mud-wrestling

and other things

In my great-grandmother’s generation they made almost everything that they needed themselves. She grew hemp and flax, and retted and hackled and spun the fibre to weave cloth for shirts and sheets. Spun wool and knitted it into socks and jumpers and mittens, wove blankets and the skirts of their national dress. Took raw wool and felted it into boots “filča zābaki” (what the Russians would call “valenki”), wearing them in winter with extra soles made from leather that were tied on with straps. They cut timber that they needed to heat the house, from the forest that my great-grandfather managed. Kept hens and geese, cultivated many potatoes and a lot of dill. They raised a pig each summer that, transformed into salted and smoked meats, fed them throughout winter. Even in her seventies my aunt would still shudder at the thought of the poor pig screaming when it met its fate. Not everything about self-sufficiency is romantic. They carved bowls and spoons from wood. Cooking pots were few, mostly well-seasoned cast iron, passed from one generation to the next.

I don’t know if they made anything from clay other than the pipes that the odd hemp leaf met its end in, but I find it tempting to think they did. My mother, displaced by the war from childhood memories of that small Latvian farm that became more idyllic with each passing year certainly inherited a diversity of interests. She sewed all our clothes (until as teenagers we wanted jeans), knitted us beautiful jumpers, was for a while a potter who made a series of voluptuously shaped bowls to grace our dining table, wove rugs for a while, and wanted to be a painter but refused to use “good” art materials until she thought she was good enough. When we were briefly visiting Granada (my parents were indulging my teenage interest in Moorish architecture)¹ she heard a luthier playing a guitar as we walked past his shop at twilight and absolutely had to purchase the instrument, taking lessons on our return to Australia and for a time becoming quite proficient. At some point she discovered Reiki and within a few months was designated a master. The one truly constant interest she maintained throughout her life was gardening. I think we can safely say she was neurodivergent, another attribute she ‘gifted’ me, too.

These past few months I have been reviving my intermittent interest in shaping forms from malleable mud, finding it excellent therapy. When focussed on clumsily coaxing some kind of vessel from a lump of clay I find that it chases all other tangled skeins of thought from my mind, much as playing the saxophone does, except that I remain with an object in hand that, no matter how misshapen or primitive, gives me great satisfaction (along with a much deeper appreciation for the true skill my mother had when making those gorgeous bowls!). My mokos have been keen to join in, so given my editing of my latest course was this past week interrupted by equipment failures, I thought I would attempt a small pit-firing.

It does look like rather a lot of fuel for a modest outcome, but much of it was the disposing of scrubby things in my garden that had succumbed to the drought. I’ll be giving the ash to the hens for their de-miting dust baths or putting it on the garden to balance out the acidity of the compost and assorted herbivore poo so essential to a productive vegetable patch. And to be brutally frank, whether I burned that pile or not won’t make a blind bit of difference in the general scheme of things, given the potential for Armageddon that is presently blooming on the horizon…but I will make up for it by planting more trees this week. I also make up for the extravagance of occasional fires (for dye pots as well as clay pots) by living in an unheated, non-air conditioned house. It balances out, I think.

That first photo doesn’t have much to do with the writing above other than to illustrate yet another interest, the making of string. I included it because it was taken in Latvija on my last journey there with my mother. We were staying in a cottage in a national park somewhere near Cēcis and I’d discovered there was beautiful red ochre by the river…unfortunately down a rather steep cliff. So I twined string from a found linen shirt, tied a weight of tangled wire to the end and managed to haul some up to play with.

You can see the ochre on the lower right hand side of the picture. Beautiful, but not a place to try and climb down to. I’m hoping to visit Latvija next year, and shall make a spirited attempt to find that river again. At very least, to collect a small sample, this time for the making of a little paint, not just the daubing of string.

Last week I took you to the Murray with me, and in doing so was prompted to rummage for images of other rivers dear to my heart.

The Tay is one I haven’t visited in a while. For about seven years (BB…before Brexit²) I taught classes annually in Newburgh, usually with the river playing a leading role. There was a magical quality to exploring the riverbed at low tide, mudlarking for treasures, and often we made gifts for the river in return.

One year we even made peerie pink boats to offer to the incoming tide. The river made its own music as is chuckled and sang its way to the sea, then a moment of quiet at slackwater followed by a different song as the salt tide made its way upstream. One day I hope to stay near the Tay again, and reacquaint myself with its stories.

I find that river endlessly fascinating.

But for now, I have other fish to fry. I had planned to release a new course tomorrow, but the gods of technology had other ideas. First the “magic touchpad” lost its mystical qualities, then the “magic mouse” I purchased online to replace it also developed a quirk five minutes after unboxing, and refused to ‘click’. It took three hours on the phone to Apple yesterday and another thirty minutes today to coax these vital objects back into cooperation. This morning I also broke a tooth on a crispy piece of toast, so tomorrow instead of launching a course with great fanfare I shall be off to the dentist. Thank goodness it wasn’t a conspicuous one (and fingers crossed the universe doesn’t do that to me in Morocco).

I’m taking the interference by the Dogs Above as a sign that I was trying to accomplish too much, so I shall be revising the course offering and trying to make it more digestible before unleashing it on my community of armchair sailors.

For now though, I’m off to bed, as the dentist is two hours away and I’ll need an early start to arrive on time.

Take care out there, friends, the whirled is getting hairier by the day.

1. Yes. I know. I have had a most fortunate life.

2. I didn’t have to complete any formalities back then as I have a European passport. Now I’m not so sure.