I ogled a castle

I am staying in a castle at the moment.  Be it a rather small castle. This castle will be my accommodation for two more days. 

It is in the north of England.  Far north.  Just a tad north-west of Newcastle and only a few miles short of Scotland’s border.  This castle is one of a number of little castles in the Northumberland area.  From what I gather it has a long history of involvement in the Scottish-English marauding and battles.  I shall not maraud or battle but enjoy some quiet, self-time in this castle and its surrounds.

Why here and why this castle?  Because I can.  

And because in July after Sister Delwyn reminded me of its existence it was added to my ‘If I Had Time I Would Like To Do’ list.  By chance I found I have the time.  

The ‘castle’ (it really is now only a largish house but is known as a castle and shall continue to refer to it as such) is called Ogle Castle.  The first written history about the castle, that I am aware of, was in 1341 which means it would have been built prior to that date and most probably in the century or three earlier as the first recorded history of a person named Ogle is lodged in the Magna Carta in 1066.  A chap called Humphrey.  A descendant of the Saxons.  It was in 1341 that King Edward 111 had the Ogle manner named as a castle, Ogle Castle. 

                       

My paternal grandmother was an Ogle.  At home on my bookshelf is a book written on the history of the Ogles from New Zealand back through the centuries in Britain to their known origin.  The book, or journal as it really is only a journal, was given to me by my grandmother’s daughter in recent years.  Pity is, it would be a good few years since I read the book and of course, due to much of it referring to the British history, I did not retain too much of that which I read.  Consequently when Sister Delwyn reminded me there was an Ogle Castle in Northumberland I expressed surprise.  My floppy disc brain always takes a while for it to whir and regurgitate the information stored and it wasn’t until much later that some of the history I had read in our family book began to return to the somewhat failing hard drive.

Ogle is not a common name, there are a few in New Zealand, some in Australia and a number in the US, all descendants of original immigrants from Britain.  There is no doubt that any Ogles in the world today will have some DNA link to one another.  And that DNA would be traced back to here, this very place I am presently at.

Therefore, once I knew I would be in the UK longer than anticipated the concept of visiting Ogle Castle became a possibility.  And here I am.  Writing this sitting in a quaint, yet solid four-poster bed, in a room that has a large stone fireplace, and the room has windows on both my left and my right overlooking beautiful gardens.  The windows give one the feel they have been thrown back in time to the 12^th or 13^th century – they show the walls of the castle are two foot thick.

                

The view from my bedroom window:

                

I took afternoon tea in one of the lounges yesterday, its fireplace was huge.  Delwyn and I visited Hampton Court Castle in July and the fireplace in that castle’s kitchen was enormous, big enough to stand up in – the fireplace here is almost as large.  

               

Over the centuries the Ogle Castle fell into ruin, so much of it has disappeared leaving only this present building which was only one small wing of the original castle.  Thankfully this has survived, be it for many years as farm buildings but in recent years reconverted into living accommodation and now run as a private bed and breakfast hotel.  Probably one of the more unique ones I have stayed in during my many stays in various places these past four months.

The castle is for sale, at quite a nominal price, $NZ 2,600,000.  Well, the castle is not for sale, this left over part of the castle which is now described as a ‘detached 9 bedroom house’ on the castle estate is for sale.  With its nine acres and separate stone built 3 bedroom, 2 lounge house at its entrance way.  A snip of a price.  

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-26983774.html

                    

Should you feel like a life style break, something different to do for a couple or more years, buy this place.  I am sure you would enjoy the English country life style – I note there is a market day in the local town today, the ideal place to sell the eggs from the hens you would have running on the property.  Or the bread you bake in the enormous fire places.

I have already seen the area is popular with local cyclists as had to negotiate passing three or four on my journey here yesterday.  On these lovely, country lanes negotiating the passing of a cyclist is not an easy or relaxed task.  With the lanes being so narrow and inevitably winding, with the hedgerows so high one cannot see any oncoming traffic, or sheep, there is little opportunity to pass safely which means one tends to have to drive at a cycling speed for a period before planting the foot on the accelerator for the only one hundred metre opportunity of passing.

And one can swim locally too. Before checking into the castle yesterday I visited the local town and to my annoyance parked right outside the town swimming pool.  Annoyance because I had no swim suit or goggles or towels with me and it would have been prime opportunity to test my memory recall on the ability to swim again.

After this scribe I shall don my rather tired and semi-redundant looking running shoes and head out onto those narrow lanes and negotiate my way around the bends and see how well I can run for a whole fifteen minutes, before turning around and returning the fifteen minute journey.  That will be about it.

The nice thing is, somewhere on that thirty minute journey I will most certainly be treading some footsteps, some pathway that some far, far and distant relative of mine would have tread back in the twelfth or thirteenth century.   Cool aye!

                     

 

    
               The Ogle motto is:
                 Prenez en Gré 
                "Accept in Gratitude"

That damn mirror again

Oh God, I did it again.  I looked in the mirror.

We were going out to dinner at a local beachside restaurant so I showered, dressed and went to put a little make up on to make myself look nice and presentable.  So I stood in front of the mirror and looked.  Then looked again.  And thought ‘damn’!   

Damn.  Damn. Damn it.

When he who created man and woman put them on earth, why did he have to have them age?  If he was so great and so clever, why could he not have placed us on this earth and kept us looking at our prime, forever?

Don’t tell me it was to keep the population down – that we had to age and die to allow the new generation through.  If he was clever enough to make us he should have been clever enough to give us the ability to procreate until the earth was populated with exactly the right number of humans to keep it a vibrant, productive and a happy place to be, forever.  Then he could have all our reproductive bits drop off, or out, and keep the earth’s population maintained at one perfect level, thereby keeping us ageless. For ever and ever.

But he didn’t.

I sighed, that mournful-type sigh of resignation and continued to apply lipstick, with the aid of the strongest glasses I had so that the aging and forever fading eyesight could ensure the lipstick went on the lips and not all over the chin.

Then I remembered.  I remembered Tony.   I remembered those lovely words he used to say to me so often whenever I complained of the aging processes on our bodies.  I wrote about it last year, and will paste the relevant part of that writing here:

….then I was reminded of what Tony had said many, many years ago when I first had a clear, magnified look at my face and bemoaned the fact to him that age, sun and outdoor pursuits are not conducive to keeping at bay the inevitable results of time, ozone holes and weather exposure.  No longer would there ever be a lineless, clear, smooth appearance on this facial full frontal.

Darling Tony immediately responded to my negativity with his endearing, positive retort, “Well my sweet, that’s why whoever our maker was had our eyesight decline with declining years too.  Because with my eyesight getting worse with age I can’t see any of those faults you moan about, I can’t see those lines and imperfections.  To me you look as beautiful as you ever were when we first met.” 

That was so Tony.

The reflection on that memory had me smile.  It brought me back to reality and I relooked at the face in the mirror and reminded myself that looking back at me was a face with a life time of living memories.   

Every line, crease, scar and every sun spot was made with and by memories.   

That young, lineless, clear, smooth face of many decades ago was poignantly naive, gingerly unsophisticated, unsophisticatedly inexperienced and had not yet lived.  This face in the mirror now has lived;  it represents a life that has been full but not yet a full life, and I should be proud of it. 

I am.

        

Talk About It

This past year has certainly been a very tough year for a number of people I care for dearly. Since Tony’s passing there have been further deaths to mourn, further losses for my family or friends to endure.

It has seemed to me that Tony’s dying was the first of an episode of untimely departures; not that any death could be called ‘timely’ but for those around me there have been awfully unexpected departures of loved ones.

Nine months after Tony’s death my much loved and ever energetic step-mother passed away, only a week after competing in a 10 kilometre walking event in Rotorua.  Between her death in December and May, the month I left New Zealand this year, there were two other dreadful and sad losses occur to people who really matter to me.  

Since arriving in the UK three months ago one more dear friend and two other long term, sweet and lovely friends have departed our living world.

The obvious conclusion is that I have reached the age when my contemporaries will die as we are in the latter part of a normal life span.  But not all of those who died in this past period were contemporaries.  There were heart breaking tragedies.  The tragedies are the hardest for family and friends to deal with, due to their total unexpectedness.  The trauma of the unexpected only adds to the agony of the sudden bereavement.

It is not until you have experienced death of someone you deeply love that you can truly comprehend the heart break, anguish and misery it gives those closest to the departed.  I know, as even though I lost both of my parents some years ago, the effects of losing Tony, my partner, my husband left me in a  far deeper chasm of torment and misery than when I lost my parents.  We live with the knowledge that inevitably a parent is going to depart – and as great a loss as it is, there is a deeper, yet more agonising grief of the untimely loss of a partner or a child.

Losing Tony has given me a greater understanding and insight of the difficulties families and friends of those who have recently departed are going through, at the time of the initial bereavement and in the many months and years that follow.  A much greater understanding.

Due to my own experience I know I have better tools with which to be a more helpful and supportive friend, for which I feel grateful.  Not a great way to learn, but at least a learning has come out of it, as I hope does for many others. 

Wherever possible I shall share with others the value and skills of what Tony’s death has taught me, and whenever possible I shall point the learnings out if I consider it would be helpful for the future for anyone who listens.

We have all gone to funerals or wakes and shed a tear for the departed and the family they have left behind but we have not always fully comprehended the depth at which some may be feeling that grief.  Naturally so, until it occurs to us.

And of course, the post period of someone dying is the time when those left need to feel the support and comfort from all areas of their lives – whether home, family, work, social, sport. Knowing there are people there to reach out too is vitally important.  Usually it happens that there is a rallying call for those closest to the inner circle to do just that, rally around and provide the support and love required to help the bereaved in those challenging days afterwards.

And then time passes.  Months pass.  The support is there, but there with less intensity.  Friends stop calling in as often, the phone calls become less, and the invitations to socialise become less.

It is not a criticism this occurs, it is a mere fact of life that people’s lives are busy and there is only so much support in grief time many people can give before moving on with their own general lives.

Then a year passes, maybe two.   To everyone’s relief the one left behind appears to have moved on with life and overcome the initial obvious signs of grief.  Those who have lost partners are often lucky enough to meet someone else, others don’t.  Sometimes by choice, often not.

During the past three months here in the UK I have spent times with others who have gone through their own distressing losses.  Two tragically, two along similar lines to me (which in our view is still a tragedy but am sure the reader understands the difference).  

Whilst some may deduce that my being with others who have lost a loved one could possibly create a depressingly solemn and mournful situation, it has actually done the opposite.  After all, we have all had something very life changing in common.  We have all shared the deepest grief and despair one could possibly endure.    That has given us mutual understanding.

In each case with each person I spent time with it was the mutual understanding which gave us all the common thread that made talking about our losses sometimes up lifting, supportive, often encouraging, always enlightening and many conversations were delightfully happy.

It felt good.  Because we could talk about it.  Certainly there was the odd tear shed, but hey, that’s what losing someone does, and very often that was momentary before the conversation ended with a touch of humour or warmth on our reflections.

There was never a time limit on these conversations.  They were never planned.  They were never melancholy or distressing.  They were naturally occurring through a mutual understanding, a bondship almost.  

They were nice.  They were nice because they allowed each of us at some time, time to talk.  To talk about the loss, the grief.

That is what all this long script is about.  Talking about it.

I am one who experienced bereavement fairly recently.  One gorgeous lady lost her loved one eleven years ago, yet the loss is as great now as it was then.  I know, because we talked about it.

We talked about our own experiences, the way we managed our ways through, the serious, the light hearted and macabre of our losses.  We talked and shared.  It was good.  It felt uplifting.  And there was an almost relief of a heavy weight being share and lifted off the shoulders. A little of the burden lessened.

Uplifted and unburdened because of talk.

It was this that had most of us realise a commonality that we had each noticed.  A thread that became a theme.  And that was - the friends, associates or family, who we see or meet whether regularly or infrequently, who don’t, or won’t talk about it.

All of us found it baffling, sometimes irritating, sometimes awkward, often perplexing – and usually difficult to understand.  People who won’t talk about it, or seemingly can't talk about it. Whether it is because they don’t know what to say, or whether they feel awkward or embarrassed; whether they think it will upset the bereaved and therefore try everything possible to completely skirt around the topic. Or whether they don’t want to raise sad memories for either the bereaved or themselves. Or whether it is just plain inconvenient and they are not the least bit interested in conversing about it, or you, or the parted one -that is, those that don’t give a damn and don’t care.

Each one of us had experienced glaring examples of this, of the elephant in the room.  Of being somewhere with someone or some others where silence seemed a preferred option to them rather than bringing the deathly topic up.

Of all the people I have had who come to visit, or call, or who I happen to encounter in the supermarket, the gym, at dinner parties, over a coffee, on a run, a walk or at a social function, the ones I have truly appreciated the most are those who have the intelligence and sensibility to say to me, “Do you want to talk about it?”  

It is as simple as that.  “Do you want to talk about it?”  

The best support a friend can give is to ask if it will help to talk, and if it is not wanted the person has the option to say, no. Let it be their choice to talk or not – if they would rather not then move onto another subject.  The weather is always a good fall back!

It’s so easy to do. It stops those awkward moments, the squirming moments of finding something else to talk about. It is better than the short, yet long moments of deathly silence.  The elephant in the room moments that you pretend you cannot see.

“Would you like to talk about it?”   “Do you want to talk about it?”  Then talk.