The Last Bluebells

I had to go back.

It wasn't over.

I knew they'd still be there,
Waiting for me,
Those that were left.

Awaiting my arrival with a longing
To have their last moments in the light acknowledged.
To capture a testament to their grace,
A proof of their existence,
Though it had been for only a few fleeting weeks.

And there they were,
Those final fading beauties;
Using up the very last of their being 

To be glimpsed
Through the new and the strong,
The fresh and the bright,

Before a final oblivion of thorn and shade.

They are not lost,

Those few that lingered,

They are not forgotten,

For in their beauty they will be remembered,

While their image remains.

And long after

They will be waiting for me,

In my dreams.

For it wasn't over.

I had to go back.

The Last Bluebells

© Nicola Wemyss 

23rd May 2015

Konnichiwa, Yōkoso!

This post is an amalgamation of photos from my birthday jaunt to the Japanese garden in the Clingendael estate last week, and another visit I couldn't resist taking today. Well, it's only open for a few weeks in Spring and Autumn, so it could be considered gathering my Japanese rosebuds while I may.  Plus, Spring has been so late this year that it's been playing merry hell with timings and bulbs and shrubs, and nothing is flowering together as it does normally, so I was happy to go back today and see the latest in Japanese shrubbery news.

For once I wasn't disturbed by the plethora of folks wandering around and enjoying the surroundings; on the contrary, they were, on the whole, friendly and courteous (so, mostly not Dutch), and I found that they actually made my photos come alive. If you know me and my people-avoiding tendencies, you'll appreciate that this is a big step forward in stopping myself from shouting at everyone to Get Off My Lawn. Especially as I own no lawn. And probably wouldn't shout at anyone. But I'd be thinking it really hard, whilst getting out of your way, and probably apologising for being on your path even though you're the one that walked into me. 

I reckon we could all do with a little more Japanese politeness and respect in our lives, and it seems that this is the perfect place to start!

Climbing Gear

"Nic is holding a minute silence for the demise of her trainers. A few hundred miles on these Primark specials were obviously too much for the poor things..."

But you know, for eighteen euros, or however much they cost me a few months ago, they've done me well. Yes, yes, I should have bought a proper pair of walking shoes, for not only would they last much longer, they'd support my foot, cushion my arches, protect my tootsies, and enhance the whole walking experience, but, pfff - my budget doesn't permit that kind of frivolous behaviour, and saving up for a decent pair means time spent not walking, and I've noticed that as soon as I pull back on the exercise I stop losing weight. Well, okay, I've stopped losing weight - I'm mid-plateau just now, and frustrated as hell, but any lessening at all of the amount of cardio I get in a week, or a hundred more calories a day, and the weight starts to creep back on.

It's so frustrating. I know; we all plateau when on a weight-loss journey. It appears to be the nature of the beast. I experienced it my first year. I lost two stones, sat there for a couple of months, then managed to put one back on again (although this was before I'd discovered the 5:2 plan, which kick-started the whole thing off again). I've ground to a halt once more, just further up the mountain. The view is stunning, and although I can see base camp, and the camp 1 (if you will) I'm now stuck at camp 2 walking in place and going nowhere.

Of course, physics decrees that I just need to eat even less and exercise even more, but then this turns into a Diet, and not something I can sustain for a lifetime (something I'm hoping to achieve with the 5:2 plan, and regular exercise.) I want to change my life, hell I HAVE changed my life: I eat really well, I exercise five times a week for an hour at home, plus I go for a well-paced walk of at least an hour and a half at least three times a week. I'm at the stage now where I get antsy when it's blowing a gale and chucking it down, because it means I can't get outside and go tramping around the neighbourhood.

I still have so much to lose. In all honesty that figure should be fifty pounds more, but the weight I'd be comfortable trying to maintain would depend entirely on how much loose skin I can cope with. My face has aged considerably as a result of the hundred pounds loss already, with so many little wrinkles and laughter lines that used to be stretched-out and made flat by my 'natural fillers'. And please don't mention my burgeoning jowls where my pudgy apple cheeks once were. My upper arms, or bingo wings as they're affectionately (and generically) called back home, are half-empty and rather more like flapping wings than before, the skin on my thighs, butt, and knees are noticeably saggy, and my tummy skin is concertina-ing in strange ways. I can cope with these just now - it's the price for leaving it until 'middle age' (eek -gads) to figure myself out, I guess, when your skin just doesn't ping back into shape like it might have done at a younger age. 'Tis the Fate's decree that I'd have to wait until now to be in a place mentally strong enough to cope with this emotional climb, and I just have to suck it up, as our American cousins say.

So, if you need me this afternoon, you'll find me sucking it up down in the shoe section of Primark.

It's My Birthday And I'll Eat What I Want To

"16,000 steps must surely equal 1 slice of birthday chocolate berry mint cake?"

And a cup of ginger coffee, made with real stem ginger. So very good and tasty, and worthy of my :: coughty-cough :: years on this earth!  

What a wonderful day - I walked to and around the Japanese Garden at Clingendael in the early afternoon, walked back to town to partake of home-made (by the baking geniuses at Swags Central, not by me!) chocolate berry cake (real name 'Halle Berry Cake') and a cup of ginger coffee, then went on to cocktails (oh my, happy hour every Wednesday night). A really lovely day, spent with really lovely people.

But yes, I ended up with over 18,000 steps recorded on my pedometer band, so I think that should have covered at least a portion of that cake, which was sheer chocolate heaven, and had I only only managed two thousand steps instead of nearly twenty thousand it would still have ended up being enjoyed by your author.  Because birthday.

(It's like a cross between a torte and a cake, with the 'healthy' components (which I considered one of my five-a-day) of raspberries and fresh mint to add a little bit of bite. So very good. I recommend it. And the carrot and orange cake, the apple pie, and, well, pretty much everything.)

I'm pretty thankful for those cocktails, though, because I think my calves may be too inebriated this evening to berate me for over-use. We'll see how annoyed they are tomorrow, once recovery (read: the hangover) sets in...

Spring Greens

I haven't visited Landgoed Oostduin Arendsdorp, in the Benoordenhoud district of the city, since my sister and I got lost there a couple of years ago, looking for a park with lots of roses. Why there and why the roses? Well, my brother had gone for a wander alone when he visited the year before, and came across a massive, open park, filled with thousands upon thousands of rose bushes, and was, according to his photos, a sight to behold. He said it was east, so looking at Google maps we found a rosarium in the park at Clingendael, so that was where we headed one sunny Summer's day.  

We arrived at the Oostduin (East Dune) estate, and thinking it was actually the entrance to Clingendael, went in, got lost, eventually got out, found Clingendael a little further on, and its disappointingly tiny show of roses that did not deserve the Rosarium appellation, and made it home, thoroughly exhausted, and equally annoyed with our brother for supplying such atrocious directions.  

He meant North. It wasn't until I'd spent more months taking my constitutionals around the city, learning about the parks and pretty streets, that I finally came across Westbroek Park and it's ACRES of rose-beds. Yup. To the North.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I shall be partaking of a visit to the Japanese Garden at Clingendael (open only a few weeks of the year) for a birthday treat, so today I thought a little visit to its neighbour park might be a pleasant jaunt on this breezy day. I really didn't remember the park at all from my last foray into its grounds, and it was rather lovely to have the time to acquaint myself with it's pathways, waterways, and beautifully kept grounds. It looks like there was quite a show of bluebells earlier on, although most are past now, the rhododendrons are running late this Spring and are still in bud, but there was some wild garlic growing in the shade that was out and showing perfect form.  

This is a lovely park; well-kept grass almost to lawn standard, the archetypical Dutch brooks, and majestic old trees of many species; by far the most diverse of the parks and woods I've been in here - I can't wait to see what colours Autumn brings here. And by then I should know my way around!

Confused, Challenged And Confounded Am I

You go and rock your big arms in that cute off-the-shoulder 50's-style tea dress. Who the hell am I to judge? My upper arms are probably bigger than yours, and you should be encouraged, not mocked if you want to be cool and fresh on a Summer's day without feeling you should cover them up and therefore be too hot for the sake of those speshul snoweflaykes out there who feel like they're being insulted by having to look at, to be made aware of :: gasp :: fat arms.

But please don't judge me because I won't show my arms. I've never shown my arms. Ever. (Except when I went swimming, and the last time that happened was twenty-five years ago.) I hate my arms. I hate them even more now that I've lost enough weight to make my skin loose. I cover them up because I don't want to see them. I wear tops that skim my tummy, because I don't want to see it. I wear long skirts because I don't want to see my legs, especially now as one calf is still larger than the other, thanks to an unresolved haematoma from an accident years back.  

I am frequently at a loss at my attitude, because the very idea of Fat Activism seems such an amazing and empowering one. And the belief that Health At Any Size is possible is so very important for everyone to understand, not just the over- or under-weight. Yet I still look at my reflection in a mirror and think I am wrong. I see my weight blinking out at me from my scales, and think I am wrong. Even now, after losing so many pounds already, I think I should cover myself up and be as unobtrusive as possible, or other people will see me and think I am wrong, and tell me so, whether by laughing at, insulting, or being prejudiced against me. Or poking me in the stomach at Marks and Spenser's when I'm looking for sausages.

I touched on the burgeoning recognition of modern Fat Acceptance a few years ago, not truly understanding the concept, and not understanding how it might touch on my life, thinking that it was all a little too over-the-top, and just a little late to help me. I still think it is too late to help me in many ways. I find myself torn between wanting to love who I am and the mould I was poured in to, and longing to be a 'normal' size. I applaud the voluptuously-proportioned for wearing whatever makes them feel wonderful, and clap every time I see, for example, a repudiation of the 'Are You Beach Ready' campaigns showing the type of body advertisers think we should all be aspiring to have, but I won't wear the clothes I love the look of because I'm too embarrassed by my own shape to wear them.  

I feel like a traitor to my own cause. A hypocrite. Confused. Guilty. Jealous. Ugh. Should I be accepting myself as I am - overweight but healthy (because yes, I am both overweight and healthy, and I have worked damn hard to get to this point - at the last check my blood sugar level, cholesterol, and BP were all normal, and I have a strong heart and healthy lungs), especially as I have been stuck hovering around the a loss of a hundred pounds for the past six months? Is this my real me? Healthy, active, and obese? Am I wrong, deluding myself, to want to be a smaller size?

Because by wanting, yearning to be thinner, am I then just playing into the hands of a multi-million pound industry that works hard to make women feel insecure (and men too, who am I kidding - the pressures on guys to look a certain way is becoming just as ridiculous as it is for women) and therefore less worthy than they should because they're not a size two with collar bones you could cut yourself on? Am I letting myself be brain-washed by the continuing effects of a life-time of teasing and cat-calls?

We are all products of our childhood, upbringing, influences, loves, hates. If we're lucky, we can gain an understanding as to how the different experiences of our lives, both positive and negative, have affected us and made us who we are and how we react to things. But understanding why we are what we are, how we come to think our thoughts, feel our emotions is only a tiny part of being able to process them to create a more balanced whole, and I suspect very few people actually get to a place where they truly comprehend their entire being.  I'm certainly nowhere near.

I don't know. Am I wrong not to want to fight against the body oppressors of my life, but instead try to fit in? Am I dropping the baton of fat power by being proud of losing this weight? I love to support diversity in its myriad forms, yet I'm fighting tooth and nail to become one of the crowd, someone who wouldn't have felt alone at school, someone who wouldn't feel alone now.

In many ways wish I could take a step back and see this from further away. It would suggest then that I wasn't quite so embroiled in the emotions and experiences that make me so eager to conform. A little distance between myself and this confusion might give a better perspective and a clearer view of the whole, instead of feeling like I've backed myself up into a corner of self-loathing, with just my own fears and concerns in front of me.

I have no conclusion. I still need to process what it is exactly that I'm fighting for, and fighting against, because at the moment it seems like I'm for and against both myself, and the world.

And Like A Skylit Water Stood The Bluebells In The Azured Wood

(Title quote from In My Own Shire by A E Housman)

I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever in bombarding you with bluebells. Or at least bombarding you with pictures of bluebells, although I'd propose getting up close and personal with a few would do you the power of good, should your immune system not overload and cause you to explode into sneezes. My mother would hate to be here. In fact she'd probably not be able to see anything due to streaming eyes, so I wish bluebells on you only if they won't turn you in to a soggy sack of tears and snot. 

You're welcome.

But I'm not the only one who is fond of the bluebell...

...There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.
... from The Bluebell by Anne Brontë

This little demi-stanza seems so apt for these woods. Even though it's just next door to a busy highway, all it takes is five minutes walk inside the walls to lose the sounds of modern-day life, and get wrapped up in birdsong and leaves whispering in the breeze. I love it here! I loved it in the Winter, in its proud, stark beauty, I love it now with Spring treating it with colour and love, and I'm looking forward to see what a lush Summer, and golden Autumn will bring.