Small World Archives - Page 6 of 8

June 16, 2021July 29, 2021

Here’s One I Made Earlier

Just got back from a few days at the north coast. Gosh it’s gorgeous! Blustery walks, fish n chips, ice cream on the promenade and that Atlantic view that honestly can’t be beaten. Rathlin shone, Dunluce glowered and Whitepark Bay sang with pleasingly curly waves.

I laughed out loud on a trip to Coleraine thanks to the cute and quirky work from local yarn bombers. All over the town there they are – covers on seats, hats on postboxes, even shorts on statues. It was just such a happy sight.

Crafting is not only fun, it’s good for you too. It reduces stress as we focus on the present, allowing anxiety about the past or future to recede for a little while. And our brains are doing all sorts of things – both hemispheres are in use when both hands are working so all sorts of new neural connections are being made. Plus there’s the social element if you get together with like-minded people.

Granny used to knit stunning Aran jumpers and make us kids traipse around the place in woollen garments that reached down past our knees. Our grumpy faces in old photographs seem to indicate that we were not best pleased with this fashion statement. Now, of course, I love those jumpers and cardigans and artisan markets even sell them at extortionate prices. Mum patiently taught me to knit and it feels like an Irish skill being passed down the generations.

Not long ago I worked and worked on a tank top (sleeves were too much added pressure and let’s face it, even more work). I was so proud of the end result until I tried to put it on and discovered that it wouldn’t go over my head. I’d cast off too tightly round the neck. It looked good but I couldn’t wear it. There’s probably a moral in there somewhere.

At any rate I threw it down in a huff and next day set about unpicking it (oh the sadness that ensued) and learning how to cast off more loosely. I placed it over my head and it looked…well…okay. To be honest it looks better on the hanger. But I’m proud of it and crafting is surely never time wasted. All the same I don’t think the Coleraine yarn group will be in touch any time soon.

See how the neck fits so loosely? Now that’s skill…

Hobbies are big and important things but can fall by the wayside as life happens and busyness takes over. Find some wool or a pencil or a camera and set aside the stress just for a moment. Creating something, even if it’s a wonky work in progress, is food for the soul.

May 26, 2021July 7, 2021

The Art of Life

I’ve been painting our garden fence and yesterday left a little blue handprint beside the paint pot. As I hunted for a cloth I remembered the cave paintings I’d visited with outlined hands that have been waving for thousands of years. Hands that were once alive, that made art, that simply said “I am here.”

In the Lascaux Caves in South-western France our Palaeolithic ancestors created thousands of beautiful images featuring bulls, horses, stags. Crowds of human figures who worshipped and fought and loved. Haunting to acknowledge how little our species has changed. I stood in front of those red-ochre handprints and fought the urge to press my palm on top, I wanted to reach across the centuries and tell those ancient people that I saw them, heard them, felt their human foibles and loved them anyway. Around 20,000 years separated us.

“Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence.”

V.S. Ramachandran

Being human is quite the thing. And art seems to offer answers to the weight of consciousness, the pull of existentialism, the questions without answer. Creativity in music, writing, painting seeks to point out our humanity while remembering that our time is short. It seeks to shine a light on the dark places of our soul. No wonder dictatorships so fear the artist.

My blue fence looks nice, I suppose, but I feel the need to visit a gallery and stand motionless before a painting. The Ulster Museum is calling.

May 19, 2021July 7, 2021

The Bees’ Knees

It’s World Bee Day tomorrow and appropriately enough I can hear buzzing from the shed today. Honeybees keep trying to squeeze in between the wooden slats and get frustrated before reversing back out. Bumble bees drift clumsily by as if learning how to fly for the first time, now and then knocking against the window. There’s also the odd wasp, but since they don’t yet have their own UN-designated day, they note our attention on their insect cousins and are probably preparing to attack in jealous retaliation.

So it’s all about the bees. Here’s a few fun facts plus a delectable Brian Bilston poem (beautifully handwritten on this card last year by my friend, Roberta).

1. They are under threat 
Bees and other pollinators, such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, are increasingly under threat from human activities. But we need them because…

2.  Bees pollinate one in three mouthfuls we eat 
Almost 90% of the world’s wild-flowering plant species depend on animal pollination, along with more than 75% of the world’s food crops and 35% of global agricultural land. Not only do pollinators contribute directly to food security, but they are key to conserving biodiversity. No wonder lots of sci-fi stories involve the end of bees and then the end of the world as we know it.
 
3. Honeybees live in 50,000-strong colonies 
This number falls to around 10,000 in the winter when the remaining members huddle together and shake to keep warm - a hive therefore resonates all year round. They perfect this ‘waggle dance’ throughout the year to alert one another to the best places to find food. Their social nature (not to mention propensity to dance) could teach us a thing or two about life.
 
4. Male bees do not sting 
Honeybee workers (female, of course) have a sting in the tail - they protect the nest, sometimes to the death. But don’t let your patriarchy loose just yet, remember the queen bee? She’s in charge of tens of thousands. At least in one animal arena there’s a female CEO.

5. Hives (not to mention honey) are things of wonder 
The geometric columns of hive hexagons are like mini Giant’s Causeways (and also, it should be said, like Blockbusters - remember the stress of the gold run?)

The natural world just can’t be beaten for beauty and inspiration. We love you bees – please keep buzzing.

April 28, 2021June 23, 2021

A Walking Shadow

Sitting down to write about Shakespeare is like a toddler confidently announcing his neurosurgery skills while wielding a knife. But it was his birthday this week so I feel the need to focus on the Bard. I’ll never win this fight but he is the worthiest of adversaries.

I’ve always loved words and the effect they can have as we stumble through life. Bookworm childhood was my story and then, when the terrible teens struck, I found him. Just in time.

The 1989 RSC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Belfast’s Grand Opera House quite honestly threw me to the ground and shook me awake. It was as if my eyes had opened for the first time to see all that life had to offer. And obsession was the inevitable result. Any time we went to visit my aunt in England, I begged Dad to drive me to Stratford upon Avon whereupon I would traipse around the streets, visit the grave in Holy Trinity, watch the swans and buy teeny tiny copies of the plays so that they could always be in my pocket. I bought pencils and pencil sharpeners and bookmarks. I even got a sweatshirt with RSC emblazoned on the front and wore it every day. I painted a watercolour of Anne Hathaway’s cottage. I think I had some real friends in school too.

Astonishing to think of this glover’s son first sharpening a quill. What possessed him? How did he create such worlds when he (doubtless) had never travelled far? Most of all – how did he know so much about life and love and loss? He wrote through the Black Death, he wrote for a Queen and then a King, he wrote as his 11-year-old son lay dying. He wrote words beyond compare. Could he have imagined his ink-stained hands reaching this far into the future? Over four hundred years, centuries of change and humanity rolling ever on, and still his words endure.

I’ve stood in the room where he was born, sat in Anne Hathaway’s garden, read in the alcoves of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, gone behind the scenes at the Globe theatre in London, stood on Juliet’s balcony in Verona, even walked the Danish banqueting halls in Elsinore with Hamlet, and still I don’t feel like I know the writer. He is remote yet close, real yet intangible. No sooner have you grasped onto him than he flits away.

Therein lies his magic and it is the man himself. Bard, playwright, legend. William Shakespeare.

My reading of Sonnet 116

April 7, 2021May 12, 2021

A Walk in the Woods

Going for a walk is so much more than just forward momentum or aiming for a destination. It’s your state of mind that usually asks your feet to get moving. Who’d have thought that placing one foot in front of the other would have such mental health consequences?

So in honour of National Walking Day I’ve complied a list of my favourite walks. In ascending order:

5. In at number five is the Blackhead path at Whitehead – recently re-opened just in time to allow lockdown-easing jaunts along the path; waving hello to sleeping bats in the caves, climbing hundreds of steps to stand beside the lighthouse looking out at the pier disappearing into lough mist. It’s official: I heart lighthouses.

4. Non-mover at number four is the route from Dunseverick Castle to Whitepark Bay via Portbraddon at the Causeway coast. Oh how I miss the north coast! Nothing can compare to causeway waves and that big, grey sky.

3. New entry at number three is a rainy saunter around Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, preferably with autumn leaves strewn romantically about the place. A haunting and hallowed place all its own.

2. Not able to push number one off the top spot but holding firm at number two is a walk in the woods at Mossley Mill in Newtownabbey. Put simply, this place kept me sane during lockdown. A wee gem in the neighbourhood.

1. Nothing can shift this from the number one slot – it’s the Norwegian glacier at Dalsnibba. Astonishing viewpoint over the fjords, bright green glacial melt and a sense that nowhere else on earth is this beautiful. And was that a wolf howling in the distance?

Category: Small World