Personal Reflections

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’.

Having two homes is stressful

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

The reality of having two homes is not so easy as you might imagine.

One of the things I have had to accept since moving to Catalunya is that the process of moving is slow and there is going to be a period of transition which is quite uncomfortable.  I love my new life but I also feel deeply attached to my old home and especially because my two border collies are still living there, being taken care of in their familiar home but without me.

I hope to resolve this as soon as I can but in the meantime, we went back to visit Cornwall for Easter
It was the first time my partner and his son had been in the UK and I felt responsible for making it a good trip.   So, what happened?
St Michaels Mount was still there and looked beautiful in the sunshine
We  got terrible colds which meant all our plans had to be changed
It also rained a lot and I felt sad that my new family didn’t see Cornwall at it’s best.
Spending time in my own cottage was wonderful and being with my dogs was bliss.

alt='two border collies'
my best friends
It is sometimes very hard having two homes and wanting to be in both of them.
We were still coughing on the ferry trip back  from Plymouth to Santander
I drove to Granollers in my little white van, bringing back essentials such as Twinings Earl Grey Tea and my blue Denby teapot, four fine china mugs and a very uplifting table clothBut two essential dogs had to be left behind … next time……… I hope… they can make the journey.

Remembrance of Lost Times

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment
The laws of balance mean that I must now write about homesickness. I have been reading lots of online articles about the experience. How it can either sneak up on you slowly or hit you in the face. How it affects everyone who lives for some time in another country and culture.

I am going ‘home’ soon to Cornwall with my new partner and his son. It will bring together two of my worlds and after the excitement of planning the trip I now find myself feeling nervous. And for the last few days I have felt a weird inexplicable sadness. A fullness in my head as if I can stuff no more new information inside without exploding. An inability to speak coherently in castellano. And a total absence of those warm fuzzy feelings that I described in the last post.
Strange!

There are hundreds of web sites describing the symptoms of homesickness – how it normally hits after three months in a new country. I used to think it was a feeling of wanting to go home as experienced by a child away at summer camp who lies in bed crying, but now I can see it is something else – something more complicated to do with our need for familiarity, for places and smells and tastes and sounds that link us to the past. And however much you like new places and people and experiences there is something inside that also craves the known and familiar.

It is hard to describe how tiring it is to be always having to think. Every little task can be a mountain to climb. Everything is new. No wonder babies sleep such a lot – learning new patterns is exhausting and you need to take regular breaks. Buying soap powder – no familiar names, no signs to let me know if it is for washing or conditioning, then it doesn’t seem to smell right and the clothes aren’t feeling the same as they did in Cornwall. Confusion, frustration, exhaustion and irritation.

In October three months after arriving in Barcelona I had a crisis of wanting to be at home – not to return to Cornwall but to find a quiet safe place to relax and just be. It became urgent to have a retreat from the world, somewhere to just be myself where noone would think me strange if I did things in my own way rather than the Catalan Way. That was one reason I started to write this blog – to try and understand rather than flail around in a sea of alienation. And now living here in Granollers I have a similar urge. I want to surround myself with some familiar things, to sit in a space that feels safe and known. Suddenly I understand why people buy some British things when they live abroad. Not because they reject the new ones but there is a deep need for tastes and smells and sounds that link you to your roots. Just sometimes….This trip to Cornwall is partly to bring back some of my things – I have a list that contains teapot, birdfeeder, mug, blanket, cookery books, baked beans! Not because they are better but because they link me to some deep inner current. Thank goodness for the internet and for being able to connect with friends and family regularly. And through the internet i can read about other people’s experiences and find out how normal these feelings are. For several weeks now I have been ‘seeing’ familiar people from Penzance walking the streets of Granollers. It is similar to when someone dies and you think you see them walking past – a trick of the mind. I know that when I am in Cornwal I will also start to ‘see’ people from here, magically transported across Europe.
And more thanks to the internet because I can listen to Radio 4 -feeling a little guilty when I do it, imagining I should be immersing myself more in Castellano/Catalan – I now realise it is a vital link and helps me stay sane.
As I have been writing this post I have been thinking of Proust and all his wonderful thoughts on memory and time and perception and yearning. I named this blog with a sideways glance at his book title Swanns Way. But no time to expand on this now as it is time to go….to the airport to fly to England.

Warmer

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

 

How do I capture the happiness that I feel here?

So many little things that make me smile every day. And how would I photograph that feeling?

Today the sun shone. I took the bike to my first English class and it was still there when I came out after an hour talking about land, inheritance, marihuana and visions – a nice way to earn money. Cycling is such a pleasure in Granollers – there are little back streets to whizz down, you can go on the pavement without anyone seeming to mind, it is flat and within 15 minutes you are out in the countryside.I came home to the back door which is the entrance to Llançadora – the artists association organised by my partner – offering classes in circus, theatre, dance, acrobatics, and more. The space was originally a textile factory owned and run by his family. We are sleeping in sheets at the moment which were made there! Another time I will show you inside.
Later I went to buy vegetables and for the first time in ages it was warm enough to go out without a jacket. Bliss.
I had my hair cut and coloured yesterday for the first time in Catalunya. It went well although I was nervous beforehand about not being able to explain what I wanted in Spanish.

But today I felt much better groomed and less of a scarecrow! People here don’t go out on the street in their slippers like I have been known to do.Small things – sunshine, no coat, new hairdo, shopping with a proper basket, a bike ride to work and crisp clean home made sheets! And coming home – this time to the front door – the blue one! Happiness…

Dogs

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

I now live here in the same house as a dog. She’s called Duna and is a Springer Spaniel, age eighteen months, female. I always knew dogs have different lives outside the UK and that this could prove to be a challenge to my decision to have an open and uncritical attitude in this new country. And so it is!

Walking in the countryside there are many empty houses where the owners only come at weekends or for holidays. For security they often have two or more dogs who live there alone being fed by some custodian, sleeping outside or in a kennel and having as their main stimulation each day those moments when someone walks past the fence. Then there is a cacophony of barking and huge excitement as they race up and down alongside your path. They sound fierce but in a life of great boredom it must be the highlight of their day.

Duna came here from a family home where she lived for her first year, I don’t know how much time she spend indoors but it is very likely she slept outside and spent most of the day alone as the parents were at work and the children at school. All credit to them, the family decided they couldn’t give her the life she deserved so she came here. She was not house trained but had been taught some fairly useless tricks such as giving a paw on command and lying down to play dead. She is very willing to learn and has a very gentle nature. When we take her out for walks in the countryside she loves rummaging in the woods and looking for mushroomsWe live in a town. It is a big house and has a roof terrace and a half enclosed patio but no garden. When she first arrived she slept on the patio and used this for her toilet. It has taken a long time for her to learn bladder and bowel control and to wait until we take her out for a walk.
As the weather got colder last autumn I started to campaign for her to sleep indoors. It is hard to explain to UK dog owners how totally weird this seems to Catalan people. Here it is normal for dogs to be outside and any suggestion that it is too cold for her is met by wide eyed disbelief. I might as well be saying she should be given a chair at the table and a knife and fork to eat with! But the problem of her using the patio as a toilet made it easier to convince others that an indoor life would make it easier to know when she needs to be taken out. However, toilet training here is also of the old school variety – accidents happen and then she is made to put her nose in the puddle or pile and then summarily banned outdoors again. I knew it would be a challenge and it is definitely the hardest thing I have battled with since coming here. Last night I looked up web sites on dog training and found a mountain of information in English but very little in Catalan(which I knew would be more convincing than anything written by us softies who treat our dogs like babies!)It is interesting for me to have found my bottom line – most things like eating, speaking, house cleaning, socialising, time keeping, shopping I can happily adapt to and try to accommodate. But I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut when it comes to the lives of dogs.
However, Duna’s life is hugely better than it was before and a million times better than many dogs who live outside all their lives, with little human contact and no opportunities to explore the outside world. Or those who live in apartments in Barcelona who stay at home alone all day until that late evening hour when all the streets are full of dogs and their owners out for a stroll.
Duna has been to the seasideto the Costa Bravato France, on a skiing holiday, for a weekend camping and many times to the mountains and the woods and she is very lovedShe knows how to drink from the ubiquitous drinking fountainsI have to admit too that she is better behaved than my own dogs – she sleeps patiently most of the day, she only barks when the shop opposite opens or closes its shutters and she can be safely left tied to a lamppost while I am shopping without fear than she will bite passing children.