Summer in Dorset is a picture of true heavenly beauty. The vivid green of the rolling hills moulding shapes under a piercing blue sky. Heavy leaf-abundant trees create draping canopies over the small country lanes leading to little areas yet to be explored, and the sound of the ice cream van interrupts a lazy afternoon of gardening and house maintenance.
On one particularly sweltering summer’s day, where most people seek shade and swimming pool relief; where the allure of melting ice cream cones and suntan lotion seems to be the activity du jour, you wouldn’t be to blame should you happen to find yourself in the heart of the Blackmore Vale, and more specifically in the sprightly little town of Sturminster Newton, drinking tea.
And that’s exactly what Englishman and I decided to do.
Across the bridge, just on the hem of the town, lies a beautifully restored Georgian building which is home to Rob & Michelle’s Comins Tea House, a tea-sanctuary that welcomes all visitors that walk through the door with muted scents of faraway lands and abundant hospitality.
Englishman and I had met Rob at a local country fair, and we’d decided to pay their tea house a visit. With my love of tea, and Englishman’s love for trying new things – it was the perfect combination for us to enjoy and be educated. More than this though, it was the thrill of finding something slightly different to the run of the mill tea and coffee shops you see dotted on every corner, in our own countryside. A little piece of a faraway land, at home, like us, in a little corner of the UK. It hardly mattered that we didn’t know our Assam from our Matcha, our Oolong from our Sencha, finding this little oriental gem was a treat that we’d both been looking forward to.
As we slowly made our way through our first cup of Oolong, with Rob carefully taking us through the traditional Gongfu tea ceremony, we chatted about the life of the teahouse, and the course of events that had brought them to this point. Rob, a self-proclaimed former tea sceptic, and his wife Michelle, had walked the Indian tea lands, smelt the leaves, felt the earth beneath their feet – and had lived and breathed a journey that would change their lives forever. And in this brief moment of sharing something so foreign, we all had a commonality that bonded us, over our little clay tea cups.
And as the day grew longer, and the 3rd hour had passed, and we’d tried the frothy Macha and the ice cold Sencha, time had escaped us completely, we’d realised. We’d chatted with a resident local called Chris who told us about travels, while philosophically sipping his Houjicha and we’d enjoyed the stretching afternoon sun that was creeping in from the patio outside, and warming the tips of our toes. We’d listened to Rob’s stories about creating the counter in the shop out of a local Ash tree, and the vintage school chairs that he’d sourced from an antique dealer in Cornwall. But most of all, we’d experienced something new.
As the River Stour meandered its way around Sturminster Newton and the Dorset sun set over a hill shrouded by a herd of lazy fresians, we felt blessed. We’d found something new, something foreign, but at the same time, something so familiar. And most of all, we felt welcomed, and we felt blessed.
There is something special about Christmas time in the country. You know when it hits. The air chills creep into your bones and the heating is switched on a little more than normal. The smell of cinnamon and cloves seem to follow wherever you go. Wet muddy boots replace pretty dainty shoes, and lie waiting at back doors and on front steps for the next time you need to pop outside to let the dog out for a wee.
Christmas in Beaminster is a truly beautiful season. And for me, slowly making that mental shift from the scenes on the Christmas cards, to the reality of a stone-built town filled with narrow streets and smoking chimneys is becoming a little more comfortable. The whistling Robin that sits on a snow-covered hedge is now the one sitting in my front garden. The Christmas wreath glistening with dew, is now the one hanging on my front door. The quaint country lanes that lead to town centres bubbling with warmth and fires and bakeries and pleasure, are now the ones that lead to our town square.
I remember the first Christmas I experienced in Beaminster. Slightly overwhelmed by the picture-perfectness of it all, you couldn’t blame me for being completely oblivious to the fact that this was, in fact, a new kind of reality for me. The entire thing felt like a movie set – I’d stepped into a picture-book of quintessential English traditions – and even a roasted Chestnut wouldn’t break my idyllic state of mind. It was blissful. Picture-postcard perfection.
This past Christmas was not very different. Except for one small thing – this was now my reality. No longer the drawing on a foreign Christmas letter, but a traffic-jam, soggy-leaking-boot, pothole-ridden reality. And it was ok. The Christmas lights still flickered, the chimneys still whispered puffs of steam as heating and fires warmed homes decorated with icicle lights, flashing Christmas trees and garden signs that read, “Santa – please stop here”.
This was the 3rd Christmas we have spent in our little town and no different to before, we ventured down to the town square to be part of the annual Christmas Lights Festival. The Christmas ‘edge’ had perhaps been taken off due to familiarity, but we were happy to feel part of a community that celebrates, and enjoys the triumph of another year completed. Poetically looking back at what has been, and triumphantly looking ahead to what may still be, we ate, drank and were merry.
Nibbling on melting marshmallows straight from the fire and bumping into familiar faces, this year I felt a little more ownership for my Christmas festival, and I felt proud. Englishman and I took a moment to just be quiet and absorb our surroundings. Christmas lights flickered from shop windows and pubs, overwhelming laughter and chatter emulated from every corner of our precious town square. Carol singers lifted the clouds away, and as 7pm struck the dark corner of our Town Square was immediately illuminated by the magical Christmas lights officially turned on for 2013’s Christmas season.
Delirious with orange and cinnamon Christmas scents and a satisfaction of feeling welcomed, we grabbed a hot chocolate from a local vendor and joined in with verse 2 of Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
The day I bought my first pair of proper Wellies was an exciting day. Ok, albeit being from a general well-known DIY store, but new Wellies they were nonetheless. I could say gumboots, but it wouldn’t have the same charm.
Wellies.
We’d been planning a trip to Wales, and I thought the visit (in the heart of the summer) required Wellies – you know, for sploshing around mud puddles in etc. Perfect excuse.
So I trundled back home, with a pair of spotted Wellies in the car, a bag of prawn-flavoured chips (because that’s what they are), and a new pair of secateurs to attack the Willow tree in the front garden that had decided it was growing a Belieber mop. I was nonchalant in my own little world, driving up the main road, when I spotted three High Vis bodies standing outside of the pharmacy. Arms folded. Stern Look upon faces. One with a notebook. They didn’t look like the law, but who was I to know. Instinctively I check my speedometer and notice that I’d been travelling slightly over the 20mph zone, and my foot extends to the brake pedal and casually slow down. Not making eye-contact as I pass, I make my way home.
Whilst crumbling my last Peppermint Crisp over the tart I’ve just made, I think about the High Vis brigade that I had just noticed and recall an advert for a community speed watch campaign that was being launched in our town. Living in the quiet countryside, where the largest criminal activity is perhaps a garden shed that has been broken into, or a drunken brawl that ended up with a blue eye and a sore head (I jest), I’ve become almost distant from the constant reminder of The Law, no matter the capacity thereof.
I look out of my lounge window and I see 2 school-kids walk by, a little lady on a motorised scooter, and a man with his dishevelled Springer Spaniel, and I feel miles away from the people selling their wares on street corners and robots (because that’s what they are), and beggars at the highway off-ramp intersections. I feel miles away from guys earning their keep by looking after my parked car, and feel stupid at the countless times that I felt irritated by their directing my reversing out of a parking bay, while I knew perfectly well how to drive! Ironically, I find myself suggesting exactly the same when I look at the way some people drive and park in the countryside. I hypocritically add, “One thing they could do with here, were some car-watch guys to help these people park”.
My beaded artwork of the African women hanging up their washing, hangs on the wall in my lounge. And I remember meeting Oscar on the corner of the N2 and Somerset West’s Victoria Road, where he was hard at work with this creation – and his fingertips bleeding from the countless time the wire had pierced his rugged skin. And I remember buying this massive work of art, while knowing that my flat was already packed up and ready to ship – and not knowing how I’d get this to the UK.
But here it hangs. And suddenly, it dawns on me that the High Vis Beliebers, fulfilling their role of traffic speed management, are no different to Oscar, nor to the tannie that bakes pancakes outside of the Bonnievale Spar on a Saturday morning. They’re merely doing their bit for their families and for their community, regardless of how it may appear to anyone else.
And suddenly, I feel very small, and so I put on some Johnny Clegg.
You have to love small-town newspapers and news reports. You know the ones I mean. They often use the words, “CHAOS!”, “MAYHEM”, “PANIC” or my personal favourite, “TERROR” in their headlines, and often in capital letters too. The ones with photographs of scowling parishioners or a man-hole with traffic cones in the middle of a single lane road, with a high-vis clad gentleman standing on the side of the road, arms folded.
I attended a town meeting once: my baptism into the small-town community and how they deal with things. The town had recently lost its main artery of life-giving through-traffic and pleasantries, when our faithful tunnel that covers the main road into and out of Beaminster collapsed after a particularly rough rainy season, unfortunately resulting in the death of two people who were passing by at the time.
The tunnel, which had now been out of action for several months, was on everyone’s agenda and the council were faithfully trying to provide open and transparent updates to all affected, and openly invite questions and feedback from anyone who had something to say.
The town meeting, held in the Town Hall, which can accommodate 240 seated guests in the main hall and an additional 80 in the adjacent room, was heaving. Townsfolk had turned out in droves, with queues of people heading out of the hall and into the street – all with the aim to hear what the authorities in charge of the tunnel restoration had to say. My Englishman and I were part of the few youngest there by about 20 years, but we felt determined to be part of this community – and be part of change. And more so, to hear what our local future held for us – with local businesses in dire situations and nearing the end of their “savings for a rainy day” purses with many struggling to keep their doors open.
As the council engineers and representatives methodically went through their PowerPoint slides, the townsfolk listened intently while every so often individuals scoffed and shook their heads. It was only towards the end of the presentation and the invitation for questions when the event truly became comical. Armed with invisible pitchforks and flaming torches, those who had voices wanted them heard. Despite heated debate, a few dramatic exits complete with Final Word Declarations, a few guffaws and a hand-clap or two, the meeting adjourned, and just like that, we all went back to our own lives and own routines.
Walking home, while munching on a chili stick we’d bought from a local Biltong supplier, my Englishman and I pondered the almost Shakespearean scene we’d just witnessed. And although comical and emotive which actually had us more amused than frustrated, we appreciated the determination and upset of the local residents. We understood their annoyance, but most of all, we felt compassion towards the businesses in the town who relied on the passing trade and it was in that moment that we made the decision that we would do something to become actively involved to promote the town for what it DOES have, and not focus on what it DOESN’T.
The air was slightly cool, with a slight hint of wisteria following us all the way up North Street. And amused as we were, we felt somewhat proud to be part of a community who were so determined to make something work. The proof of the pudding would naturally lie in what happened next. Telling would be in the difference between the Talkers and the Do-ers, and in the determination to get stuck in to turn a dismal, truly chaotic event of mayhem, and panic, into one of empowerment, productivity and most of all, triumph.
Now THAT’s a headline I’d like to read.
Hopefully I still will.
In the meantime, I’ll endure the continuously newsworthy articles of stolen teddy bears and car wing mirrors.
A little while ago, I wrote a piece. I didn’t quite know where I’d use it or if I actually ever would. But today we stand with a heaviness on our hearts as we pay homage to a true icon, an example of real humanity, a gracious leader but most of all, the symbol of our Freedom as South Africans – no matter where we find ourselves in the world.
My days seems to be a complete blur of words at the moment. Press, Social Media, Emails, everything – everyone is trying to use their words to capture a person who, quite simply, was so large that words, just simply, cannot explain or define.
I woke up this week telling my Englishman, “This is when I miss being home, the most”. I want to grieve alongside my people. I want to share in that Ubuntu. And even as I sit here and try to make sense of my thoughts and the words I’m trying to formulate, I’m muddled with sadness, pride, humility, anger. I stream my favourite South African station while I try to work.
As the day unfolds, and my mind makes sense of the expanse of messages and words of sympathy flooding my visual world from every corner of this Earth, it hits me that I am anything but alone in my solitary world – and that the embodiment that is Madiba, touched hearts of nations – and at once, I do feel part of a cause between these 4 white walls of post-it notes, empty coffee cups, empty printing cartridges and a heater that is working overtime to defrost my toes. And I am filled with admiration at a life that didn’t mean to become anything more than he was, but in doing that – became one of the greatest examples of grace that this world has ever known. And my sadness at being away from home melts into a heated pride.
So here’s what I wrote – my attempt to make sense, using my words.
Last night, I lay awake. Husband snoring next to me, cat taking up 75% of my side of the bed, iPad resting on my chest. Twitter page open and, as if robotic, as if programmed, the old familiar swiiiiish PLOP sound keeps me company as I read one tweet after the next, that capture 1 single search term:
#Madiba
Father of our nation. Democratic Giant. Fighter of our Faith. Hero of our human rights. Peace-maker. Peace-keeper.
Tata.
Like most other South Africans in this world, and I’m sure not only South Africans, but supporters all over the world, I spent most of last night with my eyes fixed to news reports and social media discussions. How I longed to be in my home country and feel that same communal spirit we felt as a united people – the day Francois Pienaar held that Rugby World Cup trophy in the air… the day we all, black, white, pink and blue, took to the streets dancing, singing, holding on to each other; for what that trophy represented, was so much more than just the win at a rugby match. It was so much more than supporting our boys in their green and gold. It represented that for the first time, since our first steps as a democratic and free country, we could stand together – united – legally – and we could celebrate. We could recognise our differences, we could praise our similarities, but most of all, we could celebrate in the knowledge that, as a nation, we had faced what the world had deemed “brink of civil war” and we had stood up, shoved it in the face of the doom-sayers and said, “We are South Africa. Hear us roar!”.
I lay awake reading the tweets. Tears streaming down my already damp cheeks.
So in this quiet moment of turmoil, and feeling a million miles away from the nation I love, the culture I drink up, my family, my friends – in this quiet turmoil feeling completely alone and insignificant, I took solace in my Twitter community who, where the prognosis was nothing but despair, echoed my dreary heart and broadcasted words of wisdom, celebration, praise, and most of all, gratitude.
And I feel loved.
Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika.
“He not only freed the oppressed. He freed the oppressor. And that makes him incredibly powerful.”