A castle of one’s own
It was my birthday yesterday. I celebrated with a visit to Sissinghurst Castle and Gardens, which has been on my list for some years. It felt appropriate, to visit the home of several writers, most notably Vita Sackville-West. There is a writing gazebo in the gardens, posher than my 6ft x 6ft writing shed. Vita’s lover Virginia Woolf wrote that women writers need ‘a room of one’s own’, and I feel blessed to have mine. I can dream, though, of a castle of one’s own.
I am 67 now, just six months younger than my brother John was when he died. Milestones like that shouldn’t be contemplated for too long. I watched the last ever episode of the Up series on the evening of my birthday: 70 Up. Tony, the boy who wanted to be a jockey at 7, was a friend of my brother. The finale was emotional, seeing those children age in 7 year increments. Like John, not all of them reached 70. It made me feel grateful to be here, on this planet. I wrote about Tony on Substack a few weeks ago, as well as other vicarious connections with famous people: Degrees of Separation and the perils of gossip.
I had my own Up moment last weekend, at a school reunion. I hadn’t seen some of the girls from Rosebery since 1976. All of us had joined the school in 1971; some of us left after taking O-Levels, some stayed on for sixth form. There were teachers, a horticulturalist, a musical conductor … I didn’t get round the table to talk to everyone, to find out what we had been up to in the past 50 years. It was both wonderful and overwhelming. Some faces immediately recognisable, others that I couldn’t place until a certain facial expression gave away the girls they once were. I was surprised to learn how many of them read my Substack. A couple said they hoped that I would write about the reunion. I shall be, when I have processed it in my head and in my notebook.
A birthday is a time to look back and look forward. I thought about the last birthday message I received from my brother, in 2022; I remembered my 17th birthday, which was forgotten by my parents; the 18th party I organised myself the following year (no one was going to forget that year!); my 30th and 40th parties; the two birthdays I spent in Ireland.
I deactivated Facebook over two years ago, and decided this week to ‘Delete Forever’. I hadn’t realised that it was a two-stage process, that my profile was still visible. On my birthday, I would receive secondhand reports of birthday greetings, from my husband, Bob. This year, I asked him not to mention them to me; those people that are close to me know that I no longer use Facebook. It had been causing me some anxiety to log back in to Facebook to delete my profile. The decision to leave was partially because of being bullied, blocked, then unblocked (to see what I had been posting) by people who should have treated me with more respect. I got Bob to sit with me whilst I logged on. I saw there were 5 unread private messages; I did not go to them. I simply pressed ‘Delete Forever’. Even so, I must wait a month for this to happen.
There will be one more instance of looking back this week. I am visiting my aunt and uncle in Surrey, and shall stop on the way to see the road where I was born. I have not been there since I left, aged 4 years old. The prefab where I lived is long gone, but maybe the recreation ground I remember is still there, the field where we gathered for fireworks night. As someone who was born in a prefab, I had to give them a mention in this Substack post: Low level living, from prefabs to bungalows.
Looking forward, I hope for more travel, a return to writing fiction (having finished my first short story in 3 years), and keeping up with friends old and new.
