I Felt the Anchor Shift (An Update)

WELCOME

I cannot welcome you aboard the Erica tonight as at the moment I am many miles away, balanced on Norfolk’s wind-whipped coastline of roaring Corsican pines, and dunes and marram grass, and wildings of saltmarsh ghosted by the haunting cry of curlew and oyster catcher.

For just tonight, this is a coastal episode narrowcasting into a bitter January night to you wherever you are.       

Although I am not on board the Erica and the waters, real and figurative, are far from still, I am so pleased to be able to be here and that you could make it. We might not be able to welcome you aboard, but the welcome is, nevertheless, just as warm. It’s an achingly raw night with a wind like a whetted knife, I’ve got the kettle on, so come inside into the warm, make yourself comfortable and warm yourself up.

[MUSIC]

I FELT THE ANCHOR SHIFT (AN UPDATE)  

So far this year, for a variety of reasons, I have not been able to record any episodes and I wanted to come here and explain what has been happening and the reasons behind my absence.

I’ve not got any of my recording gear with me and so going to try to make the best of things and hope that this laptop’s built-in microphone is going to be up to the job. At least, I hope that the end quality will not to be too bad.

I left you, at the end of 2023 on Christmas Eve – many thanks for all your messages and comments and best wishes. My plan was to resume podcasting for the 7^th January. That was because, we knew that at the beginning of the year, both Donna and I had various pinch-points with our works and also our boat safety inspection is due and there were a number of smallish jobs that needed to be done to make sure, as best we could, that the boat was ready and was complying with the latest regs. However, as you will no doubt be aware, that there was no podcast on the 7^th.  

I mentioned at the tail-end of last year, around Dad’s birthday, that he wasn’t feeling the best. Unfortunately, Dad has had to be admitted into hospital, here in Norfolk, where his is having 4 litres of fluid drained from one of his lungs. It is therefore not at all surprising that he had started to become so breathless and fatigued over Christmas.

The first thing is that he is responding to treatment and, actually, quite enjoying his time in hospital (at the moment). He certainly sounds and looks a heap better, although he is still undergoing the drain and courses of very strong antibiotics. Although, understandably, feeling very weak – and slightly hampered by his chest drain, he is up and about and can sit in his chair beside his bed for short spells. He is also highly enjoying the hospital food which he heartily recommends. He doesn’t feel up to reading at the moment, but said that there was plenty of things happening around him on the ward to keep him occupied as well as a lot of very interesting looking machines that flash and beep. Wendy, has already had to restrain him from taking down a machine and having a look at its works.

This is his first time in his life that he has encountered any serious ill-health. The worst he has suffered was flu, and he has never been in hospital as a patient before. Understandably, he is feeling a little wobbly as there is such a lot of new experiences that he is having to process and work through. As he said, the trouble is, when you don’t look your age (he is 95), both he and other people tend to forget that his body is old and not so up to bouncing back. Nevertheless, despite feeling (justifiably) a bit fragile, he is pretty perky. This week he is having further tests to see why there was such a build-up of fluid.

As Wendy lives 2 hours away and we live four hours away from Dad, there has been quite a lot of driving over the last few weeks. And so, this is the reason why I have not been able to record a podcast and been fairly silent on social media.

As we jokingly told Dad when we were all together last that he certainly does pick his time. We have a busy period at work and a boat inspection (which then gets postponed as the inspector goes down with Covid – but that is something for another time!), but it does mean one of us has to shuttle backwards and forwards to the boat! And Wendy has the electricians coming in to her house to sort out the electrics.

I think, what I am trying to say, in a very roundabout way, is that there has been a lot going on these past couple of weeks and potentially into the next couple too! Consequently, I have not had time or, to be honest, the mental space to be able to do any recording.

Recently, I have begun to feel the anchor that has held fast for so long move. And it is all quite stressful and intense, for all of us, but things could be a lot worse and we are all coping well and making the best of things.

The thing is, life has a habit of throwing curve balls. Things don’t go to plan – and when they do, they often don’t quite turn out according to the blueprint in our imaginations. Despite the destinations we fix within our sights, the path follows its own twists and turns. The river runs where it will.

And this year has certainly started with a bang that has rather left us reeling. It is so tempting to say during times like these, especially when plans don’t fall out the way you had envisaged that,

‘Ah! Things have gone all wrong.’

But, of course, they haven’t. Things have just happened, the leaf falls where it does because it is part of the rich flow of existence. Where it falls and when it falls is neither right or wrong. It just is. That is the way of things. It makes as little sense to say that the river has gone wrong when because of geology we encounter a section of cataracts and rapids.

Part of the problem is that I was born and brought up in a culture that finds this concept hard to accept. It is a culture based upon adapting our worlds to suit our purposes and our desires. If there is an obstacle between us and our aims, it is our right (even our social and moral duty) to remove it. “Where there is no vision” the proverb says, “the people perish.” Although it fails to mention its corollary; “with this particular people, where there a vision it seems that everything else must perish.”  Ours is a culture based upon casting mountains into seas, if not theologically, then by brute force or technology. If the difficulty remains or the planned objective is not reached, it is counted as a failure – A failure that bites deeply personal into our marrow. It's evidence of our weakness, a yawning deficit in our character or ability. Failure must be due to our lack of belief, or our lack of moral strength and capacity.  Control our destiny – our purpose is to adapt and transform to suit our purposes. If we cannot, then it is proof that we are not ‘up to the job.’

When I was young, I remember hearing a story at school of two rain drops running down a window pane. I cannot remember the details, but I always remember the stentorian message delivered to me by my moral betters; “Strive for great things, no matter how hard they be, do NOT, it warned, be like the little raindrop that followed the path of least resistance.”

I tried to follow that dictum – ‘go against the flow’, ‘swim against the tide’. That’s what we humans do, isn’t it? Beat the odds, rise above the natural order of things. But there was always a part of me that admired the timeless wisdom of that little rain drop. It was neither weak or lazy – as I was first taught. It was simply being true to what a rain drop on a window pane naturally was. There was a path for it, after all. Although it had no claim or sense of ownership of it, but simply followed its way down as I follow the desire paths of fox and rabbit across summer meadows. Riding the flow is the most natural response there can be. It was only much later did I come across other cultures for whom flowing with rhythms of life and death with acceptance and gratitude was at the very heart. I had, at first to wrestle with the castigations of its passive fatalism and lack of human endeavour. Both charges so far from the truth - a sense of progress, a sense of journey, of following a deeply meaningful path (individual and collective) is at the heart of them all.    

All of this doesn’t make times like these any easier though. Times when the unexpected and the unwelcome seem to pile up and hit you on every side. Times when anchors begin to shift. No, they’re never easy, are they? These times when things don’t go the way you had planned. I guess it is natural to feel bruised and battered, uncertain and confused, anxious, helpless and frustrated. But these are not signs of weakness, they are signs of being alive and being human, borne on the winds of existence.

I am a great fan of the band James. They are a British indie band that first became popular in the 80s. They are eccentric, vibrant, passionate, thoughtful, insightful. They are still recording and touring. But it is one of the early (and possibly most famous) songs, ‘Sit Down’, that comes back to me – as it does quite often when things get hard.

[READING]

And there you have got it. “I believe this wave will bear my weight so let it flow.” Let the flow of the river take you, follow the twisting path of fox trod, through the fescue and ladies’ smock, he knows the terrain far better than you. Let the battering winds sculpt and shape you into the form that suits you the best for your environment as it does the hawthorn tree. The falling leaf falls to the ground for that is now where it belongs. 

But it’s not easy, this flowing. It goes against our cultural instincts even if it is evident everywhere around us. I have watched the great oaks in the teeth of a storm that rages up the cataclysm of a hill. I have watched the branches break and fall as the wind whips against my face. It can be overwhelming. I know that feeling and I can see it in Dad - and that is the hardest. Overwhelmed and punch drunk by the assailing winds, I have not as yet learnt the lesson of the hawthorn.

And the anchor is beginning to shift. That anchor that has held secure in the seabed of life for so long, I feel it shift, coming free. An unmooring. A loosing is happening. There are tides and currents awaiting to take the small boat. Who knows where? Who knows where?

No, it’s not easy. This loosing. This unmooring. The falling of the leaf into the lap of the wind. The joining with the spit-wet soil. It’s why we need each other. It's why places like this are so important. To feel the other’s recognition of our existence and our own unmoorings.   

And it is there too in James’s song.
It continues:

[READING]

And so, this is where you find me tonight. In a house a short walk up from a small harbour with daily rise and fall of fishing boats and small yachts and dinghies. For now, I am here, under wide grey skies of gull-cry and the needling curves of tern, and the scent of crab pots, the sting of diesel, and the tinkle of slack halyards against mast. Perched on the edge of the grey North Sea that bounds and rages upon the harbour bar (a mile or two out to sea) high on the north Norfolk coastline.

And the miles of tightly embroidered lavender of the salt marshes, labyrinthed by serpentine creaks – mud-walled and dripping deep – sweeps and weeps into the chasming grey bell of a landscape that knows all about unmooring. The echoed antiphonies of wild-geese-call shepherd us aright, here. Leading us on. Calling us on to who knows where? Who knows where? And this lavender will once more bloom again, and the gulls turn on knifing wings against a sky of cobalt blue. Sun-blind and warm. And the tide will rise and ebb, rise and ebb against the weed-slime of the harbour wall.

And the anchor shifts beneath me and I feel the call and tug of waters deep.

I am not sure, after all this, whether or not I have explained where I have been. But this is where I am, in body and in heart.

I know that some of you have asked if everything is okay. Yes, it is but not. And that is okay. I am sorry, I haven’t had the chance to let you know before now. I am not sure when I will be back – beyond the assurance that I WILL BE BACK. I just need to walk along this path with Dad for a while.

Thank you for your kindness and your wonderful words. And yes, Lee, I certainly hear you and am thinking about how to stay in touch, especially for those who are not on social media and no you haven’t missed any emails etc. – I still can’t quite work out how to make all that work. It is on my to-do list though!

And I must say a thank you to Captain Arlo from over in New Jersey for becoming our newest Lock-wheeler. Thank you also to all our other lock-wheelers:

Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Sean James Cameron
Orange Cookie
Donna Kelly
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith.

I’m just going to leave you with a very short passage from John Moriarty's book Dreamtime: 

[READING]

SIGNING OFF

Until the next time (and may it be soon), this is a land-borne me and skies spun with the with wild geese and gull, signing off for now, and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG