Symbolic Forest

This blog has been relatively quiet this week. Clearly, finally completing that in-depth work-related post about inclusion and diversity on Monday must have taken it out of me. There are a number of things waiting in the to-be-written queue, but all of them are the sort of posts that deserve effort and energy and research putting into them, and this week has been too tiring a week for that sort of thing.

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Keyword noise: The Children, autumn, seasons, superstition, memories, astronomy.

My second memory of the year is the more important. It’s not so much a memory of a specific event, as of a feeling. The feeling I had when we had moved in to our new flat together, the friend who had helped us move had left, and we were alone in our own place for the first time. A feeling of immense love and unbounded opportunity.

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Keyword noise: happiness, memories, moving house.

In past years, I’ve usually posted my stand-out memories of the year so far, around this time. Last year there were four; the year before five.

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Keyword noise: birthday, flying, Latvia, memories, Riga, travel.

Last year, I spread my favourite memories over a series of posts, and wrote each one up properly. This year, I’m still feeling rather woozy and fuzzy-headed; but, nonetheless, these are the things I remember most clearly about the year.

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Keyword noise: Devon, flight, flooding, memories, travel.

I’ve been tagged, by Dimitra. The idea being, I write eight things you don’t know about me. Which is hard. I mean, there are a few people reading this; and moreover there are different sets of people reading this. Some of you know things, some don’t. I’ll have to think of eight things you might know, might not. I never know who I’ve told what to.

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Keyword noise: information, meme, memories, rationality, socialising.

Today has been another plain, ordinary day. Nothing out of ordinary in the news. Nothing exciting has happened. Which is, you know, just as it should be.

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Keyword noise: July 7th, memorial, memories, remembrance, terrorism.

Last year, of course.

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Keyword noise: 2006, memories, Memories Of The Year, quote.

…is a bit of a cheat. Because there isn’t one thing I want to add which would round the year off. There are too many moments which would leave it incomplete. The Cat returning. Someone taking me for a quiet walk in the park, so they could split up with me. Going for a first date with someone else, and watching their last train home pull out of the station because we didn’t realise it was about to leave. Someone trying to kick my car windows in, whilst I was sat inside the car. So many people who have made this year very special—in particular, V-

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Keyword noise: 2006, The Cat, dating, looking forward, memories, Memories Of The Year, relationships, self-reflection, The Plain People Of The Internet.

This is just a short one. A romantic breakfast, in a supermarket in Greenock, squeezed between the railway and the firth. Haar is hanging over the firth,^* and the far shore is out of sight. I’m sitting, looking at you, and wondering how many times I’ll be back here.

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Keyword noise: 2006, breakfast, Greenock, haar, memories, Memories Of The Year, mist, relationships, romance, Scotland, supermarket.

This one is from back in April. I’m sat in the back of a car, with some people I don’t really know that well, travelling off to somewhere I’ve never been before. I didn’t really know where we were going, either. I mean, I knew what it was – a Social Club – what it was called, and vaguely where it was, but not exactly where. I’ve always been closely attached to maps, and not knowing where I was going made me feel a little disconnected and wary.

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Keyword noise: 2006, memories, Memories Of The Year, socialising, Wooldale.

I found out later that it was quite a historic room, with all its mouldings and recherché cornicing. Back in the 1910s, when equality for women was all the rage, Sylvia Pankhurst held suffragette meetings there. I didn’t know this at the time, though.

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Keyword noise: 2006, Civil Partnership, friends, marriage, memories, Memories Of The Year, wedding.

Time to do some looking back. Some of these memories will be good, some bad, and none are in any particular order.

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Keyword noise: 2006, beach, memories, Memories Of The Year, moonlight, new year, relationships.

A very nice man said to me today: “It’s been a good year, I think.” And it has for me, too. It’s been a very good year, and a very bad year; and the strange thing is, the good and bad parts have been together at all times. It’s been an extreme year, I think, a year of travelling and new experiences, of meeting very nice people, very nasty people. Most people aren’t specifically nice, or specifically nasty, but can be either if they want to be. A few, though, are at one extreme or the other; and luckily I know more of the former.

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Keyword noise: Christmas shopping, emo, memories, new year, self-reflection, shopping.

This is a slightly faded memory, from a few years ago now, from the last time I was in the Outer Hebrides. It’s a late night, two in the morning or so, in August. You can hardly make out a thing in the darkness. There’s a crowd of us sat around in deckchairs, in the front yard of the University farmhouse, heads leaning back. We’ve all just returned from the “local” pub, about six miles away, and we’re sitting outside to watch for the Perseids. Out there on the Atlantic coast, the sky seems, strangely, lighter than elsewhere, because of the number of stars scattered across it. The sky is filled with patterns of light, coming from millions of years ago; and leaning back in a deckchair, the age, complexity and size of it all fills me with a slightly dizzy awe.^* Every thirty seconds or so, a meteor flashes across the dark sky, and everybody watching smiles.

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Keyword noise: astronomy, Callanish, ink polaroids, Lewis, memories, meteors, Outer Hebrides, Perseids, Scotland.

After I whinged to her about life for a while, my friend (and regular reader) K set me a challenge. Think of six happy memories, and the places they happened. It took me a long time, but here they are:

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Keyword noise: happiness, memories, Big Dave.

Unlike the first half of the year, there is one big stand-out memory from the second half of 2005. The start of my second business trip to London. Getting off the train at Kings Cross and walking down Platform 4 trying not to start crying. I was worried because someone I knew – even though I’d not seen her for a few years – had, like many other people, been missing for three days. She’d last been seen at Kings Cross, changing trains. I held myself together until my taxi was driving away from the station, onto Euston Road. As we passed the ambulance standing at the station entrance, waiting to take another run to the mortuary, I burst into tears. This was on Sunday, July 10th. Half an hour later, a Lancaster bomber flew noisily over my hotel-room window.

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Keyword noise: 2005, End Of The Year, marriage, memories, wedding.

I was planning to write two whole posts about all the great things that had happened to me this year; but then, I realised I couldn’t actually remember many.

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Keyword noise: 2005, camping, End Of The Year, holiday, memories.