Alice Mason Artist

When I was a child, I used to have a recurring dream, wherein I was in a huge house, an old stone building and there was a secret door that only I knew about. I would enter the door and a whole new space opened up to me, and it was mine alone. There was something so enchanting, mysterious and secret about this labyrinthine special space, with doors and rooms and corridors where i could explore or escape from everyone and just hide.

Well today, I found a place like this, decades later. I am teaching English part-time in an independent school.  In an ancient abbey.  Sometimes all the classrooms are being used and today was one of those days,  and I had to ask my line manager where I could take my two Chinese students. It’s the end of half term and i had brought in one of my favourite films, Paris Texas, for them to watch on my laptop as a treat. She suggested I used this old classroom in the eaves. She found the keys and led me up through a network of stairwells and doors to the old classroom. I loved it. Now used as a dumping ground for piles of pillows used by the female boarders; there were old telephones, folders, pots of pens, rickety chairs and tables. It was perfect. I found my classroom and a secret place very similar to my childhood dreams.

There is so much more to this ancient abbey. Sometimes monks are walking about, along the corridors,  in and out of rooms.  They are real monks.  At first I thought they were apparitions, because they are not something you see every day, but they appear to work here too.   I don’t quite know what they’re up to.

There is something about me that needs to hide and retreat frequently. It feels sensual and exciting. I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of the secret classroom.

Autumn. An original painting in my etsy shop. All works are my copyright.

All works are my copyright.

England.. Land of austerity, Brexit, ‘ Get a Grip’ campaigns, where we are told to send our children to school unwell to keep up attendance numbers.

Land ruled by the Nasty party, selling off our NHS, destroying our libraries, dismantling our hard-won social schemes. Land of fragmented families, lack of social cohesion, where gang culture is following in the U.S.’ footsteps, where young people have fewer youth clubs, because public spending has been so dramatically cut.

England i never really loved you. Where bullies from the Bullingdon club have formed our governments and failing newspapers owned by billionaires control the minds of the masses. Where TV shows are about people baking cakes or even of people watching telly. Wtf? Wtf England?

Land of traffic jams and wind screen wipers; two layers of cloud sometimes.

Pubs are nice and so are the people. The self- depreciation, the humour, the belly laughs, the irreverence, the adorable neurotics, the ability to laugh at ourselves. The music.

My Dad.. he was English and the best kind of Englishman. A gentleman and a socialist, a musician and architect who rebuilt classic cars, loved real ale and was vulnerable yet strong. The handsomest man in the world.

English eccentricity; yep that still abounds. Women are strong here and don’t take bullshit. They are proud to walk alone and don’t need a chaperone.

Multiculturalism still thrives. Long may it thrive.

Random thoughts on a country which is supposed to be my home.

Ambivalent about that one.

England. I can never really love a country so easily persuaded to vote so stupidly for something about which you know fuck all…

Brexit. Don’t even get me started….

Written in mavaise humeur 😉

It is before familiarity sets in that we are most alive and porous to our environment, our relationships, and even ourselves. If you’ve ever gone travelling with a backpack, you’re familiar with this magic. Travelling where we don’t know anyone, or how to get about, we are forced into complete unfamiliarity. Though part of us is impatient to have community and anchors in place, this clumsy period is full of potential. We could reinvent ourselves or meet different kinds of people outside of our habitual type. Now imagine that we could be symbolic travellers every day of our lives by becoming friendly with the awkwardness of all that is unresolved in our hearts.

Toko-pa Turner.

It’s not often my great friends are here when I am, but yesterday two of my dearest ones and their son were in Malaga for a couple of days. We met at the beach, at a beachside restaurant and sat and ate, drank and swam. R is like a child-man, although tall and exceptionally handsome, he is wild and enthusiastic, with mad uncombed hair and shoes in shreds, with a spontaneity I have rarely seen.. B is beautiful, empathetic, fiery, loving and makes me laugh til i cry. On the beach, R went on a giant inflatable bouncy thing with his son for an hour, bought beer from every passing African salesman, and a massage from a Chinese masseuse.

I drove them back to their B and B near the airport and got lost in an industrial estate for half an hour. It was dark by now, so when i found the Autovia, I took the one sign-posted Cordoba Granada Seville, as in my haste to return to my mountains and self-imposed semi exile, I thought that would surely be right. It wasn’t. I drove through high mountains for a very long time but gradually Granada drew nearer. I stopped at a services to go to the loo and buy water. When i got out of the car a whole family of muslims were sleeping on cardboard on the ground, with a huge tarpaulin roof rack with all their possessions. I looked at the mother and little children laying there and the mother had her arm outstretched on the floor, palm upturned. I wasn’t sure if she was silently asking me for money as the gesture was so subtle. In the restaurant loo were beautiful teenage girls with their mother in traditional dress, with bare feet and uncombed hair. The dresses were colourful silks and long to their ankles. I couldn’t place their clothes, but could only think perhaps Afghanistani. I emptied my purse of change and thought I would give the money to the family by the car, but when i returned they were no longer looking at me, and the mother’s palm not upturned, and i was not sure if giving them money unmprompted would offend, so I didn’t give. I now wish i had as no doubt they were refugees and the awkwardness was only a typical British fear on my part of doing the wrong thing. The night was hot and still, filled with a peace and sadness of displacement and resignation. By the time i got to my car, another Muslim family were laying down mats on the ground. In my weary state I assembled the image slowly and realised they were praying. Spain seemed even more mysterious and full of people moving slowly through the landscape, to a hoped-for new life, laying down to pray and sleep in a service station car park somewhere in the mountains of a hot night at 11 pm. More longing and belonging. Or longing to belong. I missed my son and daughter and the constancy of N, whose intransigence sometimes frustrates me, but he knows the value and importance of home.

Belonging and longing are strange bedfellows. They seem to coexist within me throughout my life..

Maybe it’s because of my nomadic childhood with restless parents, but nevertheless they are there like guests in the house of my being, and somehow these mountains are some kind of metaphor for the containment within something larger, yet protective, and the adventures within. The discovering each little nuance from village to village; each so similar and yet so different, like each little bend in the road. The longing for adventure and time alone. The belonging and not belonging to a place, so familiar yet so alien.

Difficult to write on a phone keyboard, but thoughts that need expanding perhaps later.