Author: Kate Wilson

Roots

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

 

It is the last day of June and summer is here. I travelled again to Cornwall to see my beautiful dogs who are still living ‘at home’ and waiting for me to find a home for them here with a garden for us all.

But meanwhile they can enjoy privileges Catalan dogs can only dream of…… My cats too are happy in the Cornish countryside where they were born I had two days of intensive tango in Devon seeing old friends and letting my legs rediscover total freedom from conscious control. Then a sleepless night and an early flight home to Catalunya.  I had many thoughts about Home and what it means to leave behind all that is familiar and known and build a life in a new and sometimes strange environment. What it feels like to reposition myself in fresh earth, in another climate, with new foods and waters. And how I move between these two worlds when I travel back and forth, balancing between the two. What is happening now to my roots as they dig down finding new ways to provide stability? Why do some people stay very close to their origins and others go on journeys to different lands? I have headed south in my life – from Inverness to Edinburgh to London to Penzance to Catalunya. I know what it is like to be the new one, the different one, the foreigner. Here we are called ‘guiris’ and I asked recently what it means to be a ‘guiri’ – it can be translated as tourist or foreigner normally someone from the north of Europe with blue eyes and blond hair and pale skin. I hear the word used sometimes in a dismissive way –  ‘that restaurant is only for guiris’ and at other times as if it is just a description of someone different. I will always be a little bit the outsider here, no matter how long I stay or how well I speak Catalan.  Interesting questions to ask myself –

Why do I find it so easy to live somewhere where I am always different?

Have I ever felt I am more or less the same as those around me? Perhaps it is something to do with being red-haired when I was young – always a little different and sometimes uncomfortable with this visibility but now I seem to enjoy just being myself in a new world. My roots are not only seeking out new stability but are intertwining with others at a new level.

When I was living in Barcelona I had the strange experience of feeling like a ‘guiri’ but being treated like an unofficial tour guide. Every day I was approached by people – Spanish/Catalan people – asking me for directions, checking if they were on the right train, wanting to know the nearest chemist….. I couldn’t look more like an outsider but clearly something in me was exuding ‘ I belong’.

Market Day

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

Thursday is market day here in Granollers and I went to meet a friend for coffee and then to buy some fruit and vegetables for the week. I have always found it a rather stressful experience going alone – the pressure to speak well in front of a queue of onlookers, not knowing all the names of the vegetables, not really having a good grip on grams and kilos (still? I know we use them now in the UK but I continue to think in pounds and ounces)
In my imagination it is an enjoyable experience – all the colours and sounds and smells of the market and the excitement of choosing from such an abundance of choice. But if I am truthful I have always felt a bit shy in French and Catalan markets and spend a long time choosing which stall to use on the basis of whether the stallholder looks friendly rather than on the quality of the produce. And as I don’t like an audience I often chose one which is quiet – and shouldn’t I be doing the opposite?
But…two weeks ago my experience changed. Perhaps with greater confidence in my powers of speech I took my time chosing a stall with the freshest salads and the greatest variety of potatoes. I was relaxed, I chatted, I took my time like all the other people who don’t hurry this important moment of buying food. I enjoyed the experience.
And yesterday when I went with my friend I had an extra game to play – I had learnt as many words in Catalan as I could stuff into my already very full brain and I ordered everything (well almost everything) in Catalan…..with the help of the very friendly stall holder. Here are some of the words with their castellano equivalents – Eng/Cat/Cast.

Courgette – Carbassó – Calabacin
Onion – Ceba – Cebolla
Potato – Patata – Patata
Pepper – Pebrot – Pimiento
Cherry – Cirera – Cereza
Banana – Platan – Platano
Strawberry – Maduixa – Fresa
Apricot Albercoc – Albaricoque
Peach – Préssec – Melocotón

A Walk in the Woods

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

Walking in the woods in the Natural Park of Montseny is one of the great pleasures of being here. It is a chestnut oak and beech wood with areas of pine forest and twice I have been there with a small group of people to do Reiki in the Woods. It is organised by a gentle and interesting man called Jordi. We meet up in Sant Celoni at about 10am on a sunday morning – sometimes it is nearer 11am when we all finally arrive but I must write another post about Time! Jordi takes us to a secluded and peaceful part of the woods and we spend time doing simple but deep exercises of healing, meditation, body movements and connection with ourselves and the natural world around us. I have done lots of classes in Catalunya which of course are all taught in Catalan which I still don’t speak but I have become accustomed to this new position of welcome outsider. I don’t understand everything, I miss some of the responses that people give to the exercises, I can’t communicate all that I am feeling in words. But something else happens – I have become not just practised at smiling and nodding but also more sensitive to body language, my heart hears emotions which may not be expressed in words. I make connections with people without being able to talk very much. When I first arrived in Barcelona I often felt frustrated and invisible and out of kilter but I have recently noticed this happens less and less. There are ways to connect and communicate without words – or without all the subtleties and clever wit that in the past I thought were vital. I think people here talk a lot – especially women – but perhaps it is just that I speak so little now. Words flow around me as if I am a rock in a fast flowing river and goodbyes can last over an hour as it seems there is always something else to say. I live in a more silent world – and the danger could be that I start to think too much and make judgements as I observe the other people. This sometimes happened in my first months here – a defense against the strangeness of my surroundings. But now I seem to have settled into enjoying this time of acute awareness of other levels of communication. Of course I also understand a lot more Catalan and I can respond in my hesitant but improving Castellano but I have also relaxed more into accepting this stage and taking things one step at a time – poco a poco or poc a poc!These pictures were taken the first time I did the Reiki in the Woods workshop and after a beautiful morning connecting with the trees – the new growth – the colours of the fallen leaves – the sounds of birds – we found a nest on the ground, intricately woven with grey beech twigs and I raised it on a longer branch and placed a pine cone inside – art – another way of communicating without the need for verbal explanations.And Duna was there too. Noone seemed to mind a little wild dog racing around excited by the woody smells as we did our more meditative work. She was the free spirit of adventure and for three hours was happy to explore by herself and bury her nose in the sweet leafy earth until in the end she become one with the surroundings.

The Delta

~ Kate Wilson ~ 7 Comments

 

So, after a rather long gap I have at last found time to write the next post.

Delta de L’Ebre
Flamingos at Delta de L’Ebre

I think about this blog a lot and gather information and photos but then sometimes it is hard to get started – what to include? what to leave out?  How to write about my life here while steering away from the ‘too personal’ which involves other people?   Too many questions can stop you from just getting on with it! It was my birthday and we went away in my van for the first time here in Catalunya. I drove late at night to the Delta de L’Ebre which is near Tarragona and about 200 km from here. The Romans named this river the Iber and this maybe where the term Iberian Peninsula came from. Being behind the wheel made me nervous – after more than 35 years of driving in the UK and in France I suddenly felt like a beginner again. I couldn’t understand why.  Yes it meant keeping to the right and also sitting on the right so visibility was a bit restricted but…..could it be that after 10 months of being a passenger I had lost confidence? There is something here that feels different – perhaps it is the speed and the sheer amount of traffic on the roads.
We arrived well after dark and I felt rather than saw the surrounding waters. I crept along. In the morning this is what I saw….and this……The Delta is one of the most important wetlands in Europe and is a vast water-land which is now both a protected haven for thousands of birds and an agricultural centre for growing rice. The narrow roads lead from one little settlement to the next and are only slightly raised above the paddy fields. Houses sit out on watery fieldsand the intensive work of rice production means there are complex irrigation systems to fill up and empty the fields as the season requires.Like so many mirrors the fields reflect light and colourWe spent hours on the long empty sandy beaches creating sculptures from the wood that had been washed up and stripped clean by the sun the sea and the windThe van sheltered us from the strong winds that blow in this region and we parked beside the water with only ducks and stars and a new moon for company.That night in the very far away distance we could hear horns tooting and bangers exploding when Barca won the Spanish League cup and although we listened on the radio to the celebrations they all felt like sounds from another planet. Here only peace and sunshine, wind and open skies, birds and sand.
And delicious rice!

A Rose for Love and a Book Forever

~ Kate Wilson ~ 8 Comments

Sant Jordi is the patron saint of Catalunya…….as well as of England and Palestine and many other places. He is also called Saint George!.. April 23rd is the second most important Feast day in Catalunya and is called El Diada de Sant Jordi or El Dia de la Rose or El Dia del Llibre.
It is the Catalan day for lovers and it is traditional for men to give women a rose and for women to buy books for the menChildren also give roses to their mothers and some mothers give books to their childrenSo it is book, rose and love day!
Several different celebrations have joined together to create this fiesta and it felt a very happy mix.

In Granollers the central streets were full of stalls selling books or roses. Everyone seemed to be on the streets choosing their books, holding their roses or waiting to meet someone special.As it is a national day there were lots of Catalan flags hung from windows and walls and on the stalls. It is four red stripes on a golden background and is called the Senyera.In one small square there was a poetry reading with a large audience and several poets and in the main square a band playing traditional music for people to dance sardanas.
The association of roses with this day goes back beyond medieval times and there are records of a festival of roses but the book tradition seems to have started in 1923 when a bookseller promoted the holiday as a way to commemorate the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Half the yearly total book sales in Catalunya take place on this day.

I went twice to the central square to browse the stalls and mill around with hundreds of other people, most of them holding roses or books or both. It felt much nicer than Valentines Day which for me was always a disappointment – the feeling of failure if a card didn’t come, the imposed coupledom of the restaurants in the evening, a sense of isolation whether alone or in a pair. Sant Jordi however was a social event – like so many things here in Catalunya. People were out in the streets, talking to friends, meeting neighbours, watching the band playing sardanas, dancing sardanas, buying books and roses, sitting not in couples but in large groups in the cafes.Of course it is also nice to get a book as well as a rose!