Overwhelm

Woodland Cemetery, March 2026

I've been focussing on friends and GRUHI while keeping an eye on the water issues and also negotiating with the painter and scaffolder. I have a date for Severn Trent to investigate further, and a start date for the scaffolding permit. It's been a bit overwhelming, to be honest.

Anyway, recent GRUHI success stories include donating another box of stuff to a friend who works in a charity shop, another couple of bags to Action 21, and actually selling my tenor saxophone for real money, to someone in my music group who is collecting instruments on behalf of a Scout group. It takes a long time to list things on eBay so I'm only using it for the things that are either easy to send by post or are worth something - so far I've sold a Chromecast Audio device and my Clavinova electric piano, which gave me such pleasure for so many years but realistically I'm not going to play any more. And Lola II has one if I do get desperate.

I've been trying to keep in touch with friends despite feeling as though I'm doing a full time job at the moment. With various people I have gone for walks, seen a film, gone to a comedy show, had a Zoom call and a telephone call, and a coffee morning. In the last week I managed badminton twice, Buddhist group twice, board games, a concert, U3A walking group and spent two days with mum, accompanied by Lola II and Sister D for a trip to the cemetery to see dad's freshly installed gravestone. It was an unusually hot and sunny day and the woodland cemetery full of daffodils, including some on the grave that we definitely hadn't put there. Lola II placed a beautiful boulder she has decorated on the grave, and then we nearly got locked in as we hadn't really taken account of the fact that the cemetery closes at 4pm.

UJ is back in town, although she's staying with friends and is not sure where or when she will settle. She came round to collect the few letters for her that had arrived; we went out for a meal and it was very interesting to catch up. The winter in Ukraine has been particularly cold and conditions are terrible; she thinks her parents may be coming round to the idea of leaving. Nothing can be relied upon, no planning for the future is possible, and Russia has gained from the war between the US and Iran. More than four years since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine and it seems no nearer to ending.

The Smaller (but still Big) Event

Sheet folding lesson in the laundry, Adhisthana, August 2025

So I left you as the Big Event started on Thursday evening, when more than 300 people were to be found within the site. Many were camping, many found themselves squeezed into rooms normally for two people with an extra mattress or bed. My friend T and I were allocated the solitary hut that I stayed in last year on my own, but I put my tent up just in front of it so we had a bedroom each.

Our space for creating the meals for people with restricted diets was an ordinary kitchen without any industrial scale equipment, but we were producing food for between 30 and 45 people per meal. We prepared cold food and warm food - with the facilities we had it was almost impossible to provide hot food. To start with we only had one oven shelf, but two more were bought to make full use of the oven. We didn't have any help with washing up on the first day, but we got a bit more help after pointing out that we were doing 12-hour days on our own. It didn't make the day's work any shorter but at least we could plan for the next day while someone else was dealing with the washing up.

In terms of the food - our customers loved tahini sauce (tahini, lemon juice, add water until pouring consistency) and put away about a litre of it every day. Mashed potato was another big hit despite the hot weather as it's not usually offered by a retreat kitchen. On the whole everyone seemed to find enough choice and there were many compliments and thanks. One particularly difficult customer started bringing us a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice every day towards the end of her stay.

The atmosphere was wonderful, and it helped that the weather was perfect. At meal times clumps of people could be found in every corner - on chairs and benches, sitting on the floor, sitting outside their tents, inside in the dining rooms, all happily chatting and eating. It felt like what I imagine a Buckingham Palace Garden Party might be like (except without the Royals). There was so much to do that I hardly emerged from the kitchen at all, but on a couple of days I managed to walk about for half an hour and met a few of the people I knew. That was very worthwhile.

Then the crazy busy weekend finished, and we were straight into the next event, which had fewer people booked onto it but lasted a week. After the first evening I had a whole day off, which I spent with Sister D and Lola II. It was scorching hot, so after a walk up to the local viewpoint we spent some time indoors looking at the different buildings and exhibits before wandering down to see the fruit trees and the solitary cabin. They asked some really interesting and challenging questions that really made me think about what this all means to me, and why I find it so important.

My cooking friend T had to go home the next day but was replaced by another friend, W, whom I'd also invited. Instead of catering to upwards of 30 people we were now down to 'large dinner party' size of about 10 people, which could have been managed by a single person except that I was due to have another day off and we needed a stand-in who knew the ropes. I had a bit of difficulty with some Spanish speakers who decided they didn't like the food in the main kitchen and started coming to the restricted diet kitchen even though they didn't have any intolerances, which meant that we ran short on a few options. (This forced me to examine my own particular views on fairness, kindness and generosity.) So towards the end of the week we were catering for more like 15 people.

My attempt to manage my own diet completely failed after the week of setup. When I was actually cooking, in the kitchen for 12 hours at a time, surrounded by all sorts of tasty and interesting foods, it was utterly insane to imagine that I could maintain any restraint. But under home conditions I intend to return to abstinence.

Photo credit: Sister D