– The Milky Way (1)

 Trains of Thought...

 

After three weeks and three thousand miles, mainly on trains, I am home.  The cats mew welcomes and I drop my bag, exhausted.  I think this may have been the longest separation from Amanda in forty years and I am looking forward to collecting her from Respite in the morning, but first I must burn some heating (the house is cold! - but can we afford it?)  I am cold.  And tired, and need to lie down.....

 

Three-thirty in the morning and I cough myself awake, unable to sleep again, not feeling good.  Seven-thirty and two thin red lines stare back at me from their plastic frame.  After three years and three vaccinations, and despite wearing a mask for three thousand miles, finally the bug has got me.  Plans change.  I cannot pick Amanda up.  

 

Time for reflection.  The point of this break was in part for me to recharge my batteries, to allow me to prolong my care for Amanda at home.  In part, however, it was to see how she got on in the local care home, conveniently nearby.  I had planned to bring her home for a few days to see how she was with me, then to take her back for the weekend while I collected my thoughts and then to make a final decision on the Monday following my return.

 

For anyone caring for someone, there are many things to consider, the first of which is to allow the cared for to remain safe in his or her decline.  A secondary consideration, however, concerns the carer.  For example, if I, or one of the dedicated carers who have been helping Amanda at home, were to become ill or incapacitated, then the situation would rapidly become problematic.  Whereas if she takes up residence in a care home, there is 24-hour assistance, and, while no one can pretend it will be as “nice” for her as being in her own home, if we are nearby and can visit, take her out or bring her home regularly, then maybe everyone benefits.

 

For readers unfamiliar with this story, Amanda was diagnosed with dementia about eleven years ago (to be honest, it’s a blur now and I cannot remember quite how long ago it was, it may have been longer). Initially we were told that it was early onset Alzheimer’s disease, but I contested this and after brain scans and extensive testing it was agreed that the correct diagnosis was Frontotemporal Dementia (Semantic Variant) a relatively rare (and long-lived) condition.  In practical terms this doesn’t make a huge difference – no dementia can currently be cured, and all converge eventually in some kind of death – but in Amanda’s case it has meant that while she hasn’t had some of the symptoms that can be so distressing in dementia – such as extreme behaviours, anxiety, disconcertingly repetitive actions – she has now lost almost every shred of language, both in her understanding and in her ability to communicate.  

 

She continued working, and driving, for some time, and apart from struggling to find the right word at times you might not have known she was affected.  It is a slow, silent, stealthy insurrection however, and day by day plaques, abnormal clusters of protein fragments, build up between nerve cells, then dead and dying nerve cells contain tangles, which are made up of twisted strands of protein.  Nutrients and other essential supplies can no longer move through the cells, which eventually die; the brain shrinks dramatically and the effects become more noticeable.  

 

We continued to travel, though our trip to Bologna and Ravenna in 2015 was a milestone as I had an epiphany at the Easter Vigil in the Metropolitan cathedral as the Paschal Candle was lit to the singing of the Exultet:

 

Accept this Easter candle,
a flame divided but undimmed,
a pillar of fire that glows to the honour of God.
(For it is fed by the holy melting wax, which the mother bee brought forth
to make this precious candle.)
Let it mingle with the lights of heaven
and continue bravely burning
to dispel the darkness of this night!
May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all humanity,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen.

 

Unlike Amanda, unfortunately I have no faith.  But in the dimness of that crowded place I realised that we had come to a point of no return, and that our relationship could not maintain the equilibrium we had enjoyed for over thirty years.

 

After Amanda had to retire, we visited our daughters in China and Australia in 2016, but then settled down to quiet routines of swimming, walking, and watching Escape to the Country, rowing back against the advancing deterioration.

 

Our last overseas trip was to see the Christmas markets in Krakow in 2019, after which the pandemic raised its ugly head and we were locked down, just the two of us, sneaking out for two walks a day (no swimming) and awkwardly waving and clapping on Thursday evenings on the doorstep to keep in with the neighbours....

 

During that time, while I caught up on some heavy reading (Boswell’s Life of Johnson – an ironic choice given the lifelessness of the then Prime Minister – and John dos Passos’s USA) Amanda spent her time cutting and pasting, creating Christmas and Birthday cards for her friends and relations all the way up to 2029....)

 

And then we moved, to Norfolk, in an attempt to find a home where our daughters could stay comfortably should they be able to help with care, and where we could potentially have residential carers should we reach that stage.  It was a good move, though, with retrospect, too late for Amanda to appreciate.  The upheaval disturbed her, and her condition worsened.  So that now, despite all the help and goodwill from family, friends and carers, we are faced with the trauma of dislocation once more.  

 

And so, over eighteen months since we moved, and exactly a year since I last went anywhere at all, with all this in mind, I take a series of trains to Harwich, a place of diminished charm:

to ship to the continent, with a meticulously planned itinerary to visit old friends and haunts, and to revitalise my tired thoughts.  Amanda is safely installed in a local care home for a period of respite, and I am temporarily free.  

In Amsterdam I pass a wonderfully convivial evening with a family of dear friends who we knew from Rome, though as this was almost my first social evening in someone else’s home for some years I was perhaps over-excited? 

 

 

With two other friends, by chance on a similar trajectory, we revisit the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh, but I am already troubled.  What is it that is gained through this incessant interaction between visitors and works of art?  I don’t tire of Rembrandt or Vermeer, and Van Gogh’s frenetic output never ceases to impress.  But as I gaze at the Lowry like scene in the foyer:

or at the serious attention paid to walls covered in oils, 

I have a welling sense of futility.

 

On September 8^th at around 16.10 local time, a double rainbow rises from the North Sea.  The following morning the papers are awash with the royal story. And so they are in Germany, Austria and Italy for days to come.  I’m not the only one with problems.

 

Stranded by a Dutch train strike (yes, it isn’t only Great British Railways, though I must say this was handled differently....) I spend a night where Chet Baker died, and wander Amsterdam in the rain, seeking solace behind locked church doors, 

and views from on high....

 

Then I am away, and coursing through Germany, streaking away from my responsibilities, I spend a night in Bamberg, entranced by both the half-timbered Altes Rathaus, 

perched above the Regnitz, and jars of Rauchbier (smoked beer) in the dark and warm interior of the Hofbräu.....

 

Then on to Munich, where other beer halls attract, 

as does the rather moth-eaten Alte Pinakothek, 

once (1836) the largest art gallery in the world, though with almost every picture glazed with reflecting glass I again find it difficult to know what I am looking at, or for....

 

I reach the high spot of this part of my journey in Innsbruck, where funicular and the Nordketter Cable Car transports me to Hafelekar at 2,269 metres above sea level.  Here spectacular views across the Tyrol are crystal clear in the mountain air.  Alpine Choughs:

hop about round my feet, and for a moment I feel almost weightless, though from here the only way is down.....

 

This journey is a pilgrimage, like the wanderings of the peregrine, or like a journey down the Milky Way to Santiago de Compostela, a journey that in Luis Buñuel's film La Voie Lactée plays with time, and entertains questions of orthodoxy and heresy. I don’t mean to exaggerate, but if we are thinking beings, we should be examining the purpose of existence and trying to make some sense of our place in the universe. On my various trains my thoughts turn frequently to Amanda and the life we have shared, the places we have visited. At the top of the Karwendel Nature Park above Innsbruck, I am reminded of a trip Amanda and I made to Salzburg, before the children were born. From there we had a day trip up into the Tyrol, in shiny blue weather, like today, and we surveyed the rocky and snowy world from on high.

 

And we believed, then, in a bright future.

 

Now I am home, alone.  I really do not feel that well.  It’s time for bed.....

[All photos, except that of the two of us in the Tyrol, taken either on my iPhone SE or my Canon EOS R5]

Talking Pictures

 Staircase to Heaven

It doesn't happen often, but I have just managed a fleeting visit to London.  From remote, rural Norfolk, where the clap of a butterfly's wings is a disturbance of the peace, to the mixed up confusion of the Qatari Capital of the World, where a fetid spatter of international tourists clamour with the exhausts of a million air conditioners....  it's just a disrupted train ride, it's merely a hundred miles, though it seems like a light year.....

I carry a camera.  People don't seem to notice - everyone's too busy talking on their phones or taking selfies.....  And I snap away at this and that; young:

And old:

Day (this was breakfast in Bar Italia - Frith Street, since 1949 - and the girl was trying to sip tea between visits to the bathroom - she really wasn't very well poor thing):

And night (there are a lot of very very expensive cars to be seen prowling the streets of Mayfair - and there are a lot of very very smart young women too....):

Some scenes are humdrum:

And some slightly bizarre:

But I found most delight in galleries, where framed faces from the past were eager to catch my attention.  In the wonderful Courtauld Gallery this gilded child was desperate for attention:

Mary Magdalen, by Fra Angelico (active 1417 - 1455)

And a couple of handsome young chaps seemed immersed in discussing the contents of a suspicious box one held in his left hand....

Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, from The Trinity with Saints Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist
by Sandro Botticelli (1445 - 1510)

And I love the cross talk between and embarrassed Adam and a bored Eve in the Garden of Eden:

Adam and Eve

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1526)

And there are the famous faces, too, ones that everyone knows (but not everyone hears....) From the self-harmed Vincent:

To the long suffering Suzon:

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Édouard Manet (1882)

To the quietly reflective younger Seamus Heaney:

Portrait of Seamus Heaney
Edward McGuire (1974)

Currently at the Courtauld, there is an exhibition of Edvard Munch's Masterpieces from Bergen, amongst which there is this scene:

Evening on Karl Johan
Edvard Munch (1892)

Then it is time to descend the staircase from heaven to the ground again:

Out into the heat and glare of the drought of London.  Parched parks:

Trees shaken by the oven breath of a southerly breeze:

And trickling slime at low tide:

The mouth of the Wandle, Wandsworth

But then I find refuge on the site of the Millbank Penitentiary, in that marble monument to the sugar cube, the Empire's Tate Building.......

Here I am welcomed by one Walter Sickert, a proto-Europhile (born in Munich, raised in London, active in France and Italy):

I knew nothing of this man, confusing him perhaps with a mash up of Whistler (his tutor), Sisley and Seurat (what do I know?) and at first I am not sure about what I see:

His portraits seem distorted and almost garish, like this 1923 painting of Cicely Hey, a painter herself, and close personal acquaintance of Sickert, who modelled for him several times.

But as I move through the rooms, he grows on me.  Pictures of Music Halls in London and Dieppe capture a world of entertainment more or less lost to the modern sofa.  I particularly like the energy of this shot of the Tiller Girls, reminding me of an old acquaintance, Pamela La Marca, once a Tiller herself, whose lively manner and homely speech enlivened many a dull parents' evening in Rome:

High-Steppers (c 1938-9)

And on the other hand, he finds art in domestic boredom in this study of a listless couple.  It was posed in his Hampstead Road studio using models Marie Hayes and Hubby (one of Sickert's assistants and models), 

Ennui (c 1914)

But most of all, I like his street scenes, bold, colourful slices of urban existence, exploring light on architectural planes. It's a familiar world.... without the noise and heat of today:

Maple Street (1916)

And with that, I'm gone. Back to the world of pierrot and parades, sunshine and shadow, empty deckchairs and the strained vaudeville of everyday modern life....

Brighton Pierrots (1915)

Amsterdam 2018

We all need to escape.....

Angry Young Man John Osborne never stayed in the Grand Hotel Amrâth Amsterdam as, at the time of his death in 1994, it was the headquarters of the city's public transport company (GVB). It had been created just before the First World War as the Scheepvaarthuis (Dutch for House of Shipping), the joint head office for six shipping companies. Architect Jo Van der Mey combined Art Nouveau with contemporary Dutch and nautical ideas to form the key work of the Amsterdam School.

In The Hotel in Amsterdam, six friends from London, whose lives and work are overshadowed by K.L., a demanding film producer, flee the country for a weekend to escape his influence. In a hotel in Amsterdam, the uneasy equilibrium that has existed between them begins to unravel as the alcohol starts to flow. John Osborne's account of these relationships won the Evening Standard Best Play of the Year Award in 1968. 

The play was revived at the Donmar Warehouse starring Tom Hollander (a happily coincidental name) in September 2003, but is rarely performed these days, though it is not without current relevance.   They are escaping the clutches of K.L, who is described as, the biggest, most poisonous, voracious, Machiavellian dinosaur in the movies.... And we all know what that means......  Indeed, I think we do, Mr Weinstein?

In the Grand Hotel Amrâth we are not escaping anyone.  We have come to see old friends, as well as Rembrandt, Van Gogh et al.  We have come to revive ourselves with the delights of foreign travel, while we still can.  The hotel itself is an extraordinary building and we marvel at the way architect Ray Kentie and his team of artists renovated the office building.  It took a year and a half of demolition and clearance, starting in 2003, and then a further two and half to complete the restoration.

With a glance over my shoulder at Osborne, however, we feel just a little oppressed by the city, and by the hotel.  It is shadowy, and the heavy woods and thick wallpapers dull our spirits.  The irony is that, as tourists, we are ever trying to escape ourselves.  Amanda and I first visited the Rembrandthuis over twenty years ago, and were welcomed in through the front door into a relatively quiet, dark seventeenth century town house.  It seemed as if the owner had just stepped out for a stroll, and we made ourselves at home in anticipation of his return.  Now you enter through a glass, steel and concrete atrium, and jostle with hundreds of others, all intently glued to audio guides.  There were 265,000 such visitors last year and I am told that they anticipate 300,000 this year.

The Van Gogh museum only takes online bookings. There are queues for the Rijksmuseum.  The Red Light district is now swamped by tour groups. There's hardly a sailor in sight. No chance of privacy.....

What can we do?  We are tourists too.

We escape. Again.  To Haarlem.  Seventeen minutes on a train from Amsterdam Centraal, and a totally different atmosphere.  The Grote Kerk, dedicated to St Bavo, is an oasis of peace, despite the monumental organ once deftly played by the ten-year-old Mozart. 

We pay our respects to Frans Hals, though the Laughing Cavalier is resting in the Groot Heiligland, the Alms House for old men where he ended his days, in anticipation of celebrations later in the day.....

A fact endorsed by excited locals, who seem to be bursting pink and turquoise balloons in our honour....

The pedestrian streets are quiet, their quaint, wonky houses immaculate (apart from the occasional reference to South Park).....

And the windmill waves at us across the Grebe-infested river.

Back in Amsterdam we have a beer at Café Papeneiland, a bruine kroeg from 1642,

then find an old fashioned restaurant in Jordaan and eat stamppot andijvie met lamsbout, which is mighty fine. After this we have a de Koninck and oude genever at the Café Karpershoek before retiring to the Amrâth, feeling full, and a little wobbly, and not quite so jaded.

We look back.  But not in anger.  I met John Osborne in Rome once, not that long before he died.  The man who changed British theatre was no longer an angry young man.  He was more an avuncular old boy with the husky Fulham tones of the late John Hurt playing Jeffrey Barnard.  I asked him whether he ever regretted writing Look Back in Anger?  He smiled, perhaps at my naivety.  It pays the rent, he said,with a chuckle. 

I didn't ask him about The Hotel in Amsterdam.....

In actual fact, I look back, whenever I look back, with great affection, whether to Amsterdam or not......  Perhaps looking forward is not so easy nowadays?