Garden Archives - Wolfie Wolfgang

Coming out of my cage

Colin Bell — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 14:11:01 +0000

I have been reluctant to post my blogs over the last few months of lockdown and its aftermath here in Lewes, UK. I didn’t feel I had much to add to the millions of comments about the pandemic over the last eighteen months as I am convinced that no one would be interested in what it was like to be a privileged, white, no-longer young, middle class European male during the.time when so many people suffered so much more than I have locked-in here in my two-hundred year old terraced house with lots of narrow stairs in a beautiful historic town in south-east England.

And anyway, not much really changed for a writer like me. Like most of my kind, I don’t really go out much anyway and I mostly work alone in a small room with a computer and some books. So there aren’t many dramas here. OK, I shaved off my beard for a bit and then regrew it.

no beard

I tended my small urban garden and watched the seasons change out there in my small piece of England.

I was able to not just carry on keeping fit with my personal trainer Gyles Abbott at Soulfit Studios https://www.wearesoulfit.com/about-soulfit but I have got fitter than I have been for years.

Gyles Abbott

I actually took on extra fitness training too with Soulfit’s Kieran Brooks, an enthusiastic and dynamic former baller-dancer, who is now giving me regular one-to-one classical ballet lessons. It began as a bit of a ‘could-I-dare-I’ challenge to myself and it has turned out to be more than a short-term experiment. I’m loving finding something so different and so inspirational at a time in my life when I’d thought I already knew all of my abilities and limitations.

Kieran Brooks

I have also been carrying on with learning Italian and, after reaching a 687 day streak with the online languages app Duolingo have taken on a new online teacher, an excellent Sicilian, based in Venice, called Elio Ministeri – he is taking me through my paces and picking up on my many errors.

Elio Ministeri

And, as I did before the pandemic, I’ve carried on writing poetry and fiction – some publication dates have slipped because of lockdown, but, even with the pandemic, I had some more Fibonacci poetry published in the online journal The Fib Review http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

One of the poems even commemorated my beard – the other one was about life, age and death. I suppose that was inevitable after the passing of my mother in April at the grand age of 106. I locked down a bit after her death, not just in mourning for an extraordinary woman, but also for an end to an era in my life and the life of my family and, inevitably, all the duties that fell to me in sorting out her estate. I will honour her memory and her long interesting life in a later blog, I hope.

Here in the UK, we are seeing the ending of the pandemic restrictions, and the beginnings of hope for the future. I share that hope and I am beginning to celebrate the feeling of coming out of my cage. I haven’t seen many of you for a long time now, but lets get back together soon and, I promise, I shall come back to this website which has been masterfully restored and improved by an amazingly patient man called Matt Artley.

So much remains the same and much has changed during this difficult time. The season is changing again too as we move towards September so, for today, I will leave you with signs of fruition – the apples and tomatoes are ripening with high summer flowers outside by my dustbins. See you all soon.

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The second Covid-19 lockdown here in the UK allows me to work at staying fit.

Colin Bell — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 19:15:01 +0000

The hot days of the summer lockdown here in the UK have passed but now it’s second time round for the covid-19 precautions and, in classic English autumn style, it has been raining and, more importantly, it has got cold. No excuse to stop my fitness regime though. Back in July I started doing 25 pressups a day and I have carried on ever since – rain or shine.

I do a different variation on the basic pressup every day each week – now I have seven favourites which target different muscles. I plan to do a blog about these some time soon. For now, just let me say that pressups are perfect for daily no-nonsense fitness-training and I can really feel the difference since I’ve been doing them.

I’m a member of a martial arts club here in Lewes, White Crane Fighting Arts http://www.whitecranefightingarts.com/ but the club has had to close down during lockdown. At home, I have continued my daily 66-moves Tai-chi practice which in our White Crane form is really a soft form of kungfu known as Shuang Yang Bai Hè Rou Ruan Quan or White Crane Soft Boxing. The aim is not just to look gracefully elegant (unlikely in my case) but also to use the soft martial techniques not just for self-defence but for fitness. It is a method I have been doing for a long time now and, hopefully, I will be able to carry on (and improve) for the rest of my life, even into extreme old age.

I am not allowed to do Kungfu full-contact sparring any longer because of the brain haemorrhage I suffered 12 years ago, but I have continued to practice my four White Crane Kungfu patterns and hope, one day, to learn a few more. I go through them every morning after Tai-chi and my 25 pressups. I have never been much good at it, but I have done it and enjoyed it for so long now, that it is a permanent part of my self-image. It is still useful too – a few years ago, I used a lower crane block to dispatch a pick-pocket on the Pont du Nord bridge in Paris.

I end my morning sessions with a set of fourteen moving-meditation exercises said to have been invented by a 5th or 6th century Buddhist monk known as Da Mo (or Bodhidharma) who is said to have brought Buddhism and martial arts from India to China. These exercises, are a bit like Tai-chi in that they are supposed to look calm and gentle but they are, in fact, really difficult and what your muscles would recognise as hard work. The fourteen exercises involve doing various stretches and moves which use the whole body, in horse stance, knees bent, whilst regulating the breath and letting the mind focus on abstraction. I’m far from getting the posture right, but I’m still trying. One day, I might get to the abstraction bit, but, for now, it’s enough to get through them in a state of calm while those leg muscles are screaming stop this madness now.

These morning exercises are a supplement to my two hour-long personal trainer sessions a week with Gyles Abbott of Soul Fit in Lewes who has been putting me through a custom-built fitness routine which has grown incrementally now for nearly three years as I have got fitter. https://www.wearesoulfit.com/personal-training During lockdown we are meeting either in the park or on Zoom. It is really enjoyable if you like to feel your body performing in the way it was designed. I am getting there, I think.

When each morning session is over, I promise you, breakfast and coffee taste better than you can imagine. And I don’t feel so guilty about spending so much time writing at my computer these days…the other advantage of lockdown, is that there are few distractions from getting on with the 5th draft of my fourth novel.

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Wolfie Caged

Colin Bell — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 18:01:17 +0000

How I survived lockdown.

I have finally got round to writing a blog now that, wisely or foolishly, the great British lockdown is being eased. Until now, I haven’t quite managed to write about this, the strangest of times. I was last on here in February for the launch of my poetry collection, Remembering Blue, http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-poetry-colin-bell-remembering-blue.htm After that memorable event, my last public adventure was when I went to London to see the impressive Troy exhibition at the British Museum.

Then the curtain came down on my life outside my home here in Lewes.

Here are some photographs and thoughts to mark the passage from then to now. Just one person’s view on the extraordinary and, for many, the often tragic interruption to normal life that was, and still is, Covid-19. I know that I have been very lucky.

The reality sank in over Covid-19 and the long lockdown when I looked out of my window one evening. Here is my street in those weird days of silence – days went by with no one out there, it seemed. There were no cars either, but all over the world we had a clear and clean blue sky – an unexpected plus.

On TV, I watched the Italians suffering and showing a brave face – it couldn’t happen here could it?

I had been having my roof retiled and, luckily, the job was finished just before the lockdown rules came into force. So, at least, I wasn’t going to be subjected to scaffolding being my only view.

Instead of scaffolding I got this face at my window next morning – the Waitrose van delivering somewhere in my street made me jump in momentary terror when I saw him, this guy, like someone in The Shining, grinning at me.

Being a writer is a lot like being in permanent lockdown. I was used to spending hours alone in an empty room, so I was unfazed by the experience, especially in the early weeks. Good news comes for a writer when you hear of your work being published, , and it helped at this time that I had three new Fibonacci poems published by The Fib Review – http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html making a total of 100 poems published in consecutive issues, over eleven years, in this impressive journal. I was chuffed by the news of those Fibs and then I heard that Ward Wood Publishing http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/author-search.htm plan to bring them all out as a book. I didn’t need to leave the house for any of this.

All over the world, people learned to come together using the new technological wizard on the block, Zoom. I did it for family reunions, personal training sessions, tai-chi and for my regular poetry group meetings. I worked for me, but I know several others found it distressing and isolating. I had been attracted to the internet and most of its offspring since the beginning, so I wan’t sure why people didn’t find it natural and a wonderful opportunity in a time of crisis.

Then came the Spring, not always a season lacking cruelty, but my flowering cherry tree greeted me every time I looked out of the window and I managed even to celebrate the traditional Japanese hanami ceremony as usual with my neighbours – not quite as usual of course, but we raised a glass of wine to each other over the fence, acknowledging, as the Japanese do at this time, the transience of beauty, and, of course, life.

Being locked-down meant there were less interruptions to my life than usual, so , during this period I finished my third novel, Over the hills is a long way off, and sent it off to the publishers Ward Wood Publishing. A great moment.

Then the tulips in my garden got into full keeping-Wolfie-happy mode. Was it lockdown, or was it one of the loveliest English Springs in memory? A bit of both, I suspect.

Even the flowerpots were seductive in the extraordinarily hot weather that dominated the beginning of lockdown and made life bearable for anyone lucky enough to have a garden.

Lilies and fuchsias started to flower as the temperatures soared and I started to spend longer out in the garden where you can’t feel isolated, self-isolated or any other kind of isolation, because there are the bees, butterflies but, yes, also evil lily beetles ready to devour the seasons most elegant flowers – gardens are seldom as peaceful as they look.

Then, it was Summer. The main event in my garden in any Summer is always the roses – and, this year, it was actually quite difficult to feel down when they were in full bloom. Mine are not just beautiful to look at, but they are shamelessly aromatic. On a hot morning and, for others, early evening, you don’t even have to stick your nose into their petals to get the fragrance.

My little poetry notebook came into its own out in the garden too. I have used this small book for writing poetry, mostly the Fibonacci ones, for over a decade now. It sits comfortably on the garden table and wears the smudges on the cover put there by a shower of rain in Florence when I first started writing these little poems. It is always there for those emergency poetry-writing moments.

Summer by the dustbins can be inspiring too – especially the tiny pond, a French washing bowl from the 1950s, with its irises and waterlilies….

…and, of course, the frog. She has been here in the garden now for three years and, I am not sure if I imagine it or not, but she seems like a friend when she pops out of the water to stare at me. I stare at her too. It feels like a rapport. I resist thinking that she recognises me, but if she happens to be in the pool, she always puts her head up out of the water, and, yes, we greet each other. I often wonder if there can be a relationship between man and frog.

As Summer became hot and sunny here in southern England, and the lockdown continued, I felt extremely fortunate to live in such a lovely place with the leafy Bronze Age mound to the rear of the traditional Sussex flint walls, When the study window is open, I even get a bit of a sun-tan and feel almost out-of-doors when I am at my computer.

In June, up there in my room, my novel-writing surge led me to finish my next book too – well, almost finished, it is the fourth draft of my fourth novel, In the lovely month of May. My time in lockdown has been well-spend completing two fiction projects and writing some new poetry too.

As lockdown eased, and social distancing became a priority, contractors were allowed back from furlough. Electrician Lloyd returned to complete the works that were interrupted in March. The final touch on home-improvements, illuminating the garden and allowing it to be a sanctuary day and night.

The gardening lighting system makes the garden a magical place by night….

….a glass of wine on a humid evening with the roses lit from beneath, and I felt I was living in a movie….

….sometimes waiting for Count Dracula to call.

Novel-writing on pause, Dracula asleep, the sun came back and things apart from just writing came to fruition, like the surprisingly good harvest from the little cherry tree that I planted in a pot last year.

The next important job after so many writing projects had reached completion was to catch up on reading The New Yorker – perfect summer reading was their fiction edition with a ‘new’ Ernest Hemingway short story and one, a rather good one, by the fascinating Haruki Murakami, unpredictable, cryptically profound and witty in turns – I am a fan.

Some idle rose dead-heading resulted in this accidental flower-arrangement in my birdbath. ..all seemed calm and still that day. Yet, I thought of others a lot less fortunate than me. Those that had lost their jobs, who had to live with a family of small children in a one-bedroom flat, the many elderly victims of the virus in Britain’s inadequate care home system, or those who weren’t even lucky enough to have a protective wall against infection, like the Brazilian slum-dwellers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. I hope the world will learn to care about its endangered people after inequalities are so brutally exposed in this terrible time. It’s too easy, maybe, for me to say this from the privileged environment of my own back yard.

My garden, I know is an oasis. It was a good place to continue my study of the complex modernist poetry in Ezra Pound’s Cantos which I am reading, one by one, in chronological order, at the on-line poetry readings I give every week in the virtual world of Second Life. Beyond Pound’s unpleasant enthusiasm for Fascism and anti-semitism (recanted, I hope), I have found many parallels between the troubled world he was describing and our own. Like Wagner, and other ‘bad guys’ who were also geniuses in our culture, we have to hang on to their good bits – we can learn from them, and find inspiration there too.

My virtual world avatar is Wolfgang Glinka, or Wolfie for short, and his weekly poetry event, Wolfie’s Poetry Surf has been running without a break since 2012 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cookie/57/238/21 – during lockdown, I have not been the only one to appreciate the value of these virtual communities of writers and artists that gather together from all over the world in the much misunderstood virtual world of Second Life. Wolfgang Glinka now runs an arts complex there known as The Glinka Gallery and, during lockdown, opened four new buildings with a festival of fine art, poetry, photography, music and dance. when real life arts venues were all forced to close.

I even got to become a dancer in the virtual world in my collaboration with the creative talents of the Sway & Dance Troupe – we have also made animated films together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAuvt2MOi_E

The Glinka Gallery has been an inspiring project which will, I hope, live long after lockdown ends. Believe it or not, it has kept me in the real world during this strange time when it is not always clear what is real and what is imagined. My virtual gallery is now a recommended venue on the Second Life webpage. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nolidae/122/233/3001

It would have been all too easy to get really unfit during lockdown but, luckily, I was able to continue my weekly personal training sessions with my excellent and dedicated trainer, Gyles Abbott. https://www.wearesoulfit.com/, who carried on doing our one-to-one classes via Zoom before we were allowed again to meet up once more at his studio. I now have a custom-built weights cupboard in my study and, during lockdown began to do a second personal training session with Gyles’ weekly notes. I have not felt so fit for a very long time.

I am not alone in thinking that many of our new lockdown habits will continue long after the dreaded virus has been defeated. Certainly I am determined to keep up my training at home as a brilliant extension of my fitness regime.

Over the last few weeks I have a new fitness challenge thanks to my friend Vanessa Newman who nominated me to take part in an online push-up marathon #25pushupchallenge on Facebook, when I had to do 25 pushups a day for 25 days to raise awareness of anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder issues. Problems, I suspect, only intensified by the lockdown. I hope my efforts, along with all the other participants, did some good. It certainly got me going and I enjoyed it immensely. I got better at push-ups too with online advice from my personal trainer, Gyles, and my ever-vigilant kungfu instructor, Neil Johnson http://www.whitecranefightingarts.com – an example of the positive value of social networking, not just when we are socially isolated. I shall continue to challenge myself with these press-ups – a classic from of exercise.

After three months when I had hardly left the house, some of the restrictions were lifted and, gradually and cautiously, I began to go out to places where social distancing was easiest – like the ruins of Lewes’ 11th century Cluniac Priory…

…or the wide open spaces of the Sussex Downs near Lewes, along the River Ouse…

…and over the hills – but not far away….

then after more restrictions were lifted, it was even possible to do the 6 miles journey to the sea at Seaford…..

…and then to Worthing in West Sussex to visit my mother, who had been socially isolated in her flat over-looking the sea.

In August, we entered another stage in the nation’s retreat from lockdown, I took a train to London for the first time since February. Masked and gloved, I reached the nation’s relatively deserted capital.

I was heading for the National Gallery and an exhibition postponed when all the country’s public venues were forced to close. I have never seen Trafalgar Square so empty.

Practically empty too was the National Gallery’s Titian exhibition, Love, Death, Desire which reunited Titian’s Poesie – six late masterpieces painted for King Philip II of Spain in the late 16th Century and not seen together for nearly 500 years until the National Gallery brought them all together again in London. It was a moving, and, after so long a time of social isolation, an overwhelming experience to see these powerful pieces in an almost perfect setting. Maybe there was a benefit in it being a bit of an effort to book ahead, to arrive at a precise time and to go round the gallery in a small group where everyone could see and appreciate the art on display. It has been a long time since I remember seeing such a serious group of art gallery visitors where people stood, often for ten minutes of more in front of a single painting and, yes, looked.

There was plenty to think about when I was back in my garden, but, of course, tempting though it is to think of the ending of lockdown being the end of Covid-19, that is far from the reality. I hope that people will carry on being careful and responsible in this long campaign against the 2020 pandemic. I hope too, that we will take some of the lessons of this period with us into the future. Let’s try not to pass on our germs to others in public places. Let’s value our personal spaces more, respect the time we need to spend alone in our own heads, and feel closer to our fellow human beings in a world where the virus treated us all as equals. I hope too that we will remain cautious over traffic pollution, and the excesses of early twenty-first century ‘First World’ hedonism.

Finally I have to reiterate my own sense of my own good fortune during this time. I wanted to share my experience of the lockdown, but I am well aware of how different it was for so many others far less fortunate than myself. I have to add too that I usually have the common cold at least several times a year, maybe even too many times a year, but, since lockdown, I have been 100% infection-free – I have learnt a lesson there. I wish us all a new world where, just maybe, there will be a vaccination that works to prevent all future pandemics.

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It’s St David’s Day and that means it’s daffodil opening time here in Lewes, UK.

wolf01 — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Midway through February and the rain has come my way, here in Lewes, UK. It might get a guy down, damp feet and water down the back of the neck, but, somehow, when the bulbs are stirring , I don’t feel too miserable.

It’s St David’s Day and therefore it’s opening time for daffodils in these parts. The croci have started too, just as the snowdrops are on the turn. It’s definitely the beginning of the gardening season here, so watch this space to see how my small urban garden grows this year.

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Hopeful signs bursting out all over Lewes.

wolf01 — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 14:09:00 +0000

As we reach the middle of February here in Lewes, UK, our winter is releasing its frozen grip out there and I can already see signs of hope out there on the horizon. I, inevitably, have succumbed to the latest viral infection that it buzzing round town but I haven’t been entirely idle.

I’ve been reading Alex Ross’s excellent book on 20th Century classical music, The Rest Is Noise. One of my new year’s resolutions was fulfilled this morning when I came to the end of this massive and massively impressive study of a difficult but truly exciting period in music.

I have also been writing – pretty well as usual – and over the last week, amongst other projects, I have written six new Fibonacci poems, scribbling away in the little doodling book that I keep for the purpose.

Naturally, I’ve been keeping company with a number of 20th century composers during this time and, this week, I’ve been listening to Shostakovich, Copeland, Jerome Kern and Messiaen – what an amazingly varied century it was for music.

Outside, in my little urban garden, things haven’t been idle either.

The bulbs are more than stirring….

the primroses are in bloom…

as is the wonderful Hellebores out there, like the primroses, thriving in two of the garden’s darkest corners.

My camellia too is beginning to flower with its boldly unseasonal red petals.

The snowdrops, of course, are now in their element….both old favourites….

…..and new plantings.

Before the lurgey forced me indoors, I’ve been out on my rambles around Lewes and was delighted to find one of my favourite plants in bloom down the road in the town’s Grange Gardens.

The Chinese witch hazel, hamamelis molis, with its intoxicating perfume and vibrant colour offers more than enough hope to me here in this moody Lewes February. Late winter is always interesting here in the UK, if you love plants. You just have to look a bit closer for their beauty.

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Unexpected exotic passion in my Lewes garden.

wolf01 — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I planted a passionflower in my Lewes garden last year and it seems deliriously happy there. The passionflower or Passiflora edulis to its Latin scholar friends, is only just frost resistant so it usually grows in hot countries like its native Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay where it is the national flower. Lewes in the UK is a long way from Brazil and even further from Paraguay, but my little English urban garden with its sturdy flint walls is very sheltered and it retains the heat so my plant isn’t feeling a bit homesick. I hadn’t expected its fruits to be viable though as fruit but, knock me down with a feather, it has been covered with lovely orange fruit. I had assumed that these were unripened versions of those well-known brown-skinned passion fruits but, another feather please, they are the real thing and they’d be pretty enough in the garden even if they weren’t edible.

Well, I picked up some windfalls and thought I’d see what they looked like under their skin.

Inside they are the most exotic things to come out of my garden since a certain fancy dress party a couple of years ago. They weren’t poisonous either, unlike some of the people at that party (only joking), and, in fact, they are deliciously sweet without being sickly. These are the last fruits of my mini-harvest. I hope to have a lot more next year – a bit of passion in the garden does you good.

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Who says apple pies don’t grow on trees? They do in Lewes.

wolf01 — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I harvested the Bramley Seedling cooking apples from the espalier tree in my small Lewes garden recently. After a slice of apple pie, I thought back over the year and was glad to have watched the process that led to this classic treat sitting on my dining table. I would’ve offered you some if you’d got here before it was all eaten.

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My Lewes weekend apple harvest

wolf01 — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 07:56:00 +0000

My little apple tree has been a source of pleasure all year and this weekend its season reached its climax with an unusually large amount of bright red fruit ready for picking here in my Lewes, UK, garden.

This is a French variety of dessert apple called Croquella which is grown as a miniature tree and which works well in my small urban garden. Not only are its fruits like Christmas tree decorations from summer to autumn but the blossom is one of my favourite flowers. This is what it looked like in April this year.

In 2014 it didn’t blossom at all and there was no fruit last year so I was doubly pleased to so it in bloom this time round in the seventh year since I planted the tree as a tiny sapling.

For a moment, this weekend, I regretted that the time for picking had arrived because these little red balls have been so decorous out there in my garden.

Harvest-time has its own imperatives and I followed its orders on a lovely sunny weekend.

It always amazes me how much fruit is produced by this plucky little tree but this year has seen a bumper crop.

With the apples picked and stored, my garden has lost one of its seasonal highlights but the dahlias and heliotropes continue their autumnal starring role.

The passion flower too continues not only to flower but to fruit.

I wasn’t expecting this extra fruit harvest but the passion fruits taste delicious.

I’ve still got Bramley cooking apples ripening on the espalier tree too. So it’s been a successful season for fruitfulness.

These Croquella apples don’t just have pretty faces – they taste good too.

Juicy and sweet without being too sweet – just how you want an early season apple.

Some of these Croquella apples made it into a splendid and traditional harvest feast of roast pork on Saturday.

Some more of them are now sitting in the kitchen fruit bowl and the rest are stored in the garden shed – my harvest is definitely home.

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… and the rain came to Lewes

wolf01 — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 22:00:00 +0000

Yep, after all that sunshine here in Lewes, UK, things changed…..but remember….

…rain has its charms and, anyway…

…every time it rains, don’t run under a train or anything like that, it’s time to sit yourself down and watch an old film in black and white….

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My new friend, the one-eyed Siamese cat.

wolf01 — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 07:31:00 +0000

I’m an enthusiast about my small Lewes, UK, garden and, I have to say in all modesty that it is looking particularly fine at the moment with all the roses in full bloom and much else on its way. My new friend, the cat who moved in next-door earlier this year, has helped me with some of this. I like cats, dogs too, but don’t own one any more and the absence of a feline has meant that my garden has been open territory for some of the neighbourhood cats to use as, well, a convenience. Now that there’s this new cat on the block, the others have been chased away in a series of skirmishes that has left my garden as a one cat paradise. This large one-eyed Siamese looks as if he’s seen more than his share of territorial wars and now that he’s the temporary boss round here, he is much too proud of his space to defecate in my/his rose beds. He’s a good fighter but mono-vision means that he’s not a great bird-catcher and, consequently, my garden is now alive with bird song and free of cat poo. Perfect.

A few years ago, another cat adopted my place, and used to come into the house on visits to sit next to me when I was writing. Sadly it was killed, brutally, by one of the neighbourhood dogs and so I was cat-free but also cat-soiled again. I had to revert to my reliable Japanese water canon and keep watch for any persistent offenders. A bull’s eye with a strong gush of water is a sure way of insuring that unwanted cats don’t come back.

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