version 2. Tim's tenancy agreement from the house in Dadford where things began. Tim's statements and pay slips. Scraps of paper filled with his spidery writing. Notes left on my desk. Cards from him, loaded with so much love it spilled over the sides. The estate agent's flier for his beloved shop, now empty, and this beautiful house, now holding only half the love it did. The place where things ended after a decade filled with sweetness.  I've just bought a new shredder, and now my office carpet looks like it's been hit by a cellulose snowstorm. I'm going through a huge box of papers and getting rid of anything older than five years.
There's a satisfaction of pushing sheets of paper into its tooth-lined maw, and filling paper sacks with shreddings for recycling. It is making me think of things that are no more. Cars, houses, cats, jobs. And marriages. There's a lot of Tim's paperwork in here. Payslips, bank statements, bills, receipts, car documentation. And always the challenge of seeing his writing. I can't keep it all but there is part of me that feels guilty getting rid of it, as if I am erasing him. There are some things I'm keeping, though. An old driving license. His invitation to his cousin's 21st birthday party. The receipt from a wonderful; holiday in the Loire Valley. Notes that he left on my desk. It's a balance between preservation and decluttering, and the most valuable things there are I still have. My memories of him.  I'm having a grief attack today. They happen now and then, and as the Grieving and healing in the afterloss page says, they are not setbacks but part of the grieving experience.
It started with the Lancaster flight across Tideswell. Standing at the very top of the garden, in the glorious sunshine with friends, we heard the low rumble of the four distant Merlin engines. And then the beautiful Lancaster flew across with a sound that vibrates deep inside you. Three sweeps across the village, grey against the china blue sky, the final right over my head. Tim would have so loved it. Would have known where it was based, its history. And would have done a far better job of explaining how the bombs worked to a friend's young cousin. I feel I have lost so much – so much knowledge, so many stories, so much love. And now I'm just about to disassemble the bed that Tim died in. I have ordered a new bed and mattress, new bedding and new bedlinens that are all arriving on Monday. I need to do this, as part of… something that's hard to describe. It's not moving on. It's not working through. It's not getting over. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's part of being brave, living life 3.0 to the best of my abilities. I was excited about all this newness. A waxed pine bedframe. A wool mattress, duvet and pillows. But now it has come to it, I'm no longer sure. It feels like I am giving a part of him away. That the room will be my bedroom rather than our bedroom. I know that I can't make the house a shrine to Tim. And that making changes will help me to cope in the longer term. But there is always a cost.  For part one, go to Tales for Tim: The Bare Arms weekend #1 My darling Tim I signed off the last letter about feeling the odd one out. I was feeling alone and sorry for myself and very much out of my depth. And I sat with Jules and I cried about you, about feeling alone, and about being unfit, old, inadequate, afraid, shy, overweight, out of my comfort zone. All my inner demons came out and sat on my shoulder. But over a glorious shared supper of local food we all started to talk, to learn about each other, to tease and to joke. I also found a fellow petrolhead and talked about motor racing and the joy of classic car racing. We then went to sit outside the 'pub' – a garden shed with a couple of barrels of rather nice local beer – and I talked about how I had handled the bullets and the tactility, the sound, the smell of it all, the words that had danced in my head. I talked about your synaesthesia and about the amazing conversations we had about words and smells and tastes. The glorious sensory world you lived in. And people listened, joined in, made me feel part of the team. And I realised how wrong I had been. It also made me wonder – how many of us were sitting there thinking that we were the odd one out? An early night in a pretty room shared with the amazing Kelley, a breakfast of cereal and fruit with fresh local milk that you would have loved, and then back to the classroom. A morning of firearms law, initially so complex that it made my head spin and then it started to fall into place. Civilians can have sporting and hunting rifles and shotguns, as they can't be hidden as easily as handguns, and they have a maximum of three rounds – while they can be lethal, they are not weapons for mass use. Revolvers, pistols, machine guns, and (perhaps not surprisingly) rocket launchers and cannons are more tightly restricted. Weapons for productions and rehearsals are generally real but adapted for blanks and supervised by an armorer. And then we were handed assault rifles. AR15s. M4s C8s. M16s. Lighter, sharper, looking less like an antique and more like something that means business, but still effectively a bolt-action rifle in a party dress. Why rewrite a 1916 classic. These are designed to do mass damage – 30 rounds in a magazine and one in the chamber – with an automatic reload fuelled by the exhaust gases from the previous shot. We learned to check the state of the weapon. Safety catch on, remove the magazine, open the bolt and three-point check, and hand it over open. Then ready to go – push the magazine in, a pull to check. It's loaded. Cock it – pull the bolt back and let it go. It's hot, or ready, or cocked, and you have to focus. Next were the pistols, which are effectively the middle section of an assault rifle. So if the AR15 is a Lee Enfield in a party frock, the Glock is a little black number. Small, sleek, satin black, with the slide at the top that acts as a cocking handle and threatens to take your fingertips when you pull it back and let go if you hold it wrong. Even more so when you fire it. (Sorry, Bags. You told me that almost as often as you told me to take my finger off the trigger. See, I remember it now…) The Glock is semiautomatic and has no safety catch, as it is designed for rapid fire. Its role is as a primary weapon for the secret services or armed police, and as a secondary weapon for soldiers. Slip the catch (takes practice), load the magazine, pull the slide and let it go to cock the weapon. Once we were down at the range, we loaded and fired, blanks for the Glock and live shells for the rifle. And I finally got my eye in and hit the target. James Bond has nothing to fear from me, and to be fair the enemy would still get off lightly, but I was so proud of my perforated sheets of paper. And the rifle didn't have the kick of the Lee Enfield, which had left me with an awesome bruise. Another night chatting in the pub, enjoying the beer and the company. Talking about cars, how writers think in words and dancers think in movement. About the tactility of swimming, feeling the flow of the water. Discussing films. Listening to stories about sets and stages. Enjoying being in a place that was outside of my still very new normal. And the morning of the last day. What had seemed to stretch far away was suddenly there. We talked about marksmanship and movement. This is all about poise and balance and focusing on breathing. Standing or kneeling or laying in a stable position, with the weapon pointing naturally and without effort, the sight picture correct and movement kept as small as possible. Walking with a weapon needs to be smooth and silent, the head remaining level. We practiced fast exchanges between a rifle and a pistol. Think John Wick. Aim the rifle, shoot, out of ammunition, turn to the side to check the weapon, down to the hip with the rifle with the left hand and draw the pistol with the right, making it as smooth and fluid. And then loading and firing the pump action shotgun with dummy rounds, bringing out my inner Arnie and leaving me with a grin on my face that disturbed quite a few people… The whole weekend was a work up to the final scenario, where we had to move through enemy territory and transition between four different guns, three with live rounds. Choregraphed movement has always makes me feel vulnerable and self-conscious. It has been mentioned that I have all the grace of a fairy elephant, and as a child it was suggested that I could trip over a shadow on the ground. It felt like the combination of just before an interview and being picked last for PE. But I did my very best to get inside the mind of my character and the 'mind' of the gun. To move silently and smoothly. To see the jungle and the buildings and the 'bad people' with the guns. And just before this, the final assault, I leaned over to Jules and said 'For Tim'. Because I wouldn't have dome it if you hadn't persuaded me to. We began with firing a sniper rifle at a very distant target, and then loading and holstering a semi-automatic and a Glock. Moving and shooting five rounds with the semi-automatic rifle, switching to three rounds with the pistol, and finally picking up an abandoned pump action shotgun and being Rambo. It felt like being inside an impossibly loud computer game. The buzz was incredible. I wouldn't say that I kicked ass but I certainly nudged bottom. We went through the scenario twice and after the second time I hid in the corner shaking with the adrenaline and weeping silently that I could never tell you about it. But I know that you would have been proud of me. And startled. But mostly proud. I wondered whether it would make me understand the power of guns and why people feel so empowered by them. But it didn't. It left me with respect for the people who can handle them safely and smoothly, and an understanding of the hours and hours of practice it requires. And respect for the mind of an actor (and of a soldier) that can be fully immersed in the now. I'm not sure how many live rounds I shot, but you will be glad to know that the only blood I saw was when I scraped my finger shifting a piece of scenery. I am so glad I did this. It gave me time to spend with Jules. And it gave me the opportunity to meet some amazing and charming professional actors who were very kind and welcoming to this writer and amateur thesp. Thank you to Bags and Al and to all of my fellow Bare Arms students for your patience, humour, talent and encouragement. And thank you my darling for encouraging me to go. Love you and miss you. For always, your Suzanne.   This afternoon I stole an hour from work to plant up a bed I cleared and dug over on Sunday, putting in flowering plants for the bees, and enjoying the rainbows drifting in the spray as I watered the soil. I usually plug myself into a podcast but this time I didn't and that left me space for thinking, something that I often tend to try to avoid these days.
I have done Life v2.0 already. It was when I was in a marriage where I was so low that at one point I wondered whether there was a purpose in me being there any longer. Because if I wasn't, it would mean that my then husband could go off with the women I thought he wanted to be with. And then at least two of the three of us would be happy. I was in a job that made me unhappy as well, but I figured that at least I had a job, which was the one constant in my life. And then I was made redundant. That was me plunged into Life v2.0. But I was brave enough to leave the marriage, move somewhere new completely on my own, and set up as a freelancer. And then Tim and I got together, after having known each other as friends for many years, and we had eight years of marriage. Those were some of the happiest years of my life. Life v2.1 I guess. And then he died, and I'm left in the limbo of Life v3.0. I don't want to be here. I liked Life v2.1. I don't know whether there's ever going to be a Life v3.1. But I've decided that if I could be brave before I'm going to be brave again. And it's not the 'Oh, you are so brave, I don't know how I would cope without [insert name here]'. It's a brave with the stitches showing and the glue not quite set. It's a broken and mended brave. It's a Kintsugi bowl repaired with gold brave, a brave that sees the beauty in the flaws. And while it's a kind of brave that doesn't always withstand a puff of wind, I'm hoping it might be the kind that will stand up to a storm.  My darling Tim.
I think you were as sad as I was when I told you that all my colonies of bees had died. You loved to go and sit near them at the end of a long day, watching them flying in and out. Smiling at the shadows that made them look like incoming planes. Relaxing as they flew on their carefully charted courses. We would sit and drink coffee and talk and watch the patterns in the sky that their tiny bodies made, and marvel at the amazing colours of the pollen on their back legs. You never liked honey but you loved my bees, and the pleasure they gave me. You held me when I cried at the loss of the bees. Encouraged me to keep trying. Told me that you'd read that the second year is a hard one for beginning beekeepers. And made me promise to order a new colony, which I did. And that arrives next month. But last month I got a surprise message. Someone from the High Peak bee group had a spare colony. And so a beekeeper friend came over from Sheffield to help me clear out the boxes, and see if we could work out what had happened. It looks like the little swarm, the one I picked up from the allotment clinging to a gooseberry bush, was just too small to survive. The next colony along was isolation starvation, where they had got through the stores close by and had just been too cold, or not brave enough, to venture further. They were all clustered around their queen, trying to save her to the last. The third colony, where the rain and the storm had got in, had plenty of stores but had just got too chilled and wet. And the fourth colony – well, I'm just not sure. We couldn't see why. It could have been varroa. Or the cold. Or an infection. Or simply bad luck. It was a tough winter, this year. I'm going to drive over to the High Peak tomorrow to pick up the colony in the little green nuc box. Drive home to the sound of gently buzzing bees, and put them in a new spot in the garden, to see if they will get better sun there. I'm going to clean and paint the hives on the next warm day. Ready for the two new colonies. And take down two trees to give them more sun. I'm sorry. I know you loved trees, but I promise I will replace them with native trees full of flowers for the bees. I couldn't tell the bees that you'd gone, because I'd lost them all over the winter. But I will tell the new colonies about you. All my love Suzanne  Everyone has a comfort zone. Everyone steps outside their comfort zone sometimes. Well, I've just been so far outside of my comfort zone that I think I ended up approaching it from the other side. I've come back from one of the most demanding and exhilarating weekends of my life, a firearms for theatricals course with the incredibly patient and proficient people at Bare Arms. I am bruised and exhausted and amazed. But… the hardest thing was not being able to report it all to Tim. So my friend Carrie suggested that I write it as if I was telling him. And call it Tales for Tim.
My darling Tim You remember that night I called Jules to see how he was, and ended up sitting on the stairs talking through a sticky plot point in his latest screenplay for an hour. And he told me about the crazy drama firearms training course he was going on. And I said it sounded fun. And he said that there was a spare place on it. And I decided that it was too scary and too expensive, and you persuaded me to go for it. You said it would be good for me, an amazing experience, and a chance to spend an entire weekend with Jules. Well. I've just come back from it. Amazed and dazed and bruised and exhausted and still giddy on adrenaline two days later. After Thursday working in Manchester and a drive down to Dorset via every single set of roadworks in the entire UK I emerged blinking into the night, at Monkton Wyld Court, once a Victorian rectory for a country vicar and his brood of many children and now a sustainable living centre. And accommodation location for 7 actors, an am-dram actor-cum-writer, Ben, an ex-Army officer, and Al, an RAF officer. I'm not sure that the nice people who were there to volunteer in the grounds or attend a shamanic course in the village hall quite knew what had hit them. Friday started with theory. Well actually, Friday started with the indignity of being the only person who couldn't fit into a Bare Arms boiler suit after being told that they fitted everyone, but we will park that one there. Suffice to say at that point I wanted to go home. But I didn't. I knew you would be cross with me if I did. So – Friday started with theory. How guns work. What the parts of a gun are (leaving me with 'Naming of Parts' by Henry Reed dancing in my head). What is (and isn't) a bullet. What makes up a shell, and how it fires. And the science and engineering part of me loved it. And then the writer part took over – while the others went for a coffee, I felt the weight and coolness of the shells and noted how they warmed up in my hand. Looked at the colours of the copper bullet jacket and the brass shell case. Smelled the whiff of cordite, tasted the tang of copper on my fingers, bitter like the smell of pennies. Heard the sound the shells made as they rolled together in my hand. What would your synesthetic brain make of the sounds and the words? Next – the Lee-Enfield. Or to give it its full name, the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle. This appeared on our desks, bigger and heavier that certainly I expected. The guns were World War I vintage, and the wood was smooth with handling, pitted with use. The shell – I keep on wanting to call it a bullet, and I know it's wrong – was large, heavy, pointed. Designed to do damage. We practiced loading and unloading, hearing the satisfying click as the bullets – no – shells pushed down from the clip into the magazine, making ready, the feeling as the bolt pulled up, back, forward, down, chambering the shell, making the gun hot, ready to fire. The reassurance of the safety catch. And all of this with dummies, but we knew that next it would be for real. We learned how to be safe around guns. How dangerous even blank firing guns are. How to recognise the state of a gun and make it safe. Safety catch on, magazine off, shell ejected from the chamber. Three point check. And yes I know you know all of this, but let me show off a little my newly-learned skills. Finally, we headed down into the range, a road tunnel left derelict after the building of a bypass and now made into The Tunnel shooting centre. Surreally, the road's centre markings still run down the middle of the 100 m shooting range. And then we got busy. Learning how to hold the guns. Where to tuck them into our shoulders. Aiming standing, kneeling, lying prone, always with the gun ready. Surrounded by actors from their 20s upwards, martial arts experts, dancers (both ballet and pole), lithe and fit, I felt every bit of my 50-year-old size 18 body protesting – however fit I am as a runner, my flexibility and lack of upper body strength was slowing me down. And yes – I can hear you – I just haven't lifted enough boxes of books lately. And then we were handed shells. The target was an orange sheet with a German soldier of dubious vintage, with a pointy hat, a bayonet and a dodgy moustache. I loaded with slightly shaky hands, made the gun ready, and lay down on the floor in an approximation of the position I had been shown. Wedged the rifle into my shoulder and squinted down the sights, completely wrongly, as it turned out later. Slipped the safety catch and squeezed the trigger as gently as I could. I felt the shot deep in my gut and the recoil hard into my shoulder, enough to bruise. Heard it through the heavy ear defenders. Smelled the cordite and tasted the rusty tang of blood where I had bitten my lip. Four shots prone. Two shots kneeling, two shots standing. Ben patiently talking us through it. Shell cases falling to the ground with a metallic tinkle. And my status as a pacifist is confirmed. I missed every time. As I said to the proper actors, I'm just there to make them look good. But I have now handled and fired a gun for the first time in my life. And there were some tears in the quiet. For feeling the odd one out. For missing the target. But most of all for not being able to call you and tell you what I had done. More soon. Love you for always and miss you for ever Suzanne Part 2 is here |
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