15th June 2017
I have four statues - y'know, those small figurine things - on my dresser. And thereby hangs a tale. As I've said before, I'm not really a collector of stuff, but these four have come to be significant artefacts for me, gradually taking on symbolism.
Three of them sort of go together, although they didn't come as a set in any way, they just sort of evolved into a meaningful whole....
The enigmatic white shepherd I found in a small touristy knick-knack shop in 1994, at Easdale on the Isle of Seil, in the Western Highlands of Scotland, a wild-ish and windswept-ish place cut off from the mainland by a classic hump-back stone masterpiece called 'The Bridge Over The Atlantic' that spans about a whole fifty metres of ocean. It's a great place, and this figure seemed to exactly represent the Tolkien-esque nature of the Inner Hebridean landscapes up there.
The shire horse in full kit I found in an Op Shop in a small market town on the edge of the Yorkshire moors about 20 years ago, caught my eye in the window but I nearly didn't go in and buy it, but Herself however did her "Oh, f'godsake just GET it if you want it!" thing to help me overcome my shyness. About chucking pounds about unnecessarily. So I did. Been on the dresser ever since.
The old fella delivering a talk on the Geology of England and how it relates to the evolution of the Earth, was a Xmas pressie from Herself because she reckoned he looked like my favourite forebear Thomas Perry. Thomas (1777-1847) was a Quaker from Berkshire, was into engineering for a while, was an avid countryside rambler, always pondered deeply on the Big Questions of existence, and had a compulsion to write stuff down. Left all his writings for his gr-gr-grandson to fall over about a hundred and fifty years later. MY kind of a bloke.
Okay - the significance of these three, as a set. To me they represent the crucial balance that any life needs - BODY (that is, Labour, as the Shire horse), MIND (as in Intellect, the old fella reading), and SOUL (that ethereal 'thing' that is our - hopefully - eternal Spirit, so well expressed in the hooded shepherd). Body Mind & Soul. Labour Intellect & Spirit. Your personal trinity. The three things that I believe we each need to keep equally active to have half a chance at a full life. And yes, to be able to put into words our experience of that full life.
It took me a while to see these three figures in this way, but quite a few years ago I was looking at them and the penny dropped and it opened me up to a much wider mindset, about the nature of BALANCE, the healthy balance that we need to maintain in these three facets of our life. I remember I was in the throes of a traumatic corporate takeover at the time and the Intellect part of me was working flat strap and Jack was getting to be a really dull boy. Crabby snappy and an all round pain in the arse. So I rummaged about and found my withered up Spirit and started writing again. End result was "Melrose St", my first print-published novel. And I also spent some time re-landscaping the back yard. Turned myself back into a human being and just in time.
But, lately I've been so deep into the Mind & Soul departments with endless writing and editing and e-publishing (and blogging!) and solitary and contemplative walks up the beach that I was starting to feel a touch out of balance. So - into the workshop. My man cave. Tools and scrap and small drawers full of useful stuff.
I rounded up bits of the following things....
- a venetian blind, window fittings, a biro, a pepper grinder, furniture tacks, an antique radiogram, a set of bookshelves, chipboard offcuts, fibro mouldings, a Canon printer that died of exhaustion, some gutter guard, the guts out of a 1980s boom box, some street scabbings, nuts, bolts, screws, nails, galv sheet, super glue -
Well, that's about it. Oh, nearly forgot the fourth statue. This one was a gift from Herself also, when I at last became a grandpa (geez I love this woman! - AND she's the world's best grandma). But the brilliant bit that goes with this one is about my two grandkids.
Cheers......
T.R.E.