Personal Reflections

Making Promises to Myself

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been full of energy since the New Year began.
There are things I want to write about but I haven’t quite got them straight in my head yet.
But it’s bubbling around.  Perhaps I’ll try.

Looking back over the last year – I see how many hard things there were to deal with and how the dealing with them brought me closer and closer to finding my centre, to feeling anchored.

What won’t kill you will make you strong!

  • Trying to cope with the three dogs here in our town house
  • Increasingly ferocious attacks by Duna on Bonnie.
  • Injuring first my left hand in the van door and then my right hand when I dislocated a finger
  • Preparing my new treatment room only to spend two or three months unable to use my hands
  • Constant and exhausting problems with the Resident Adolescent
  • Changing our home life when the above came to stay permanently after his mother left.
  • Blue’s death
  • Battling with Catalan at the same time as needing to speak English – just for comfort!
  • The death of my brother

I’m not going to list all the wonderful things from the last year but obviously there were also lots of those to keep me sane and at times very happy.

However the deep lows led me directly to a path which I am still walking.
I started to meditate. I began to go to the gym and get running. I read blogs which inspired me like The Wild Elephant Project. I listened to Caroline Myss and began to explore her ideas around Sacred Contracts.  Slowly and little by little I began to feel my energy changing. I started the year  creeping down the streets of Granollers, leaking energy like an old hose pipe and cringing whenever someone gave me a disdainful stare.  Today I noticed how bouncy were my steps along that same road. The stares still happen but somehow I don’t get knocked sideways by them.

Two things help me a lot

  • When I don’t know how to react to something or someone – I send out Love.
  • When I still don’t know what to do – I try to be Present in the moment.

There have been some amazing changes just from remembering to do these two things.

Pacts and Promises and Vows
I have made some promises to myself and am amazed how powerful it is to build this trust with yourself.  I started with the decision to stop drinking CocaCola.  I also stopped shopping in Tescos. Three months ago it seemed fairly easy to give up smoking and this time it feels like forever.
At the beginning of 2013 I stopped eating meat again and renewed my promise to support animals and be vegetarian.  Today I made a pact with myself to eat no wheat for 24 hours – it is a hard one for me so I find it better to take it one day at a time!
I think that the more I gain my own trust, the easier it gets to keep to my promises.

Lastly, but definitely not leastly,  I have started the Kitchen Sink Challenge.  My dear friend Tiffany put me onto this (and many other wonderful and motivational things)  For one month you promise to keep your kitchen sink clean. You are creating a new habit that you want to stick to.  That’s all – just clean the sink and watch your life change. I know it sounds crazy but somehow it brings order into chaos and sows a seed of change.

That’s it for now.  I haven’t even got onto telling you about Swing – that must keep for next time!

Christmas lights

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

The Christmas lights are up in our street.

They start at our house and go all the way into the centre of town

I like them although I know that they probably use up a lot of electricity and, of course anyone anti-xmas will scowl and mutter about waste and hypocrisy.
They make me feel happy when I come out of the house with Bonnie.
I wonder if they will do the usual piped Christmas carols this year blaring out from the lampposts?

It’s hard to believe it is December  10th already. I have done nothing at all to prepare except buy some Turrons to send to the UK and book a cottage at Sant Nicolau to retreat to for the festive week.

I will send out cards even though I know they will arrive late – I haven’t even started making them yet!
It is  something I love doing but this year I’ll cut down on numbers – I think after three years here I should begin to accept that there are people who have slipped away out of my life, leaving only memories.  It does make me sad but perhaps it is the natural way. I hate losing people and only today was searching yet again on google for three old friends who have ‘disappeared’. No luck though!

What do you think?  At what point do you just let go?  Can you ever really stop missing old friends who disappear?

Family Life

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

A little change of subject.
One of the hardest things about The Catalan Way for me – in fact THE hardest thing – is having to cope with life in the same house as an adolescent who isn’t my own one. I am trying to act as though he is but of course the reality is different. We don’t have the shared history that would make me feel secure in myself. I am the intruder.

Right now, in the kitchen, he and two friends eating toasted sandwiches and drinking milk/juice.
Harmless of course – and nothing bad is happening. None of them are rude or bad mannered.
But I feel awkward and ill at ease. I go in there and the room goes silent. I come out and they start talking and laughing. Am I sure they aren’t laughing at me?  They close the door so I know I am not welcome

I know I know. Everyone finds this age quite difficult to deal with.
 But when it is in another language, in a house that is more his than mine, in a family that I only joined three years ago, it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.  I am always walking a thin line anyway, trying my best to feel a part of this world but this situation, and of course this is not the first time, always makes me feel sick with nerves. I do not feel confident and who better to reveal this in its nakedness than a group of 17 year olds.

I tried to chat – but what language do I use?  Do I fumble around in Castellano or Catalan?  Do I just speak English and know that they don’t really understand me or they feel I am ‘that weird British woman’?   Do I ignore them and make my tea in silence while they wait for me to go? 

I feel my body tighten up. I struggle anyway to communicate but this situation really puts me to the test and, as so often, today I fail.

Barça-Celtic

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

I was quite surprised when the Resident Adolescent agreed to accompany me to see this match in Camp Nou. It was us alone – just us – noone else to help or hinder us. It’s not like we are great friends. We’re not big enemies either but you know how it is with a 17 year old especially if they are not your own son?  The step mother/son relationship is not always easy and has a huge heavy weight of baggage attached to it. Too many unexpressed emotions and not enough shared experience to carry you over the humps. Then there is the teenage  refusal to communicate.  How on earth are you supposed to make friendly contact when you are creatures from different planets?  And we had never been out together alone before.

Well, perhaps going to see Barça play at Camp Nou might bring us together.

Amazingly, we had a great time. We travelled by train and metro and foot and stopped off for a drink and something to eat. You have to talk a little when you are sharing a patatas bravas!  We chatted.  I overcame my shyness enough to ask relevant questions about discos and DJs and exams and football and he overcame his enough to answer and even smile.
I didn’t retreat behind my Kindle and nor did he behind his mobile phone.
Success!
We had great seats, right behind the corner so we could see Messi and Xavi close up

We were surrounded by kindly good-natured Barça fans except for two feisty Glasgow wifies sitting behind us who bravely chirped “Cel-tic  Cel-tic” every time that the crowd bellowed “BARÇA BARÇA”

The only false move I made was to scream and shout when Celtic got the first goal.
‘Sorry! I know I embarrassed you. But I couldn’t help it’.  He was mortified but too polite to complain.
For a few golden minutes Celtic was in the lead at Camp Nou

Afterwards as we walked away from the stadium it was me who felt embarrassed. Somehow the loud drunken chanting and bravado of the defeated Scottish fans, although harmless, seemed immature in comparison to the quiet chat of the Barça crowd.  It’s not that they are quiet during the game – our neighbours kept up a constant steam of oathes whenever it seemed that Barça was doing badly.
I learnt some new swear words although in the main it was the usual, puta mierda, collons, Ostia, cony. But after the game – friendliness and calm.

In the bar before the match one green and white clad Glaswegian fan insisted on shaking hands with all the men at this table of Catalans. ‘Good luck to you all’ he said as he pumped each arm.

So it’s not lack of good will that makes the Scottish fans seem edgy and pugnacious but perhaps an excess of alcohol?  Or is it just a different football culture?  Or insecurity?  Or that strange inferiority complex that can afflict us?   It feels like an anger that can easily bubble to the surface – something in the tone even of the chants.  I can’t imagine ever wanting to go to a football match in the UK – the seam of aggression that lies below the surface would scare me but I don’t feel that fear at Camp Nou.  As I have said before, Scotland and Catalunya – not really that similar.

Virtual Vermut

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

I am terribly behind in these posts – every day there is something new I want to write about and yet by the evening I am either tired and lazy or too engrossed in Trollope to download the photos.
So I thought a quick Virtual Vermut could be the answer and I can tell you lots of unrelated bits of news in one post!
For those who don’t know, Virtual Vermut is my name for a post written as I might chat to a friend over a drink in a cafe. It’s a chat, a chance to catch up with life.
So, although it is very late on a Sunday or more truthfully very early on a Monday, would you like to join me for a quick vermouth?

There is so much to tell you.
Home Life
As part of a much larger plan to make home life flow better as regards the Resident Adolescent, the three of us went bowling again a week ago. On Wednesday nights there is a special deal where you can play a large number of games for not too much money. The only catch is that the games are for two teams.  So with three people it meant two against one and we kept changing the combination so at one point I played against the two males and although I didn’t win, neither did I shame myself.
 It was only my third time at a bowling alley and my first time not using the side-guards. 
There is something very meditative about bowling and I need to breathe and centre myself before throwing otherwise I make a mess of it.  So true for many other things in my life as well!

Sant Nicolau again
The following weekend included a public holiday. Some people here worked through October 12th – Columbus Day –  as it is celebrates the Spanish State and the armed forces and so doesn’t have a good feeling in Catalunya.  Especially at the moment.
 But it is also my friend Tiffany’s birthday so well worth celebrating!
We took the chance to get away and go back to Sant Nicolau to look for mushrooms.
Blue’s statue is looking good and has a lovely solid presence in the garden

 The flowers were incredibly vivid in the intense autumn light

 There were some edible mushrooms in the woods, as well as a wild boar and a solitary hunting dog with big bloody jowls and a large bell around its neck. But the weather wasn’t really cold enough for a lot of ‘bolets’ although there was a beautiful line of them leading down to where Blue is buried


Back to Granollers and to our relief the house was fairly tidy and clean.  Perhaps adolescence really does begin to fade away in the late teens?  Or is it to do with the New Deal we have created?
The weather began to cool down and the shops to fill their windows with pumpkins and panellets

 Walking
At last we managed to organise a walk with Oreneta in the hills above the Maresme.
We reached a viewing point above Barcelona from where the city looks quite neat and small

Barcelona
Last Monday I went down for the evening to dance tango.  Wandering around Gracia before meeting my friend, I thought that if I ever get a flat in the city it should be here.   
It feels like Stoke Newington by the Mediterranean.
There were lots of Catalan flags hanging from windows.

 Imagine having a Palestinian restaurant nearby!

Milongas finish late so I came home for the first time on the night bus.
There are several that come to Granollers and I caught the 72 which takes 40 minutes from Plaça Tetuan to Granollers bus station.  What a peaceful way to travel and it only cost 3.70 euros. It is just as comfortable for sleeping as the train to Passeig de Gracia in which I can rarely keep my eyes open.

There is so much more to tell you but I know you have to get going soon so I’ll finish with a story about cats and dogs that happened today.
More Walking
Montnegre is a mountain range lying behind seaside towns such as St Pol and Arenys de Mar.  It is much quieter than the Serralada Litoral where we met Oreneta or the Montseny where we often go to the woods. After parking in St Iscle de Vallalta we followed a path up into the hills, passing a large property called Mas Olles. What the book didn’t warn us about was the pack of dogs that live there. First one barked in the distance, then another and another. One by one they all came thundering over the land towards us. I couldn’t count them – perhaps there were 15 or 18 – all large and all rather excited to see two people and a dog walking by

Luckily there was a stout fence but it’s impossible to know the stoutness of a fence until you have tested it. Once safely past, we discovered we had taken the wrong path so had to go past them again. Of course they had left an early warning party waiting by the fence just in case we did just this. I imagine it has happened before and this is their main enjoyment of the day.
It isn’t a place I would walk past on my own.
Later we found these wild cats on top of a ledge

 They looked very well but when winter comes I imagine they have a hard life.
So now good night and thank you for visiting and listening to these odd bits and pieces of life.
Have a good Monday – it is now definitely Monday morning!