Saturday 28 May 2022

What I've been reading

Image of the book cover

Entertaining Cancer (the Buddhist way)
by Devamitra
"Who would have thought that having cancer could be so instructive, and at times so amusing? Devamitra writes of his experiences with a style unique to him: beautifully crafted, engaging, witty, poignant, reflective and always disarmingly honest."
This is the book written by the chap who stayed with me and road tested my accommodation while on his recent promotional book tour. It's easy to read but not the laugh out loud funny account that some say it is. Devamitra refers to it openly as his 'swan song' and wants to see if he can get it stocked in WH Smith before his demise - I hope he manages it.


Image of the book cover

The Yogi's Joy: Songs of Milarepa
by Sangharakshita
"Milarepa was a yogi and Tibetan Buddhist mystic of great learning and turbulent worldly experience.  Here, three of these songs are explored in such a way that the wisdom and teachings Milarepa drew out in his songs are made relevant to life for us today."
This is the book that I took on retreat and ended up reading twice. If it hadn't been for the retreat I might not have managed it once, but it was worth the effort and will probably show its value when I need to look up historical enlightened Tibetans for a future project. Until then it stays on the shelf.


Image of the book cover

Hungry Hill
by Daphne du Maurier
"The Brodricks of Clonmere gain great wealth by harnessing the power of Hungry Hill and extracting the treasure it holds. The Donovans, the original owners of Clonmere Castle, resent the Brodricks' success, and consider the great house and its surrounding land theirs by right."
Considering how wonderfully Daphne du Maurier can write, I'm always disappointed by a less than wonderful story. It's a family saga, and I do like a saga, and it got better the more I read, but still - most of the people described come to a sticky end or are in some way damaged. The stern overbearing grandfather, the dissolute son, the shabby gambling-addicted widow, the beautiful but fragile sister who met an early death, enough already.


Image of the book cover

The Mitford Murders
by Jessica Fellowes
"It's 1919, and Louisa Cannon dreams of escaping her life of poverty in London, and most of all her oppressive and dangerous uncle. Louisa's salvation is a position within the Mitford household at Asthall Manor, in the Oxfordshire countryside. There she will become nursery maid, chaperone and confidante to the Mitford sisters."
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't very good either. I didn't believe in any of the characters, not even the Mitfords, who are real. The mystery was sufficiently mysterious but not too confusing; I think it was just the writing that let it down. Faintly interesting trivia: the author's uncle is the writer of the popular Downton Abbey TV series and she has also written books to accompany that (which I will not be reading).

Monday 23 May 2022

Retreat

Tree-lined track
Vajraloka, May 2022
All retreats are different - different locations, duration, teams, teachers and subjects. I went on one in north Wales, deep in the countryside at a small retreat centre, for ten days. There were only nine retreatants and four on the team - the main teacher, two support teachers and the cook. The theme was 'Simply Being': trying to increase awareness of the body and mind in the present moment through meditation. Lots of meditation.

This isn't a new topic for me, and one of my friends teaches the same subject. On this retreat the teacher drew heavily on the Tibetan Buddhist tradition with its chakras and five wisdoms of the enlightened mind and formless space and the Deep Heart. My friend comes at the topic in a way that is much more accessible to me, focussing on simple mindfulness while observing the senses.

Being a meditation retreat, there was a lot of sitting. Not all of it was compulsory, but if I'm on a retreat I try to turn up for everything, at least to start with. There's the usual sit before breakfast, then we had taught sessions in the morning and the afternoon and a ritual in the evening. It generally added up to between 4 and 5 hours sitting down each day.

Bluebells in a wood
So I had a few problems, especially in the first two days, when it became clear that a) I couldn't continue sitting on the chair I had, no matter how I arranged cushions and blankets to support my lower back and feet, and b) I barely understood any of the teaching. I arranged a mat to lie down on instead of sitting, which was much more comfortable but came with the risk of falling asleep, and then found a different chair which worked better. I still didn't understand much of the teaching, but I became less cross about it as the days passed.

After the first day, we were in silence for a week. I don't experience much hardship in this, as I'm in silence for most of my time at home. It wasn't even complete silence - the teacher still spoke and we could ask questions, we each had a fifteen minute review every day with one of the team, and we could join in the rituals in the evening. It did mean that despite spending ten days in close contact with twelve other people, I ended the retreat without knowing very much about them at all.

In our free time there wasn't much to do, but as the theme was 'Simply Being' we were generally encouraged to do nothing at all. The suggestion to avoid reading really only applied to novels; books about Buddhism were allowed, and luckily I'd brought one just in case. I had been finding it hard going at home, but compared to the inaccessibility of the teaching it suddenly seemed very straightforward. When I finished it, not having brought a second book, I read it again.

I also went for walks. Other retreat centres I've been to have put some effort into describing local routes for walks, but here they only had the standard OS map, which was falling to pieces through age and use. Nevertheless, on most days I managed to piece together walks in different directions, and on the last day I put them all together for a lovely long ramble. It did occur to me that in geography at school we were taught a lot of not very useful things about glaciation and rocks and oxbow lakes, but reading an OS map has definitely been a skill I've continued to use.

Pheasant at the window

Thursday 12 May 2022

Caddie once more

Caddie sitting regally on the grass
Caddie, May 2022
I recently had the pleasure of the company of Caddie, whom you may remember as the first dog I was asked to look after for Guide Dogs. Since that time she has completed her basic training and gone forward to advanced training, at which point she hurt her leg and had to come back to Leamington to recover. So she is older and wiser than when she pulled me all over the park, and so am I, having looked after four other dogs in the meantime.

I checked that Caddie would be able to travel and took her on a trip to celebrate dad's birthday with Lola II and Sister D. I say 'celebrate' but it would be difficult to discern any element of celebration in dad's demeanour, although he did like the chocolate ginger. I think we all had a nice time, and Caddie behaved beautifully, although I felt a little guilty about the quantity of black dog hair left on the floor for mum to clean up.

Caddie curled up with pig toy on the rug

There's been Buddhism and no badminton this week. Monday study has started again with a fairly practical module about meditation, Tuesday Buddhist group was led by someone else so I was free to enjoy rather than fret about arrangements, and on Thursday I went to the Birmingham centre to welcome back someone who went away to become an Order Member with a long name. Then on Friday I left for a 10-day retreat where participants are asked not to bring any leisure reading with them. I don't think I've spent ten days without leisure reading since I was five years old.

Anyway, that's where I am now, and this short post is mostly to showcase the gorgeous pictures of Caddie. And, as with Friston, there are more for future posts!

Caddie with Lola

Monday 2 May 2022

Covid-free at last

Friston at home
Friston, April 2022
Now that I am quite the experienced dogsitter I have been looking after Friston, who is a delightful and well-trained miniature Labradoodle. Not training to be a guide dog, just belonging to a friend who went away for a long weekend.

I still had Covid when Friston arrived, but I felt fine and he was not at all demanding other than wanting to be in the same room as me all the time. He came with food, treats and his own bed but he very much took to my yellow blanket, so wherever that went he lay down on it. We went for nice walks, watched TV together, and he was generally very good company. It's delightful to be greeted so enthusiastically first thing in the morning.

Friston in bed
I have many charming photos of Friston, not least because I felt it would be nice to send a picture to his owners every day (and not just to prove that he was still alive). A couple more will appear in future posts...

Apart from Friston, the great saga was the seemingly endless succession of positive Covid tests. I was so relieved about the negative tests on Days 13 and 14 because I hadn't had to cancel anything that couldn't be rescheduled up to that point, but would have been disappointed to miss a few things this week. 

The first commitment (rescheduled once) was my Role Specific Training for the Commonwealth Games. While I was Covid-positive I'd dutifully watched the recording of an online Orientation session which featured many famous athletes, all of whom were strangers to me because I'm only interested in badminton. The huge excitement that was whipped up in the audience was all about... The Uniform!!! How thrilling, a uniform! Will it be as good as the uniform for the last Games, or the one for London 2012? And the colour has been given a Birmingham-specific name - Balti Orange! How cool is that!! People seem to love a uniform, and I'm sure it is necessary, but really it's not worth getting quite so excited about it. Luckily because it was online I could speed up the delivery and not spend 90 minutes working myself into a lather about the uniform colours.

Anyway, Role Specific Training, in person, in a college in central Birmingham. All I had been told up to now is that I would be a Sport Specific Team Member supporting the Results, Timing and Scoring Team in the venue where the badminton is taking place. "As the data will be captured and recorded in real time, a high level of IT literacy will be essential. For this exclusive role, we have selected organised problem solvers who can stay focused under pressure and have strong knowledge of sport competitions and their rules of play." Yup, that's me.

There were about 25 other people on the course led by two trainers - one a Canadian woman and the other an Australian man. The first thing they told us was that RTS doesn't stand for Results, Timing and Scoring but Results Technology Services, the group responsible for timing and scoring and distribution of results. After we'd reviewed some of the Games corporate material (Bold, Respect, Unity, Movement) and had the obligatory conversation about The Uniform (we will each get a bag but not shoes) we saw a snapshot of the types of technologies we're talking about - the gadgets that capture and record timings, false starts, photo finishes, scoreboards, underwater lap counters, transponders, and some of the human backup systems just in case something doesn't work. Lastly we were told about the social media restrictions and how we shouldn't be using our phones or taking photos during competition. Fair enough.

There is certainly much more to Results Technology than I'd considered before, and I think it will be really interesting to see behind the scenes. There are two more in-person training sessions to go - Venue Specific Training where I think I meet the team I'll be working with, and then another session hands-on with Longines who actually bring the technology and show us how to use it just a couple of days before competition starts.

Friston lying on a sunny floor

The next commitment of the week was to welcome a Buddhist Order Member from London who has written a book about his experience with cancer, and is visiting groups around the country to promote it. It was the first time since the great reorganisation that I'd shared the house with a stranger, and good practice for when I welcome my Guest From Ukraine (I've been trying to think of a name for her, but GFU isn't pretty. Nor is My Ukranian Guest). As was entirely predictable, she is experiencing a delay getting here because of wanting to bring the cat, but fingers crossed for the end of May.

Then there was my Thursday badminton club AGM, where the Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and Team Captain retired. All these posts are held by a married couple who have been running the club for 44 years. He stopped playing at least 10 years ago but still turns up every week to chat and socialise; she still plays but would rather not. Their roles have been taken over by three people, but the club has shrunk from about 30 people before Covid to just 14 now. I hope it carries on, because I'm still going to my Buddhist class on Mondays so I'm relying on the Thursday club for all my badminton.

The visit from the gas engineer had to be postponed twice but 'twas on a Thursday morning that the Gas Man came to call. The call arose from the man doing the Gas Safety Certificate who noticed that the gas tap was so stiff that it needed attention from Cadent, who are responsible for the infrastructure. The Cadent man agreed that it was a safety issue and needed to be fixed, but unfortunately the small cupboard housing the meter didn't provide sufficient access, and the wall around it would need to be knocked down. We talked around this issue for a while, and he suggested that he would refer the matter to 'his team', and I haven't heard from him since. Knowing what I now know, I hope that's how it will stay.

Friston out walking