Author: veewalkerwrites

Graduations, eh?

Many parents of bright offspring will sit through one at some stage, moist of eye and empty of wallet. After three hours of applauding until our palms spasm we watch our beloved child-no-longer emerge from all the jovial pontificating to set off down the river of life in a leaky one-person kayak. As we are used to their presence on board our comfortable cabin cruiser where everyone has a personal life jacket, it is all rather unsettling.

My elder daughter justgraduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on Friday 5th July 2019. She did so in style, with a First Class Honours Degree in Classical Singing.

This is not (or not wholly at any rate) a proud mother blogpost. It is also a reflection on history, and genetics, and those inescapable moments in life when both nothing and everything changes forever.

Evie in Major Tom’s War and many of the women in our family are strong, bright and irritatingly selfless, all too willing to give up our own ambition and identity for some greater good.

Both my grandmother’s and my mother’s futures were derailed by global conflict.

And before the twentieth century, the family tree is scattered with bored, clever women, who married because it was expected of them, and who read poetry, and wrote letters, and embroidered, and painted exquisite watercolours of flowers, all to fill the yawning hours.

If you have read Major Tom’s War then you will know that Evie longed to be a concert pianist but became instead a nurse, wife and mother.

Evie’s daughter Numpy, my mother, was all set to travel to France to study when Tom shook his head at the storm clouds of war and forbade it. She became a superb teacher, but it was not where her heart lay.

Most heart-rending of all, as a prize-winning boy treble, my late brother was offered the role of Amahl in the Christmas Opera Amahl and the Night Visitors by its composer Gian Carlo Menotti. My father, a fine musician himself, turned it down. He said my brother did not have the right temperament. Perhaps he did not, but he still had an exceptional voice. Through his doubtless-well-meaning action my father denied my brother the right to try. His life could have been so utterly different.

Even in my own past I am aware that some of the life choices I have made were shaped within choices made by others. Friday’s graduation therefore had hidden emotional depths for me, as I saw it as a moment celebrating complete freedom and infinite possibility.

It is of course quite possible, even probable, that my lovely daughter will choose not to become a professional musician for her entire career. What she does next is up to her.

Even if she decides to settle in Outer Mongolia to herd yaks, I am still elated that she has had the support and opportunity to study within the creative arts for her music degree. I am so grateful that she lives in a time of relative peace in a culture where women can be utterly independent in life.

Amid all the junketing and the tossing of mortar boards of the graduation we adults often feel just that little bit older as we watch our young ones bob off down the river. Oh, we know it must be so, but we still mourn the moment, even if only just a little, and quietly. The Penny Falls has just shoved us that little bit closer to its merciless edge.

The rest, however, is all pride, and joy, and laughter.

Anyone who has read Major Tom’s War will ‘get’ how important my forebears are to me.

Like Tom, my grandfather, I had an unsatisfactory father. When I was six or so Mum gave up on her philandering husband and packed me into her Austin A40 (together with a witless Dalmation named Bobby, the family portraits and almost all the photograph albums – the one of Tom and Evie’s wedding she left propping open the door of the marriage she fled).

We turned our noses Highlands-ward. She had family on the Black Isle. I had never been there.

The journey took three days, via various compassionate friends. I got lost on a housing estate in Manchester and was miraculously found by Bobby (so not an entirely dim dog then). We took on more oil than petrol, since the Austin dribbled a leak.

It got colder. Then it snowed. It was the winter of 1968. We drove through Drumochter behind the snowplough, arriving at Drynie in a blizzard as Jack Russells bounced and barked at my aunt’s windows.

Although I have lived both in England and Europe, the Highlands have been home home ever since. I tend to regard my English place of birth as an unlucky quirk of fate.

And the Black Isle is where Mum died, on the 5th October 2005. No-one forgets the day their mother dies.

And yet, somehow, even in those first hours after it had happened, I knew she was not altogether lost. Something of her remained, and that something was, and is, indestructible.

From time to time I become aware of her presence, usually when I am alone and out of doors, or driving. I would hesitate to call it Soul, although it is both bright and beautiful. Energy perhaps comes closer. The author Sally Vickers describes it as a sheerness of presence.

Mum comes to visit me less frequently now, as perhaps she feels I need her less as time passes. But travelling back from Orkney this morning, I realised with a strange flutter of the heart that she was there once more. A whisper remembered or half-heard. Why not go a different way… where does this road go? Shall we? Oh yes, why not, let’s!

So I eschew the direct route home, the NC500 camping cars and roadworks of the A9, for the empty and undulating 40 miles of passing places on the Melvich to Helmsdale road through Forsinard Flows.

A sigh of contentment as she settles in for the journey.

I should have driven straight past the RSPB visitor centre – and do so at first – but then I hear the faintest sound of disappointment from the passenger seat. I find myself undertaking a many-pointed turn in the road.

The interpretation has changed since I produced the last iteration for RSPB back in the early 2000s (fun facts about carbon sinks, zzzz). I like what is there now rather better.

I should have left it at that, of course. A quick look round. Instead my legs, atrophied from too much recent computer work, found themselves striding out through the peatlands. The coiled outlook tower on the horizon resembles a broken stump of fossilised bogwood.

Oh Mum, I say. For goodness’ sake. It’s raining.

You are not made of sugar, comes the familiar response.

I give in.

The peatbog has a delicate, speckled skin of life topping chocolatey depths as the heather and moss decay into aeons of fragrant peat, gobbling up carbon and keeping it safe.

A duckboard path winds to the new tower. The path floats over the sopping peat on unobtrusive black recycled plastic sleepers, keeping the wood above water even in the wettest winter. Clever stuff.

I find myself slowing down, breathing more deeply, forgetting about the sixty-odd miles still ahead.

I stop and stare at the sphagnum moss, in all its shades of emerald and gold and crimson. Something about sphagnum reminds me of vividly undiluted jelly cubes, or perhaps it is just the ancient quiver of the peat beneath that I recall: the old flagstone paths once quaked here where one trod.

Bog cotton flickers. A cold wind is rising from the grey hills beyond.

Forsinard was nicknamed Frozen’Ard by troops on the Jellicoe Express heading north. Not much better today, and it is June. Midsummer. Climate change?

Sssh, says Mum. Don’t spoil it. Look!

Too sluggish to escape my lens, sand lizards are doing their reptilian best to bask on the exposed ends of the plastic sleepers. One big chap has lost his tail and I wonder how.

A heron, says Mum.

Another lizard, darker, with an elegant striped tail, is perhaps an expectant mother full of little leathery eggs. Protecting herself if not the future of her species, she is flattened against the plastic, desperately trying to blend in as she warms herself.

We watch her bright eyes, her tiny flickering breaths. She watches us right back, praying that her camouflage works and that we will not dart at her with a dagger bill to swallow her whole.

How do you think she sees us?

Two unfathomable gentle giants, we smile and leave the little dinosaur to rest, in peace.

When Mum walks with me, my vision becomes doubly acute. I can see every fragment of lichen-crusted peat, every wisp of heather and sweet bog myrtle.

I say their names out loud, threading my mother a string of millefiori beads as we walk: milkwort, tormentil, sundew, chickweed wintergreen (oh, look, look, a carpet of little stars…).

I return to the car refreshed.

On the drive south somewhere between the reserve and Helmsdale, as the light changes from inland grey to brighter coast, she takes her leave. I feel her go: the faintest pressure of her hand on mine as I change gear.

I would never say don’t go, and I try not to think it, for if she did not, I might never again feel her return: and that is unthinkable, for her occasional presence is a joy and a wonder to me.

Where does she go? To be with my brother, somehow, I think. But that is a story for another time.

And for now I am safely home.

I honeymooned in Orkney back in the 1980s. For the geographically-inept, this is the lower of the two island archipelagoes which appear to exist in the boxes in the mouth of the Moray Firth on the map.

After a disastrous first night in the Ayre Hotel, which had builders deconstructing the room next door, we decamped to a friendly B&B in St Ola on the hill above Kirkwall. There, I fell in love with Orkney – and sadly my new husband fell in love with the idea of reliably sunny, warm, dry holidays almost anywhere else.It does not always rain in Orkney – but sometimes it does. We tried another holiday there en famille 20 or so years ago when it rained for an entire fortnight, but still Orkney somehow draws me back. When the vast skies do clear there is nowhere more beautiful and uplifting to be on Earth. It makes my heart dance just to board the Pentalina at Gills Bay and cross the Pentland Firth.I am ashamed to admit that I only attended my first St Magnus Festival two years ago and I was doubly smitten. It provided the hefty hit of immersive international culture I sometimes pine for in the mainland Highlands: I love Scottish music and culture too but once in a while I need more.

And of course attending the festival means an excuse for a few days of complete escapism in a natural and historical environment I love.This year, glory be, the loose theme was 1919 and the aftermath of the Great War – so I was invited to speak.The Festival, founded by composer the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, is now in its 43rd year. It is also truly international: not just performers but also many of the audience come from all over the world.

I shared a friendly fish and chips with Linda from Toronto on Saturday night, queuing for them at the ‘good’ chippy along with the rest of Kirkwall (evening meals out can be a challenge) before she headed onwards for Shetland.On Sunday I spoke in the plush cinema at the ‘Picky’ centre – rather a good turn-out – perhaps they thought I was one of the other guest speakers?This time my volunteer ‘victim’ was the lovely Martin, a devoted St Magnus Festival fan of ten years’ standing who comes up from Lancaster every summer. Yes, Reader, I executed him, but he was very nice about it and we shared a fudge brownie afterwards.And oh yes, I did indeed check whether Terry Waite was in the audience before this photo was taken.

Arriving early and signing books at the Orcadian bookshop later in the week meant an opportunity to savour some of the other Festival delights too.Here is a glimpse of the Peace Gardens Trail which enabled us to explore Papdale Walled Garden, Happy Valley (an inspired place to use!) and Woodwick House with a variety of musical and artistic interludes. At the end, a violinist and percussionist on vibraphone played Spiegel im Spiegel with sunlight and birdsong streaming through the upper windows and I sat there listening with tears rolling down my cheeks – I know it doesn’t take much! – but a blissful release from a stressful few months of work.Poet Robin Robertson, author of The Long Take read from his poetic work.Its gnarly roots probe dark and uncomfortable places in Highland culture. Inspired by his lecture, I explored my own metaphor for the St Magnus Festival.

To me it is like a fine tablecloth, spread over the ancient driftwood table that is Orkney, once a year. The table can serve perfectly well as a table without it, and one leg occasionally mutters that it has no need of a fancy tablecloth which is only thrown over it for the benefit of outsiders: but the other table-legs quietly enjoy their bonny annual covering.

Orkney is enhanced and transformed by its time of adornment as the St Magnus Festival.

This is no frilly, frothy, lacy tablecloth either – no lightweight festival this – more a fine white linen, the very devil to iron, embroidered with ever more fantastic and complex designs each year.At the end of the festival the tablecloth is removed, shaken, folded and carefully put away until next year. The memory of it resonates, just as the single notes of the haunting James MacMillan piece I heard performed today at the eery old Town Hall Kirk in Stromness still pulsed, long after the key was struck.

Mary Bevan, Joseph Middleton and William Thomas gave us a superbly chilling selection of Anthems for Doomed Youth.The annual miracle of St Magnus is brought about by an army of volunteers, a quirky selection of venues, some very good performers and the Festival team, led by Alasdair Nicolson, who was always destined for greatness (our paths crossed during our schooldays).My own personal highlights?

A robin turning a Telemann duet into a trio in Papdale Walled Garden.A visceral response to Robin Robertson’s unsettling first poem. Watching the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra percussionists perform Fanfare to the Common Man and other mighty percussive pieces with barely a flicker of emotion: the definition of cool. Spiegel im Spiegel as already mentioned. The sheer ubiquity of trumpeter par excellence Tom Poulson (or should I say the Poulson Twins?).Tomorrow night’s performance of Alasdair Nicolson’s Govan Stones (almost but not quite its premiere).

And then of course watching the ‘Cattieface’ owl and hen harriers hunting across my friend Caroline’s wild field, as starlings mass into hit mobs to startle them, the port of Kirkwall spread out beyond. I have to return to normality tomorrow. If you can come to the last few days of this festival, you won’t regret it.

And if you have never been to Orkney, make your plans for 2020 now…

Happy New Year to all my readers and future readers! I am so grateful to everyone who has already read Major Tom’s War, wherever in the world you may be (India, Canada, America, France, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere…). Your feedback has been so kind, constructive and positive. As a début novelist, I am so grateful to each and every one of you.

2019 promises to be an exciting year, with second edition tweaks to get down to and a French edition in my sights. Not to mention the itch of a new novel in a similar genre(which may overlap a little with Major Tom’s War) which simply won’t go away!

After the joys and trials of Christmas and New Year I thought you might like to join me for a bracing winter’s walk through the ancient Mormal forest, not far from Bavay in Northern France. This dense area of woods, slightly smaller today than in 1914 – 1918, but still teeming with deer and wild boar, will require no introduction to those who have completed Major Tom’s War.  For those of you who have yet to begin, here is a brief account of its significance – I hope without too much of a spoiler alert!

Soon after the Great War began in 1914, the small British Expeditionary Force was beaten back fast and hard towards the coast by an immensely powerful and much greater German army.  The retreat became a rout and the Forêt de Mormal split the retreating army into two. Its woodland fringes became a bloody battlefield. Some regiments were ordered to protect the retreat in any way they could. Many men paid the price for this, while a very few, probably those familiar with forests from home, managed to hide in thickets or clamber up trees. They must have watched, unseen, with a combination of relief and terror, as the German army advanced past them.

These Allied soldiers became the concern of certain communities in the area of Northern France occupied for the duration. They managed to remain hidden for some time, fed and protected by local people (perhaps for example the grandparents of the two cheery hunters we encountered on our walk) until the weather turned colder and the leaves began to fall from the trees… but to know what happened next, you will need to read the book.

I was able to explore the Forêt de Mormal with my cousins Pippa and Roger Clegg, who chose the walk from a selection of leaflets offered by our helpful hosts the Mirapel family at the Auberge du Bellevue in Bavay. Locquignol was only a 20-minute drive away.

We placed a small poppy cross at the foot of one great beech tree adjacent to a very deep ditch which we had scrambled across. I wonder if any readers will ever spot it there, in the heart of the forest? I had not walked through this area before writing Major Tom’s War, but even so we all agreed it was like walking through the pages of the novel. This was particularly the case when we crossed the long, straight, Roman roads which criss-crossed the forest, but I cannot explain why without ruining the read.

We skirted the pretty village of Locquignol and enjoyed its quiet pasture edges.

This would have been a more ancient forest with older trees then. Most of the tree cover now dates back no more than a century, but it is still a timeless place, somewhere to walk slowly and wonder at small things.

I hope you have enjoyed this virtual walk – thanks for your company!