Boxing Day Floods

One of the tasks from the Wild Words course I did was to write about flooding. In York, in 2015, there were awful floods which affected many people and areas that aren’t usually flooded. York does flood regularly but this was the worst I’ve seen in.

Boxing Day Floods, York

Source: York Flood Inquiry

December 2015
wettest month
since records began
Ouse and Foss catchment
saturated

Boxing Day:
unprecedented situation on the Foss

                       weekend Bank Holiday
                       middle of Christmas

challenge escalates

27^th BT exchange
flooded

loss of landlines internet
mobile phones
no electronic communication
                        misinformation can take hold

four hundred and fifty three
residential properties
one hundred and seventy four
businesses
flooded

remarkable efforts
generosity community spirit
assistance offered quickly
unstintingly. Donations
                       local, national
                       international

spontaneous volunteers
‘unwavering response from responders’
praised for dedication and contribution

thirteen thousand sandbags
                       builders’ merchants very helpful
                       opened depots on request

voluntary sector:
                        evacuation-meals-shelter-warmth-assisting with clean up-warehousing and distributing donated goods-practical emotional recovery support

disruption
evacuated
no warning
upheaval
traumatic

‘Recovery from flooding does not simply end
when people move back into their homes.’

problems with insurance claims
managing builders
living in a state of disrepair

long-term issues identified:
                       respiratory problems made worse- mental health problems exacerbated-disruption to home-lost personal possessions-strain of moving in with family-strain of being separated from family-breakdown of relationships-financial pressures-lost ability to earn-went out of business

problems do not recede as quickly as water

York will flood again
an inevitability

‘York as a community would benefit from becoming more resilient
and better prepared for an emergency situation.’

Ancraophobia, fear of the wind

Ancraophobia is the extreme fear of wind.  This is not a word for me.  I don’t fear the wind. But I am not comfortable with it either. I feel attacked by the wind. I feel small. I want to retreat, hide, and escape.

Ancraophobia is never present at birth. The fear of wind most often arises as a result of a negative experience in the person’s past… Most often an ancraophobic person experienced a situation where the wind was blowing heavily and they found themselves afraid that the wind might destroy or kill them.
– Wikipedia, accessed 29^th January 2020

When I was 7 or 8, there was a horrific storm.  It was Christmas Eve and the power cut out.  For some reason that I no longer recall, my dad had to go outside.  The wind was screeching, lightning striking and the sky was crashing almost in time to the flashes.

I was terrified for my dad.  He was out in this hellish tornado, surrounded by trees, and who knows what was caught in the wind.  I had seen Wizard of Oz a few times.  I knew about hurricanes. 

He had been outside for years.  Hours at least.  I was scared.  I opened my mouth but fear held back the words. It took a few tries before I could raise my concerns with my mother. 

Looking back, I can see she was also afraid. But she snapped at me.  Told me off.  Made me more terrified. My teeth bit down on my lips and my fingers curled, nails in skin. Eyes kept on staring into the storm.

I was already petrified, unable to move from my place, on guard at the window.  I didn’t need someone to yell at me and tell me not to be so stupid.  It had taken so much for me to ask. To ask if she thought he was ok. I didn’t need to be knocked down.

I had visions flashing through my childhood imagination.  My dad knocked unconscious.  My dad trapped under a tree. My dad squashed by a fallen wall. 

I needed to be told he hadn’t been gone very long.  I needed to be told he was ok.  I needed her to be the adult.  To act unafraid, even if she was.  I needed to know that in a fight between my dad and the wind, he would win.  Not to be shouted at to shut up.  I went quiet, silent and alone with my fears.  And that silence was filled with the bawling wind and the cracks of trees just a couple of metres from the house.

I stood between window and curtains, trying to turn the shadows into familiar shapes. Peering into the darkness, knowing I couldn’t have seen him even if he was there. 

I am not afraid of the wind. I am afraid of the power it has inside my imagination. The destructive whirlwind that rips through my imagination and decimates my safety net.

I am not afraid of the wind.

I am afraid my dad might lose the fight.

---

Written as part of the Wild Words: Place and Environment Writing course.

A short story of the ones left behind

As part of my writing course we looked at a poem called ‘A Short Story of Falling‘ by Alice Oswald and were asked to write a poem following her structure. I don’t normally write rhyming poems, let alone rhyming couplets so this was a challenge for me. It took a lot of work and tweaking and editing but I enjoyed stepping out of my comfort zone.

Rugged rocks standing in the tide

It is the story of the ones left behind
between ebb and flow of tide

As waves retreat, new worlds emerge
fleeting glimpses, soon submerged

Black rocks gleam, spray kissed, like jewels
stand tall between impermanent pools

Acorn barnacles cling tight
to mussels’ pearly blues and whites

Conical spirals of periwinkles
littered through the seaside shingle

Bladderwrack entangles limpets
cigarettes and fishing nets

Crab’s hermitage, a bottle cap
first cosy home, then prison, trapped

Translucent sea jelly
tentacles of vermicelli

Bag for Life, or Bag of Death?
suffocating final breath

This is the story of the ones left behind
by sea, and, by humankind

Limpets and barnacles cling to black rock

Work in Progress

I remember the twisting landscape on the way to the jetty. Leaving Ullapool, overshooting the destination only to loop back on ourselves via the loosely drawn roads. The land ahead was flat, behind was hill littered, and you could see the tarmac snaking through like an S. The coast line still obscured but pulling us closer and closer to the shore.

This was a land of snaking s’s, shores and sand and scenery and the Summer Isles… scaling feelings and mountains came together for me, then. I was scrambling my way out of an eating disorder, a mix of some progress and some back sliding. Following an inner S road, twisting and turning, destination life, or death. Starvation or survival.

On the island, I was sharing a home with strangers who asked their questions – would you like some toast? Some cereal? Something? And noted when something was nothing. Strangers who walked, by torch light, home with me for that week. Toads calling, stars glimmering, paths slippery. And wished me a good night. One like I was his daughter, unaware he was seeing me as a toddler in those fleeting exchanges, but I held that sentiment close. The other, like I was her teenage daughter, concern spilling over. That week, they spoke with such care and concern for me.

That week with strangers was a salve. 

***

On my way up to Scotland, on my way up to the Summer Isles, the train journey wound from York to Northallerton to Darlington, Durham to Newcastle.  Then picked up the fracturous outline of the north east coast. At Edinburgh I switched trains, not too much lingering then a list of train stations to wrap your tongue around;

• Haymarket
• Inverkeithing
• Kirkcaldy
• Markinch
• And Ladybank

Heading further north, the autumn haze glossed over the land, golden fields and the sun highlighting the dust that hung around the purple heather. The vast tall sky, stretched up reaching for the heavens, but it’s aspirations were squashed by heavy grey clouds. The dark air that pressed down on the land had been pressing down on me for so long. Oppressing my lungs, making living, breathing, an effort. My blood was treacle and my heart hurt with the effort of pumping it. I had been living with anorexia and depression for so long that I couldn’t remember another way of existing.

At Perth, another change. So many changes on the journey north. So many changes needed to find my true north. Suspended raindrops blurred the land with sky. Wispy clouds clung to highland rocks as we wove our way through the Cairngorms to Inverness. Purple and gold hillscapes flickered past the train windows. White houses. Green forests. Grey rivers. A landscape of texture – soft ferns, prickling pines, hills undulating, rocks protruding. Ruins pull you into memories, yours and the memories of the ghosts who haunt the land.

Inverness brought with it a bookshop trip. A treasure trove of second hand books, my safe place. If nothing else, I always know I can enter a bookshop and buy myself a brief moment of groundedness. The certainty that knowledge brings. The feeling of being surrounded by information, research and other people’s stories would help me feel a small glimmer of hope that my story, my book, would have it’s own ending. Unclear whether the ending would be happy or not didn’t matter, just that this drowning would end. Sadly my bag was full so I left with a couple of postcards instead.

The bus from Inverness dropped me at Strathpeffer, where I sat, hoping that I’d planned the journey right and the next bus would turn up as the timetable suggested. My mind already planning what to do if not. Anxiety running riot. But it did, no emergency plans were required. Finally I arrived in Ullapool. A long day of travel had taken me 420 miles from home, and ended with another bookshop. I would be staying opposite this particular bookshop on the overnight pause in travel.

Being published!

When I was little I used to make my own newspapers and would go round trying to interview people and write articles. There was the attempt to implement a newspaper in primary school and another attempt to do the same when I was a Guide. None of this stuck but I loved the writing involved.

This makes it very exciting that I was recently published in the local newspaper!

(That’s all for now – writing the column, doing York Disability Rights Forum, staying alive during a pandemic and the darkening days of Winter’s approach are all taking a lot out of me. But I miss my blog and I do hope to get back to it soon!)

An untitled poem about autumn

Her Midas touch
turns all to gold:
                the light
                the leaves
                the conker’s sheen.
All honeyed under rich veneer.

Palette of pumpkin spice
               and kicking leaves
               in smoky air.
A mask.

Cracks in the façade reveal
threads of decay,
and Autumn’s truth.

She’s Winter’s catalyst.
The cog that turns
warmth cold,
bright dark,
hope harsh.

Sets the stage for
Winter’s empty monologue.

The girl in the sea

Back in February I did a course about poetry and paintings. One if the exercises was to imagine yourself in a painting. I couldn’t immediately think of any paintings so I was writing myself into an imaginary one, but here it is:

The girl in the sea

She is knee deep in riptides
angry greys and blues and browns
swirl round her feet.
Dark cliffs loom behind her
merging with heavy storm-
filled clouds.

I am hot, sticky and oppressed
by the humidity of a city summer.
My blue cotton dress reflects
off the protective glass
and I threaten to overwhelm her.

I step closer
squeeze beneath the gilt frame,
between glass and oils
and sink into her world.
Breathing with relief for a second
as the cool air embraces me.
Then icy spray
spits at my bare arms
leaving goosebumps.

I should have chosen that picnic scene
in the last room;
the one with glasses of wine
and the glow of autumnal gold.

The girl still stares towards the horizon
knee deep water becomes waist deep
and I become afraid.
The sea is untamed and will think
nothing of taking her as prey.

I don’t think I can save her.

My bookshelves… Poetry

• Basic Nest Architecture by Polly Atkin
• The Emma Press: Some Cannot Be Caught, Anthology of Contemporary Gothic Verse, Anthology of the Sea
• Holly McNish, Papers and Plum

• Dear Body by Hannah Hodgson
• The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk by Kate Davies
• Diversifly
• Maps and Legends
• Amanda Lovelace; the princess saves herself in this one, the witch doesn’t burn in this one and the mermaid’s voice returns in this one
• Nikita Gill; Wild Embers and Fierce Fairytales
• Poems for a world gone to shit
• Witch by Rebecca Tamas

• Inside the Wave, Helen Dunmore
• How to Disappear, Amanda Dalton
• Shrines of Upper Austria, Phoebe Power
• New and Selected Poems, Mary Oliver

And a couple of poetry writing books…

• Poem Crazy by Susan G Wooldridge
• 52: Write a Poem a Week. Start Now. Keep Going by Jo Bell
• Writing Wild: Forming a Creative Partnership with Nature by Tina Welling (technically not just about poetry but I wanted to include it anyway)

Responding to a poem

I am part of a poetry group and due to Coronavirus we have had to cancel meeting up but we have continued via email. So instead of meeting up yesterday, one of the group sent round a prompt for us. She asked us to take a poem and write a response to it.

I thought it appropriate to start with Poems for a World Gone to Shit and found In Preparation for the End Times by Francine Elena.

In Preparation for the End Times – my response

In preparation for the end times
I plan to build a time capsule,
think of it as a future curation,
a warning styled as a museum.

Walls will be lined with loo rolls,
antibac will flow from taps.
Everything in the kitchen will be pasta,
the table and chairs as well.

Half read books and unstarted
projects will be piled up
on the floor.

A stack of unused face masks
will be built up like a house of cards.

Boxes of gloves will fill the bath
and bottles of water
will form the sides
of an isolation pod.

In a display marked
“Well, it can’t hurt…”
will sit cures next to their
fake news headlines;

“cocaine snorted
sterilizes nostrils”

“drinking cow piss
will wash out the virus”

“eat more garlic
to wipe out the toxins”

And as you leave
you’ll pass through
a bleach shower

and maybe
just for good measure
be asked to drink some too.

Poetry about paintings

On Saturday I attended a course about writing poetry based on paintings. It’s not something I’ve ever tried before but my poetry group was going and it looked interesting.

Most of my writing wasn’t great but then I was writing about very different subjects to normal. Throughout the day we wrote about being part of a painting, about moving into or out of a painting, about meeting the artist and being the person who was posing. It produced some fun experiments and got me outside of my normal thinking which is always beneficial.

For a couple of my exercises, I chose to think about a cave painting of a bison.

If I could paint like the cave woman…

…you would see animals dancing across the rock
…you would feel the beat of your heart
crash with each thrash of hoof

I would show you the creativity of nature
so you want to reach into the stone
and pull out your own magic
– personal, powerful, empowering

and then you, you
could create your own universe
with your own mystical imaginings

I want to be like the cave woman

I want to be like the cave woman
feeling the rock and knowing
that’s where the spirit of horse
or bear or bison lay
& knowing how to release them
from their prison of stone.

I want to be like the cave woman
who knows earth, and air,
and stone as kin
& the plants that crowd the forest floor
as well as she knows her child.

But I reach out in the dark
of my bedroom, not cave,
to the untamed sculpture
that is my bed
with its heap of books
and phone chargers
searching for the lamp switch.

I could never be without my sacred
night space, it’s coccoon of safety
edged with fleece and teddy bears
and the convienece of electricity
that the cave woman could never have dreamt of

I want to be like the cave woman.
I want to know my home and land
with the intimacy that comes from survival,
but with the comforts that turn survival
into certainty and in doing so,
render the relationship
between the land and me
nul and void.