SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS
Every day tales of a winging-it creative
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Photograph by Paul Ariss -
I often wonder when gripped by one of my regular feelings of severe inadequacy whether there are two types of person in this world -those who can do DIY and those who can’t.
I’ll take it further; is it possible that there are those who can do ‘stuff’ ,such as build a garden wall, fix some rendering, repair a dodgy piece of guttering, ‘cut-in’ perfectly when they paint between ceiling and wall, change a car tyre with smooth and swift efficiency…and there are those who simply can’t and just pay someone who can.
By now you will have guessed which category I fall into, as there is little point to this blog if I’m just going to say how good I am at all of those things and more. Then it just becomes a Boast Blog, and who wants to read those except the person who writes them?
I can’t paint but I can spell…photo by Paul Ariss My lack of practical skills has come into sharp focus since I bought a new place. And it’s not all about lack of application. Obviously electrical work is something that would require experience and qualifications. Enthusiasm and a have-a-go spirit can only take you so far, and rewiring an electrical circuit would definitely fall into that category.
Similarly most plumbing issues, if not all, would most likely be a no-go area. As would replacing loose slates on a roof, complex joinery, negotiating anything remotely to do with gas, or randomly knocking down an internal wall. These are jobs for people who know their subject. They are without exception go-to people who we should pay for their skills, and training.
No, what I’m talking about is the other stuff, the ‘simple’ stuff, the kind you would find YouTube videos for that last no more than 3-4 minutes. Take painting, for one. How to use a roller on a wall and not end up with large patches that the roller either soaks in paint or leaves it annoyingly bare.
“Oh you’ve put too much paint on the roller” the annoying have-a-go ‘experts’ tell me, or just as unhelpfully “make sure it rolls as it paints, not slide. Did it slide or did it roll?” Well both as it happens, smart a*se”.
And that’s where the instructions on paint tins don’t help, as they advise to ‘add liberally’. What I guess they don’t mean however is add liberally all over my hands or hair, but nonetheless that happens. Every time.
On the said YouTube videos, paint spreads evenly and beautifully from paintbrush or roller onto wall or ceiling. What a doddle, let me have a go. No, I should not be allowed anywhere near an area requiring the smooth and even application of paint. God did not bless me with the decorating gene and that’s all there is to it. It’s not my fault.
The same can be said for most things to do with a car, such as changing a brake bulb or wheel. I simply would not dare drive on a wheel that I had changed, either for the safety of myself or other road users. Recently I needed to change two brake bulbs that had both gone so I paid £9 extra for the man in the car maintenance shop to do it for me while I stood around awkwardly and uselessly watching. We both understood. Some men can do stuff, and some men do other stuff.
For example I can write a passable play, short story or song. But be honest, if your car breaks down on a dark road in the middle of the night who are you going to want be your side, someone who can fix the problem and have you moving merrily on you way again, or someone who can make jokes or sing you a tune?
So there’s the dilemma, if you had to choose between being creative or being practical, which one would you go for? My choice changes depending on the situation, but on pure monetary terms, I think there’s a chance most plumbers make a lot more money on average than most writers or performers.
But then, most of us can name several famous writers or performers, but how many electricians become superstars? Who does society value most?
When DIY goes horribly wrong. Photo by Paul Ariss The final irony to all of this is at 17 I was offered an apprenticeship as a joiner. How? I recall very casually mentioning to my father that it must nice to be able to make something with wood. I meant it. I didn’t mean I wanted to try it. I’d played truant from school for three weeks when I was 13 because I hated the woodwork teacher.
However we had a family friend who had his own joinery business and as I was unemployed at the time suddenly I found myself mixing concrete on a Monday morning while the family friend erected fence posts. I lasted two weeks, before packing it in, much to the embarrassment and anger of my parents.
But I knew I didn’t have what it took. I still don’t, but I’m at peace with it. As long as I put up enough pictures no-one’s going to notice the paint blotches behind them, right?
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Having just moved into my new home just over seven weeks ago and still tripping over boxes – though a lot less than there were – and putting up curtain rails and applying paint (badly) onto walls and making room for new and old furniture, the space available for Christmas decorations is at present somewhat limited.
However at this very late stage I made a little space on my new writing room window-ledge for something to make the place feel a little bit reflective of the time of year.
It’s not much, but it makes a difference, and with a couple of tiny trees and a Peace Lily plant it gives me the chance to say Merry Christmas to you all and, please God, a more Peaceful New Year.
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Dog and Gun Public House, Keswick, Cumbria. Photo by Paul Ariss -
On the 31st October, I returned to my hometown after spending the previous four months – eighteen weeks in all, or 126 days if you prefer – living from my sisters spare room in northern Cumbria.
This was not planned, or at least not for that long. I expected to be away for a couple of weeks, a month at the most, while the legal stuff went through on my new home. How naïve of me to underrate the ability of solicitors to drag things out. I underestimated how they work to a pace that doesn’t in any way take into account of how it may affect your life, and how impervious they are to criticism and complaint.
However, I could bang on about this and the archaic system we have in the UK that helps result in 1 in 3 house purchases failing. The government are currently looking at a major overhaul to our centuries old system and I’ll leave it with them.
Fields being ploughed on the farm behind the house, 23rd August 2025. Photo by Paul Ariss Instead I’ll look at the positives. I saw a lot more of my family than I normally would. I learned how to drive at faster speeds because as I’ve discovered, out in the country the police are largely absent and speed limits are somewhat open to interpretation and the guy sitting on your taillight at 60mph on a country road apparently has to be somewhere really, really quickly.
That said, if a herd of cows or sheep need to get somewhere no-one’s going anywhere until they have ambled past at a pace similar to a solicitor at work.
You want to get out the car and tell me to hurry up? Photo by Paul Ariss, Barrow, Cumbria I woke most days to views of beautiful landscapes and sun-kissed valleys and fields. I learned patience when purchasing anything in the local shop that has queuing systems that are arbitrary and, shall we say, flexible.
I came to accept, more or less, that to get to a supermarket I may have to drive 12 to 17 miles (depending on the supermarket) instead of my usual 3 miles (depending on any supermarket). But I’ve also seen the seven days a week work in the farms and fields that put a lot of those essential foodstuffs on the supermarket shelf, no matter how near or far.
Frankly I’ve lost count of the fascinating history lessons from Carlisle Castle and Cathedral in the north of the county, to the birth of a Roman Garrison town at Maryport on the coast. I spent a couple of hours at a Pencil Museum (yes that’s right, a museum dedicated to the pencil) and watched three wonderful productions at a theatre beside a magical lake.
I’ve nipped out of the county to the home of the Bronte sisters in next door Yorkshire and back again to walk the corridors of a genuinely haunted castle in Muncaster, and learned enough about Beatrix Potter and poet William Wordsworth to regale my friends for hours. Or more likely, until they have a chance to change the subject.
Muncaster Castle. Photo by Paul Ariss There were long, long days when my morale was really low. My life was on hold and I felt utterly powerless to change things. At those points I had to remind myself that I did have the power of perspective; it was summer in a wonderful part of the country, not the dark long days of winter. I was free to roam wherever I chose for as long as I needed to.
And now I’m having to re-adjust to a different pace again, one that has become unfamiliar, and it’s not coming as easy as I expected. In the towns and cities I know so well I’ve learned having been away that people move differently here, have a more hurried and tunnel visioned approach to their day.
But I’m happy to be in my new place, even if for the first two weeks there was no internet (no internet!!) and for a week no hot water. I was boiling water in pans and using public WiFi. So much for returning to civilisation!
It is going to take a good while for me to see the unfamiliar walls of my new property as home. I’m going to ease back into my creative pursuits alongside decorating, getting to know new neighbours. But I’m embracing change and I’m learning to look forward to a life that takes with it the best memories and lessons of the past as a platform for the future.
A future with cows very much in the rear view mirror.
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As this weird period of my year continues in my sisters spare room, waiting as the legal palaver grinds on and on for my new property 130 miles away, I try and find new ways daily to fill the hours. As I have been here in Cumbria since June 27th (94 days if we’re counting) I am now on the outer limits of imagination.
I’ve seen many historically and fascinating homes, castles and gardens in this historically rich county. I know so much more than I did three months ago. I’ve seen gorgeous lakes and stunning mountains and woken to the sunlight bathing the nearby fields and I’m grateful for the reflections to nature that being in a rural settings has given me.
But last week I decided to move out of Cumbria into nearby Yorkshire for three days to fulfil a long-held ambition to visit Howarth, 111 miles from my present location. Howarth is the village in West Yorkshire famous, in England at least, for being the place where the sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte lived.
With it’s steep cobbled streets this is the quintessential northern town sitting alongside the rolling moors the Bronte’s gained such inspiration from. I built up to going to the Bronte Parsonage and Museum by doing other things first and soaking in the feel of the town. Staying in Main Street in Howarth I was aware the Bronte’s would have passed by this way many times.
Main Street, Howarth. (Photo by Paul Ariss) When I did get to the family home I entered it was an odd mix of excitement, reservation and reverence. The dining room where the family eat and where the sisters would walk around the table sharing ideas, was the first room on the left as I entered. It is the room where Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, and where Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, two of the greatest works in English literature.
The Bronte Parsonage and Museum. (Photo by Paul Ariss) It was unreal to be there, knowing these walls had witnessed such staggering literary creations. I tried to imagine them bouncing ideas off one another unaware of most of what they were sharing would be inspiring people two centuries on. But this was also the room where Emily passed away at the tender age of 30. Desperately sad.
And that was the overriding feeling I took away, a feeling of melancholy. Of riches untapped. Anne Bronte, author of the brilliant Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey died aged 29. The Bronte’s talented but troubled brother succumbed to dependence oN opioids and alcohol in his father’s bedroom at aged just 31.
And Charlotte, just months after her wedding and in the early stages of pregnancy was gone at 38. Of course these were times of much lower mortality rates and this needs to be taken into account. That said, Howarth had a lower life expectancy than most villages of its size. In fact the Bronte’s exceeded the life expectancy of the town, which was just under 26 years.
The rolling hills of Howarth (photo by Paul Ariss) Following his daughters deaths their long since widowed father Patrick commissioned an investigation that highlighted a staggering lack of hygiene in the towns privies, even for the time. One, at the top of the main street where I stayed, had a cesspit below the toilet that often overflowed. A drinking tap was just two yards away from the cesspit.
The local graveyard was badly designed, resulting in decomposing material seeping into the drinking water. The Bronte’s, whose father was the local parish priest, lived in the Parsonage at the top of the church’s graveyard. It hardly bears thinking about.
Imagine all that energy, all that creativity and extraordinary energy, then an empty, silent house. It’s hard enough for a parent to exceed the life of one child, let alone six (sisters Maria and Elizabeth died in childhood before they got to Howarth).
However the short but considerable lifeforce and creativity of the Bronte sisters permeates through not just the town, but through literature. An exhibition room at the back of the house showcases the many film and television adaptations of their work. All from that house, through these tasteful but ultimately modest rooms.
And though I left Howarth with a feeling of sadness, it was a also with considerable wonder and respect.
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Jane Austen was born 250 years ago in Hampshire and is regarded by many as England’s greatest female author. Writing in an age when women were not considered to have credibility in the arts she had to fight a society seeped in misogamy and had written both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice by the time she was 27 and was still an unpublished author.
Knowing I would have time on my hands as I temporarily stay in Cumbria waiting to move house I decided Sense and Sensibility would be on my reading list. Although I’ve already read and enjoyed Austen’s Northanger Abbey I did find Sense and Sensibility a hard read. However I’m glad I read it and having recently bought her whole collection I look forward to whatever my next choice will be.
Most likely I’ll choose Pride and Prejudice, so when I saw the play was on a run at the Theatre By The Lake in nearby Keswick I wasn’t sure whether to see it or not. I know the gist of the book but why would I want to know more before I read it?
But as my stay in Cumbria lingered on and the chance of seeing a production at this theatre became increasingly tempting I decided to go in the final week of its run. I wasn’t disappointed.
Opened and supported by Academy Award winning actress Judi Dench and her actor husband Michael Williams in 1999, and situated alongside Lake Derwentwater, it would be hard to imagine a more beautiful setting for a theatre.
The Theatre By The Lake, Keswick, Cumbria (photo by Paul Ariss) Thankfully the production matched the location. Played very much for laughs and accentuating what a funny writer Jane Austen was, it was a wonderful play with a marvellous cast, almost good enough to warm me through the soaking I’d received in my walk through in Keswick (honestly, drenched. Soaking. I’m surprised I didn’t squelch when I walked). When it rains in Keswick, believe me it rains hard.
Photo from Theatre By The Lake, Keswick, Cumbria So if you’re ever in Cumbria on holiday go to Derwentwater, take in The Theatre by The Lake, even if it’s just a tour of the building. And as long as you take a weather-proof coat, just in case, you won’t regret it.
Photo by Paul Ariss. Derwentwater Lake, Keswick -
Photo by Paul Ariss -
Photograph by Paul Ariss. Mason Arms, Gilcrux, Cumbria
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 