Personal Reflections

A Swift Story

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

If birds come into my life I pay attention

The robin that flew round the room when I revisited my old home in Inverness, the white owl that very very occasionally flew across my vision when I was driving home from Penzance, even the two little ceramic birds that I bought when I was back in Cornwall.  They both were survivors of a shelving accident and had broken tips to their wings. I brought them home to Granollers and Pep glued them back together again.
A week ago today I was in my room which I call my Niu – my nest. It looks onto the terrace and at the door there is a sort of gully where the steps start. I noticed something dark and fluttery right in the corner of the gully. It was a bird, unable to climb out. I put it onto the terrace tiles and it stretched its wings and identified itself instantly as a swift.

Then started two days of intense relationship between me and the bird.

I found a wonderful web site that suggested ways to help a young swift take to the air again. But it had some injuries to one wing and also seemed inexperienced in flight.

We tried to launch her on the terrace – resulting in several bad thumps to the ground. I gave her water and she drank.   She allowed me to lift  and hold her up to the air without a tweet. She  just looked around with interest. Whenever she felt the air brushing her feathers she would start to flap and thentake off. But it always ended with a fall to the ground.

After a few attempts she got tired and I left her in a shady spot.

Day two and she was nowhere to be found

I knew that swifts cannot get off the ground once landed. Their wings are so long and their legs so short that they can’t push off unless they are up high on a ledge and can launch from there.  She disappeared so of course I assumed she had died in a corner.  A few hours later I heard rustling from the patio one floor down and looking over the railing, I  saw her bobbing around on the floor. She had found herself a ledge on the edge of the terrace and launched once more but unfortunately there wasn’t the space to fly and she took another rough landing. But survived!

In the late afternoon I took her up to the fields above Granollers, beside the tower.  It is a place  I go often when I need some space and fresh air.

It was a sad and worrying walk from the house up to the top with the bird quietly waiting inside a shoe box. Once there I held her up in my  outstretched palms and did what the experts recommend, gently raising and lowering my hands so the air flow encourages the bird to open her wings.

After a few moments she took off…… and then fell to the ground.

We tried again…..this time she went a little further. She was so determined yet each fall seemed to me so violent. But there is no other way. The third flight was the longest and I willed her to stay up but she lacked strength and ended up in a bush. After that she was happy to stay in my hands and stretch her wings but showed no desire to try again. We plodded home  and I found her a bigger box with air-holes and added lots of flies and mosquitoes to her home.  She didn’t want to eat from me although she would drink drops of water from my fingers.

It is such a sad thing to see a swift on the ground – it’s just totally the wrong place. Perhaps there are other birds who could manage an earthbound life but a swift must fly.
The next day I had to go to Barcelona with my friends and I left her resting at home. She seemed quiet and sleepy.  There was someone to look out for her during the day.

When I got back in the evening, she had died.

That is the story of me and the Swift. I love these birds and watch them every day from the terrace. It was a huge honour to be able to connect so closely with one and very painful to watch her plight.

I’m glad she was able to go gently and will not forget how strongly she tried to survive.

The Miro Show

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

This weeks work on Miro culminated with a show of paintings, costumes, dance, songs and theatre.

It was beautiful!
We had looked at Miros paintings and picked out some of the themes – his use of earthy colours and strong reds, blacks, and yellows. The basic recurring images  of suns, birds, stars, the moon, and abstract lines and points which remind you of dreams and night time imaginings.
The day of the show was exciting. Somehow it all came together.

One of the boys wanted to paint a spider – he made it a huge one with big furry legs and we cut it out of cardboard and painted it black and red. He wore a black cape and had his face painted with a web design. His part in the show is to enter Miro’s dream and crawl around the floor, scaring the audience, tickling the feet of the sleeping artist and then finally enter the picture that is created at the end when they all stood together making a picture of their own.
Another girl, often a little shy, chose to paint eyes. The One who Looks. She came on stage so proud and confident that I almost cried. She danced with her cardboard eyes attached to her head and hands, looking at all the other images.
The smallest one – aged 5 – had chosen to paint the sun so she wore orange and red, face painted with hot colours and carrying a beautiful sun. In rehearsal she was a little overwhelmed but at the show she stumbled on entering the stage and almost fell. This made her laugh and she carried on with her dance in such a funny smiling giggly way that everyone relaxed and she really was the Sun giving warmth.
I love seeing the faces light up with excitement, watching how those who were nervous find confidence, seeing them do things they at first said ‘No Puc!’ (I can’t)

Me too – I did things I thought ‘No Puc’ and hopefully my face too brightened when it went alright.

Summer School

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

Today was my first day working in the summer school. This year we have chosen Famous Artists as our theme.
First Miró.
Now I know a lot more about him than before. He lived to be 90. Was born in Barcelona in the Gotic Area and lived the last 20 years of his life in Majorca. He was shy and liked working with images from his imagination, like the things you see when it is late at night and you are tired and there are patterns in front of your eyes.
The children found it easy to relate to these forms of suns, stars, ladders and insects.
And I noticed that my Catalan is so much better this year. Now I can communicate with them about more than just drinks and toilets!
It is lovely to see them gain confidence on the trapeze – first nervous and not wanting to take the risk. Then the beam of joy when they are up high with arms outstretched and swinging without support.
Can you see the spider in this pose?

What I love is seeing them working away on paintings and sculptures in the workshop – we produced some lovely cut out forms to use in Fridays show. When they are finished I’ll add a photo.
I used to be scared of children – they can be frightening when they just stare at you and then, when they have formed some secret opinion, turn their heads away to look for someone more interesting.


So it’s a challenge taking part in the summer school and it’s not over yet – four weeks to go – but today I felt much more relaxed about it all. Isn’t it funny how some things take almost your whole life to get to grips with? I was very shy at school and found the others terrifying with their confident games and loud voices. Of course I have moved on from there but still the presence of children can reactivate that fear of being rejected.  My mother ‘not-in-law’ once told me she felt the same – one of the many very nice things she shared with me to help me feel comfortable here.  It’s so nice to know you are not the only one!

Tango in Granollers

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

Tonight we went to try out the tango in Les Arcades in Granollers. Somehow the fact that there is a class and a milonga right here, not five minutes away in Carrer Girona, had slipped past my tango antennae. It has been going since January – five whole months in which I could have been walking down our road, turning left then right and then straight into a bar with a dance floor at the back and a group of people who dance tango.
Last year we tried to start a tango class here but I stopped after a term as the effort needed to teach in Spanish as well as advertise it seemed beyond my capabilities. Sometimes I feel that the energy I use  to learn two languages, get used to a new relationship, survive being a sort of step mother to a difficult adolescent, drive a car on the right side of the road, try to get health care, worry about my dogs in Cornwall and all the rest……means I just can’t do one more new thing.
Recently I have been feeling very like this.
I didn’t include writing this blog in that list as normally it is something that flows easily and I enjoy enormously. But recently, this too has felt hard. Too many questions like – What am I doing? Who is this for?  Does anyone read it (apart from those three people that I know about -thank you, you know who you are), What can I say and what is better to leave unsaid?
I try generally to write about what catches my attention and what I find interesting about Catalunya and the experience of changing my life. Sometimes it is cultural, sometimes it is personal, and sometimes it is a bit of both. But when I am feeling alien and alone here and struggling with the feeling of being an outsider without a strong support system of friends and family on hand, then the words get blocked. I can’t only write happy thoughts here but it is also a bit frightening to write down my doubts and fears and let them drop into this void.
What is this to do with tango, I hear you think.
Everything for me. This is what took me to tango in the first place and this is what I bring to tango when I dance.  Connection.  Longing for connection. Risking connection.
Tonight my dear man accompanied me to the class and the milonga, He isn’t really interested in tango but came to make me happy. We danced together.  I had a bit of a glitch when the female teacher started to tell me how to do the cross but I remembered my friend Tiffany’s advice and just smiled. The male teacher came and danced with me twice and then, just as I was taking off my shoes to leave, the man with the black and white shoes and fedora hat came up to ask me to dance. When he first arrived in the bar I thought he would be too flashy but actually he was just very good, very attentive, very connected.
It was a good evening. I came away feeling happy.

The people were friendly, the music was lovely, and we were dancing tango in Granollers.

Which made it feel more like home.

Thoughts while walking the dog

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

Last night I went down to walk Duna near the river Congost. It is one of my favourite areas in Granollers. There is a long stretch without buildings and you pass some hortas (vegetable patches), the geese guarded by Lolita the gentle border collie, and the field of wheat which has now been harvested. It’s like a little bit of countryside right in the middle of Granollers

Swallows swooping, people walking their dogs, the sound of the swifts high above, and occasionally a pair of ducks flying over on their circular routes around the river.
In the distance the hills.
I have some friends coming here to visit soon and I was wondering what they will think when I take them there. Will they see what I see?  Or will their eyes rest more on the ugly flats, the litter and dog shit, the large car park to the left and the industrial zone of Cavovelles across the river?
I can switch views and see all this too – it’s like having a button with two options – beautiful or ugly, nice or nasty, agreeable or disagreeable.
Sometimes it depends on my mood which one I see.
But generally I go there and feel good. I accept that I live in a town and not in the middle of nature as I used to in Cornwall. It just makes me happy that there are these wild places here.

But it struck me how much harder it is to do the same with human beings. Faced with someone who irritates me or who is nasty or disagreeable I find it much harder to just see the good parts. The option button gets stuck on negative mode far too often. I wonder why that is and what it would take to make the change. Practice?