Jane Metcalfe

Summer has been coming and going – well –  all summer. It’s been one of those seasons that seems to enjoy the game of hide-and-seek here on the south coast of England. When I’ve had enough time to go for a swim or sit on the beach blasts of wind have come out of nowhere or rain clouds have sailed into the sky at the rate of knots! Now it’s officially autumn and the weather game continues to wax and wane; the air temperature like a yo-yo. Today I am warm, and glad of the summer clothes I still couldn’t quite bear to put away. Of course, climate change aficionados will say it’s all part of global warming, that catch-all phrase that has now embedded itself in the English language. Whether that is genuinely so or not – there is debate on this when you look outside of the mainstream box – I somewhat selfishly want a bit of warmth that didn’t quite make the headlines in the so-called summer months. Indian summer it used to be called, and I recall many of those back in earlier decades before we became the purveyors of doom and gloom.

I can see now that, as I was born only a few years after WW2, my parents and their generation were hell-bent on rebuilding and regrowth, of bringing some sanity and order to society. As a child you don’t have history trailing behind you, affecting the way things are or should be. You just live and accept life as it unfolds, until you grow up and start looking back at what may have seemed like the good old days. But were they? Are they ever just good or bad? And what from level of that do we judge? There is what’s going in the world outside and then there’s what’s going on inside one’s personal experience of the world.  More and more in this current time, I find myself mentally checking whether I should say what I’m thinking. Children say whatever they see. I recall once seeing a woman with a fox-fur draped round her when I was maybe 5 or 6. I asked my mother –  probably in a loud voice -is that lady’s dog (that’s what I saw)  dead? And she told me off and said it was rude to say things like that.  I couldn’t understand why anybody would wear a dead animal, or why it was rude to say it.  These early admonitions or “lessons” stick in your head for the wrong reasons. That’s when self-policing begins in a way that breeds separation and learnt behaviour, which so often blocks natural and meaningful communication.

Luckily we have the ability to break free of the mainstream view that we’ve been subjected to in varying degrees via schooling and media, that is a kind of brain-bashing into a collective acceptance of what is considered to be normal. As children we are in awe of the natural world that seems at odds with the rules and regulations at home and then later at school.  Our natural intelligence can so often be hijacked and at times annihilated by prescriptive education. If, like me, you were more on the creative side, there was little in my education of help if you struggled with maths or science or other subjects that you didn’t have a natural feel for. In my school I was was made to feel stupid for not understanding the more cerebral subjects. But despite my techno-blindness (as I call it!) I have had a successful career in the Arts. It’s good to celebrate and acknowledge our differences. There is a place for all of it. We are not robots, though it would seem that the powers-that-be would like us to be! But the kick-back is invoking an ever-growing band of free-thinkers who will not roll over and die on the hill of prescriptive group-think.

Walking along the footpaths in Upper St Leonards today in what feels like the beginning of summer, despite the longest day of the year having tipped itself over towards the downward run to autumn just a few days ago, I was reminded of my magical walks during the lockdown period. It was a time when the ordinary suddenly seemed extraordinary. Every day I went out and tramped along the footpaths that I’d never properly explored in all my – then – 35 years of living in the area. I got to see Spring unfolding amidst the strange atmosphere of those times when normality was stripped of its armour. I witnessed more in the tiniest turn of Nature’s inner machine than I’d never fully appreciated before and it reminded me of that which has true value amidst the corruption that materialism brings in its wake.

Now, four years later I never take Nature’s wonders for granted. Every day I escape to the little park that offers within its parameters the whole gamut of nature. I have favourite trees that I talk to (mostly in my head!) and one that I stand in front of to do my exercises; and there’s the view from an Italian style balcony from which one can look through a frame of leaning branches and elegant white and brick toy houses, across the kidney shaped pond that is a mirror to much of this, and on to a taut stretch of sea beyond it all. The bliss of this takes me by surprise every time I see it and it is enough to send any bad mood skittering onto the curving path below and out of sight.

Today it was the alley running by the allotment that drew me in with its bounties: the leaning over of blossoms and leaves reaching out to the light, or just bending with the wind; a rose so fat it can hardly stay on its stem. It has already gone past the blowsy stage and is heading for decay; a wild plot whose tender has perhaps died, left the area, got bored, is going to the wild will of nature and is, to my eyes, beautiful to see.

Walking home, past the old Technical College site where new houses for those who can afford them have been built, I was greeted by a vision of trees much older than these smart dwellings, leaning over them like dark sentinels, as they glistened below in the afternoon sun. The phrase: All that glisters etc sprang to mind…

I have often jokingly said that I could write about my life based around the many different places in which I’ve lived. There is nothing wildly glamorous or adventuress about my life, such as travelling the world, jet-setting, living in the wilds, spending time navel-gazing in a monastery on top of a mountain. Well, that is if you don’t count running away from home at 17, working in a night club, marrying and divorcing an eccentric writer by the age of 23; becoming an opera singer, touring in the US and in Europe. Then there are the ordinary things of life that are never actually ordinary. Having children is life-changing, as is divorce and career changes and all the inner shifts we undergo that are hard to pin down – bound as we are by the limitations of language to do justice to expressing the densely-populated  world of feelings each of us has.  It’s more about how my many moves informed my life; the reasons for moving and the shifts in what I did and how I became who I am and who I may still become. Life is never over until the last breath is drawn and in between birth and death life itself is always on the move!

 

Me and my brother Chris circa 1952

It started young. My parents weren’t in the army or anything like that.. They simply moved a lot. Then there were the 4 years at Boarding School. I worked out recently that for each year I was there I only spent 16 weeks at home. I was an opera singer, famous in my small world for a short while, I have taught singing, co-run an arts company, been married twice, written, have a son, but most significantly I’ve moved and moved, to the point that it’s become the one certain thing in my life.

To be continued…

*My rental story is all too common, particularly in this current climate. It is a story with a happy ending, preceded by one of the most angst-laden periods of my life.

I’ve always been an inveterate mover.  I have owned properties in the past – if you call having a mortgage owning. Fifteen years ago I decided it was time to go back to renting after I sensed, correctly, a change in the property market and got out a week before the collapse in 2008. As a single freelancer working in the arts on a fluctuating income, I have always aimed at keeping my outgoings as manageable as possible. When looking for a new place to live, I’d put the word out through the grapevine as well as looking at private rental adverts. It was a system that worked seamlessly until this recent episode.

For six years, from 2016, I lived happily in a quirky little sea-view flat in Central St Leonards at an affordable rent. It was owned by an elderly friend who lived below me and I kept an informal eye out for her, sharing a gin and tonic now and then.  I was aware that I would most likely have to move when she died, but as I’d always found places to live easily, it didn’t concern me. After her death in 2021, I was informed by her family that it would be two years before they did anything with the property, giving me time to plan my next move.  However, eight months later, I was given six months notice to leave, just as the rental prices started to go through the roof. Nobody could have foreseen what was going to happen.

As soon as I was given notice, I put the word out through the grapevine. I went to see a pokey one bedroom flat in the process of being done up, which would be let at £695pcm, nearly £300 more than I was at that time paying. This seemed extortionate for what was on offer and I turned it down, feeling confident something better would show up. Then the prices started rocketing upwards.  I couldn’t get my head around it.  Being self-employed, and with a basic state pension, I earned what I considered enough to live on comfortably.. As it began to sink in that the extortionate rents weren’t going away, my disbelief turned to anger. How did anybody in the property game think that those on low to average incomes could suddenly magic a further £300-500 out of thin air to pay for a roof over their head?  It simply didn’t add up.

I began to actively put the word out and contacted Citizen’s Advice, and other agencies who could only offer suggestions of staying put, waiting out the section 21 period, getting evicted and being re-housed that way. Call it stubborn or what you will, but I wasn’t ready to be packaged up and put through a failing social system that was crammed with people far worse off than me.  I persisted with my way and through somebody I knew I was offered a temporary studio flat at a rent that was just about affordable. It had been refurbished with Air B&B in mind, and was perfectly acceptable as a place to lay my head whilst I looked around for a permanent solution.

When I moved I let go of a lot of my furniture, keeping my basic belongings with me. I felt deeply disempowered, and it took me some time to readjust to the new climate that we had entered in the UK. I call it “Nouveau Pauvre”. Then out of the blue, a friend told me of an empty property near where I’d previously lived and suggested I put a note through the door saying I would be interested in renting it. I knew the owner by sight as I’d passed the property many times. Even though it was a wild shot, I wrote a note, put it through the letterbox and forgot about it. Four months later he contacted me and asked if I was still interested in renting the place. I went round to see it, liked it and said yes, if I could afford it.  He told me he just wanted a good tenant and didn’t care to overcharge. I held my breath as he suggested the rent. It was exactly what I could afford!  After ten months in transit I finally moved into my new home.

I consider myself fortunate, and my heart goes out to those, and there are many, who are in positions far worse than mine.  What I feel about the current housing situation would warrant an article all of its own but I suspect what I’d really like to say would not be printable!

*I was asked to write this article for a local newspaper about my personal experience of being evicted from my flat just as rents escalated into the realm of ridiculous. To add some context, I live on the south coast of England, where earnings are lower than they would be in, say London, where earnings and rentals would be considerably higher. 

I recently spent five days at The Krishnamurti Centre, a non-denominational place of stunning natural beauty and retreat. Founded to celebrate the work of the philosopher, speaker and writer Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), the centre is located a few miles from Petersfield. in the glorious depths of the Hampshire countryside. I was in need of peace and beautiful surroundings – somewhere for my tangled thoughts to slowly stretch themselves out, freeing my mind from their incessant jostling.  It is a place I go to to unwind, to return to my sense of unsullied wonder at the gifts of Nature, as well as to my own true nature. Back to the hurly burly of life, I came across some notes I jotted down on my phone on one of my many rambles.

The water falls incessantly on stone. A waterfall,  but if you didn’t see it you’d think it was heavy rain – the sort that just tips down from the sky, as though God were emptying his bath, I used to think as a child. The sound is soothing. The sun is shining, as incessantly as the water. A drought they say, but the sound of water confounds this statement.
Can a place be so beautiful in all senses as to make one want to be a part of it permanently?  That word stretches on into the distance, carried over the yellow stubble of freshly harvested fields to the line of oaks beyond other fields and unseen roads. The only permanence is now arises in my mind. Quite so.

Later I will travel back to the place I call home, that is shortly no longer to be that. Where will I go? It is both at once scary and exciting. I have the chance for new ventures or to seek to recreate the same. I am older now, I tell myself; not so resilient. Be safe, go the route others try to map out for you. They want you tucked up in the neat bed of their minds. Well I won’t do it! What is a life if we plan for its end?

Life is, in fact, like the water falling, the sun shining. Incessant. Insouciant.