[ 01:34 wednesday 14 may – haggerston road, london ]
at one minute after nine o’clock mum phoned to say she’d watched granny die a couple of minutes earlier. i was still in the office, glad to have sergio there to comfort me.
now i’m at home, a candle burning in the centre of the table, my photographs of granny placed around the room.
there are so many memories to cherish i scarcely know where to begin.
: c :
[ 23:58 monday 12 may – haggerston road, london ]
i spent the weekend with granny. on saturday she alternated between three states. the first appeared to reflect agitation: scrunched up brow, lifted left knee, dabbing at her mouth and nose with her right hand. the second state looked like surprise or wonderment: lying still, raising her forehead and eyebrows. the third state was tranquil: either asleep or perfectly calm. her eyes were closed all the time. she didn’t speak but occasionally made noises in her throat. she was definitely aware of what was going on around her. a couple of times when she was agitated i spoke reassuringly at her side and she relaxed. when mum and i lifted her up, held a glass of water to her lips and urged her to drink some she did. when i held her hand she responded by squeezing it.
on sunday she’d passed a step further and ceased responding to anything. i sat with her for three hours and it was the most difficult time i’ve spent with her. holding her hand without feeling her fingers tighten around mine was particularly tough. her hands were so warm, the life was so conspicuous in her, but she was completely inert. writing about it now is making me cry again. for some of the time i dozed with my forehead against hers on the pillow, which brought to mind all the mornings as a child when i’d woken up early and crept into bed with her. i talked to her, thanking her for believing in me and loving me. i wished her strength for the voyage she was undertaking and told her i was there at her side every step. i sang some folk songs i thought she’d like, though my voice faltered.
eventually the time came for me to leave. it felt like the last moment i’d ever be with her. walking away was unbearably difficult. i kept turning back to kiss her and say goodbye yet time. finally i walked backwards through the door, watching her sleeping form until the very last second. with tears pouring down my face i continued to repeat “goodbye granny” as i walked out of the hospital and as i cycled through the streets of ludlow. today, whenever she comes to mind i repeat it again.
goodbye granny.
: c :
[ 17:33 monday 5 may – ludlow railway station, ludlow, shropshire ]
it never occurred to me that ludlow’s three taxi firms would close down for today’s bank holiday. my nomadic habits pay off at times like this. i’ve got got hiking boots and i’m carrying all my stuff in two rucksacks so it was no sweat to walk the mile and a half from bear and david’s house in steventon to the station. it would have been a different story if i’d been traveling with a wheely case and brogues.
the last four days with granny have been incredibly intense. that was no great surprise. what i didn’t expect was how beautiful the experience would be. it’s as though we’re traveling a supremely difficult journey together, taking us to places neither of us has ever been before. her impending death has created a situation where we interact in ways that would be impossible under other circumstances.
granny celebrated her ninety-second birthday a little over two weeks ago. since i was in san francisco and unable to be there i sent a cd to my parents on which i played six of bach’s goldberg variations and recorded a happy birthday message. granny had a happy day and was delighted with my disembodied offering. then the next day she got a blood clot in her right leg that stopped the blood from reaching her foot. she was rushed to shrewsbury hospital where they operated to try and remove the clot but the operation failed. at that point there were three options: arterial rerouting, amputation of the leg or allowing her to die from gangrene. the first and second options were judged impossible. granny was moved to a private room in ludlow’s small hospital and the family started preparing its goodbyes.
on friday evening i sat by her bed watching her face in the golden light of the setting sun. she was terribly emaciated, her skin translucent and crumpled like parchment wrapped loosely around her bones. i clasped her hand and stroked her hair while we talked. there were tears running down my face the whole time i was there. occasionally my voice faltered. neither of us made comment of this. the tears carried on when i cycled back to bear and david’s and for a good while after i arrived there.
since then i’ve cried very little. each day i sit at granny’s side talking with her, helping her when she wants a drink, holding her hand and watching quietly when she sleeps. the peak of the experience came yesterday evening. granny was extremely lucid. i said “each of us has a time to die. i’m going to be very honest. i think this is your time. you need to start preparing yourself”. she said “what do i have to do i prepare?”. i said “i don’t know. only you can find the answer inside yourself”. i asked if she would prefer to be at home to die and she replied “of course i would!”. i explained it wouldn’t be the same as when she was at home before; she’d still be stuck in a bed and needing a lot of medical attention, plus the move itself might be very painful, but she was determined she wanted to go home. i said i thought each of us had guardian angels looking over us and she said she believed that too. i asked her to be my guardian angel and help me achieve all the things i wanted to do with my life. she said she wished grandpa was still alive as there were still things she wanted to say to him. i told her if she said those things in her mind he would hear her. then she said “let’s not be gloomy!” and the conversation moved onto other things.
today she slept most of the time i was there, clutching my hand all the while. i asked if she remembered our conversation from yesterday and she said “some of it”. i didn’t press her. i travel back to london now feeling light-hearted and full of love for her. i will be back at her side next weekend but i may find her much changed. as the gangrene progresses the doses of morphine will be increased and gradually she will become less lucid. the point will come when she is longer there. sometime later her body will cease functioning. i will miss her dreadfully but we have shared something precious in these last flickering moments of her life.
: c :
[ 01:51 thursday 1 may – haggerston road, london ]
i washed up in london this morning after an eleven-day rampage across san francisco, silicon valley and new york. most days i worked fourteen to sixteen hours non-stop, not exactly my ideal pattern of activity. this stakhanovite fervour was required because i was interlacing several different sets of commitments. first, trampoline was one of twenty british technology start-ups picked for a programme of promotional events in california; second, we launched our new flagship technology in san francisco; third, the company had a stand at the web2.0 conference; fourth, i had a few seminars to deliver; fifth, i had a welter of meetings with customers and investors. everything worked out extremely well but i was comprehensively fried at the end of it.
mercifully it was possible to squeeze in a few extra-curricular activities. on friday i did a three-hour performance with shemoel, cyrus and others at the san francisco art institute; preceded by a tumultuous jam session on the wednesday. this was an utter joy. shemoel and i have decided to set up a small label as a platform for ourselves and others ploughing a similar musical furrow. the previous weekend daniel invited me to last ever san francisco performance by the beaux arts trio, which was exquisite. afterwards i spent several hours playing bach and schubert at the piano with his son nate. on saturday the weather was glorious so i rescheduled my new york flight and drove out to walk in the wilds of the marin headlands. nate came along and proved an effective hunter. without warning he would jab his hand into a bush and withdraw it clasping some writhing creature. during the afternoon he caught several species of lizard, a succession of plump newts and (the piece de resistance) an endangered san francisco garter snake with a half-eaten slug hanging out of its mouth. my thanks to simon and annie for sharing their homes in san francisco and new york respectively.
now my world turns darker. in the final days of the trip granny went into hospital with a thrombosis in her foot. surgery was not successful and the further recourse, amputation of the leg, was deemed impractical for a woman of ninety-two years. in the coming days or weeks she will develop gangrene and die. only when i finished my last meeting in new york and set off on the subway towards the airport did the emotional reality strike me. i had tears streaming down my face for much of the journey back to london. tomorrow i travel to ludlow to be with her.
: c :
[ 01:14 monday 14 april – qala, island of gozo, maltese archipelago ]
i’ve just got back to my room in qala (pronounced “aala” – malti is a remarkable language), a sleepy village of old sandstone houses perched on an escarpment at the north-eastern corner of gozo (pronounced “godzo”). gozo is the the smaller of the archipelago’s two main islands, about ten miles long by five miles wide. there’s much less development here than in malta to the south and its population is just thirty thousand compared to malta’s three hundred thousand.
i’m here for the red herring europe conference which starts this evening in the town of st lawrence on the main island. trampoline’s been picked as one of the top hundred technology businesses in europe so i’m due to give a talk. but since i’d never been to malta before i was keen to come over a couple of days early and explore. as usual i looked at a map and picked the most remote place i could find, which in this instance was qala. i planned to fly out on friday evening but that was thwarted by a broken down train at london bridge. i met a friendly maltese chap called michael who was trying to catch the same flight to spend the weekend with his family so we grabbed a taxi together. however this in turn got caught in roadworks on the motorway and we reached the airport half an hour after check-in had closed. we booked ourselves onto the saturday flight and returned dejectedly to london.
in fact the evening turned out rather well. on a tip from daichi i biked over to an improvisation concert in old st pancras church. four musicians played saws, bizarre violins with welded-on gramophone horns, a double bass and the church’s organ. the music was eerily beautiful and the church was lit entirely with candles. afterwards i ended up with a dozen people back at my house which rapidly degenerated into a frenetic jam session. i kicked everyone out at four in the morning, woke up late and almost managed to miss my flight. i reached check-in with five minutes to spare and found michael at the departure gate where he’d been waiting for a couple of hours.
arriving in malta i picked up a rental car and drove with michael up to the north end of the island, grateful for his navigational services. there were plenty of roads but not quite enough signs. i dropped michael at his familial home in st paul’s bay then continued to cirkewwa harbour at malta’s northernmost tip, where the ferry to gozo departs. the next crossing wasn’t due for three quarters of an hour so i locked the car and walked out along the coast. there was a strong wind blowing and waves were crashing against the rocks. there’s nothing more energising than a stormy sea. i returned to the car as the ferry pulled in and we set off past the miniscule island of camino to arrive at gozo just before the restaurants all closed.
this morning i got up early and set off to hiking around the coast. the wind had died down and the sky was serene. i walked north out of the village, enjoying the rustling bushes and birdsong. i stopped to take a photo of a small house whose open door was plastered with pictures of exploding fireworks and was immediately hailed and beckoned inside. three men were sitting round a table drinking home- made wine and watching football on an italian channel. the inside walls were covered with photos of fireworks just like the door. the old fellow who had hailed me, evidently the host, introduced himself as joseph, a maker of fireworks. he gave me a glass of wine and proudly pointed out photos of enormous fireworks he’d made. then he pointed to a succession of pictures of grinning men beside equally huge fireworks and explained how each of them, friends of his, had met grisly ends when their handiwork blew up on them. with a certain glee joseph recounted the details of how this one had been cut in half and that one had his head blown off. as i bid farewell he invited me to come back in august to see the biggest display of the year in honour of a notable saints day. he also invited me to visit his workshop but after the descriptions of his friends’ dismemberments i had mixed feelings about this.
from joseph’s house i continued along the road then on a whim struck off along a track. a little further on i departed in turn from the track and soon found myself picking my way across jagged limestone crags and hopping across narrow gorges. the going was not easy but eventually i made it down to the coast where a flat shelf of sandstone jutted out into the sea. the sun was high in the sky so i stripped off and plunged into the chilly water for my first sea swim of the year. after drying off on the rocks for a while i walked around the coast and picked my way up through the terraced fields until i reached the escarpment and returned to qala.
i’d spent most of the day traversing difficult terrain without any clear path. i trusted my instinct to discern where leaves were slightly flattened from someone passing in the last month, or to sense a route hopping from rock to rock that would lead me in the right direction. many times i reached a dead end, with thorn bushes or steep crevasses on every side, and had to retrace my steps before striking off along a different route. but inexorably i progressed and arrived where i sought to. it felt like an appropriate metaphor for much of what i’m doing with my life.
: c :
[ 00:22 thursday 3 april – haggerston road, london ]
everything is such a rush at the moment. i’ve just finished cataloguing a batch of slides going back to november and now the work begins to scan them and process some to put online. so much has already happened since i was snowboarding in breckenridge. i’d been in america for three and a half weeks but i only stayed in london four days before setting off again, this time to the south of france. the trip turned into something completely different from what i’d intended.
the plan was for me and timur to turn up unannounced on josselin’s doorstep in lyon and surprise him. josselin is a wonderful double bass player. he also plays the guitar, the piano and does a mean beatbox. he and i spent a many hours playing together during his months living with timur in london. but in january he decided he was sick of london and scuttled back to france. needless to say i missed him enormously. so when timur started planning a trans-european pilgrimage by bicycle and train, setting off from germany and hoping to end up in lisbon, it seemed like an ideal opportunity for us to cross paths in lyon and visit josselin.
unfortunately a few days after i’d booked my flights to lyon, it emerged that josselin wasn’t even going to be in lyon over easter. his uncle had rented a farmhouse near the village of nant, up in the mountains an hour north of montpellier, and the whole family was assembling there for two days. disaster. timur sheepishly confessed our thwarted plan to josselin and after some ingenious negotiation managed to secure invitations for both of us to join the family gathering. i grappled with the french railway’s ghastly website and finally managed to secure the last available seat on a tgv running from lyon to montpellier. then i reserved a car to pick up at montpellier airport (for some reason only scooters were available for rental at montpellier station).
so on easter saturday my alarm went off at half past four in the morning and my journey commenced. taxi to liverpool street, train to stansted airport, plane to lyon airport, bus to lyon part-dieu station, tgv to montpellier, arriving at two in the afternoon. waiting for me outside the station was josselin, it was marvellous to see him again. we took a taxi to montpellier airport, picked up the rental car and drove back to the station to collect timur who’d arrived from paris in the meantime. after struggling with the montpellier traffic we finally achieved escape velocity and nipped down to the coast where we ate oysters and watched with curiosity a reunion of elderly rugby players outside the restaurant one of whom suddenly stripped naked, ran down the beach and threw himself into the sea. once we’d recovered from this alarming sight we set off into the mountains, arriving at the house around seven in the evening; fourteen hours since i’d left home in london. the house was a big rambling stone structure whose various wings and turrets looked to have accreted over many centuries, set in isolation beside a tumbling stream.
gate-crashing family gatherings isn’t generally a recipe for popularity so timur and i were both a little uncertain how it was going to work out. but from that first evening josselin’s family was delightful and we were made to feel completely welcome. on easter morning we all went for a long walk up the hillside and along the limestone escarpment, eroded into fantastic jutting forms, that overlooks nant. while we were walking a succession of snow squalls passed down the valley and successively engulfed us, each with distinct boundaries almost like solid masses. afterwards we visited a chocalatier in the village and gorged ourselves silly. in the afternoon we drove up to roquefort and visited a cheese cellar excavated four stories down into the stone. i have an intense dislike for roquefort cheese which is too salty for my palette, but the town itself was engagingly bleak and strange.
on the monday we drove timur up to millau, the nearest railway, and left him slightly forlorn with a six hour wait until the next train was due. then josselin and i continued in convoy with his twin brother martin for the long drive across the massif central to lyon. for most of the journey we were in a blizzard with driving snow sweeping across the dazzling white landscape. it was a magical experience and driving was quite an adventure. at a certain point martin peeled off for his home in valence and josselin and i continued alone. as we descended onto the great rhone plain the surroundings became more industrial and the concentration of traffic increased. we stopped for a coffee and pain au chocolat in the town where josselin’s grandparents had lived. finally we reached the suburbs of lyon as the sun was setting. i dropped josselin close to his flat and faced the final challenge to find my way through the labyrinth of bypasses and intersections to reach the airport. all my criticisms of satellite navigation were forgotten, i’d have killed to have a supercilious robot barking instructions at me. but with a few hairy moments i made it.
the symbolism of lyon airport is very odd. the whole complex is dominated by one sublime piece of architecture, designed by santiago calatrava. however it’s got nothing to do with flying or aeroplanes. it’s the airport’s railway station.
: c :
[ 13:51 sunday 16 march – denver airport, colorado ]
for the last ten days i’ve been snowboarding in breckenridge, three thousand metres up in the colorado rockies, with mum, dad and jill. this was my second time boarding, the first being a week at levitunturi in finland two years ago (described here: http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/2006/02/22/f-e-a-r.html) . that first week i progressed from zero to making it down green runs, the simplest grade of piste. i started this visit to breckenridge with no specific objectives. i didn’t have any sense what i’d be capable of or how much i’d remember from the first stint in finland. but i wanted to learn as much as possible and improve as far as i could.
i’ve been out boarding for four or five hours each day, including two half-day sessions with an instructor. the conditions have changed wildly from day to day. sometimes the sky was clear, temperatures rose and the surface snow became mushy. other times the temperature plummeted, inches of snow fell overnight and blizzard conditions persisted through the day. it was the latter i enjoyed the most; with few people out on the slopes, visibility severely limited, the snow deep and powdery. i could fling myself around recklessly, sometimes not seeing another soul from the beginning of a run to the end, knowing that i could fall and even come cartwheeling down the slope without any risk of injury.
by the last day i was zipping down some black runs, three levels up from the green runs where i started. most of the feedback my instructor nikki had given me had become instinctive. i was sometimes, though not always, getting a sense of fluidity and rhythm coming down the slopes. above all i was loving it. i’m already itching for my next opportunity to get back on the snow.
this is the first time in my life i’ve really got fired up about a sport (yoga is different). against all expectation i might even have the potential to get good at it. and i love the fact it’s something i can share with mum and dad.
big thanks to warren for letting us all stay in his flat, which was the perfect base.
: c :
[ 11:10 monday 3 march – garden street inn, san luis obispo, california ]
sun streams through stained glass, splattering abstract patterns across bookcases, rugs and a huge old upright piano. i don’t like staying in hotels but when it’s necessary i do my best to find somewhere like this. the garden street inn is a late nineteenth- century house carefully converted into a small hotel of thirteen rooms and furnished with a hotch-potch of antiques. it’s not part of a chain and the people who work here aren’t robots. i found it completely by chance. this was the hotel with the least depressing name when i arrived in the small town of san luis obispo last night and asked my satellite navigation gadget for a list of nearby possibilities. lucky me.
since my despatch from san francisco last weekend i’ve driven six hundred miles, done a dozen meetings up and down silicon valley, found my way to several noisily experimental music events and caught up with most of my friends in town. on saturday i set off from san francisco to make the epic drive down the cost to san diego at the opposite end of california. san luis obispo (“slo” in the local parlance) is about midway so i’ve got another few hundred miles ahead of me today.
rather than the faster north-south freeways further inland i chose to take highway 1, the narrow and wiggly road etched into the cliffs running down the coast of california. the driving is somewhat more demanding but it’s amply repaid by one of the most beautiful coasts anywhere in the world. the pacific crashes onto craggy rocks and sandy beaches with tranquil forests of redwood and beach rising up the hills behind the coast. on saturday evening i stopped in monterey to reunite with quinn and dip into the bil conference, a loosely structured gathering of non-conformist thinkers from a boggling array of fields. i set off again early yesterday morning and spent most of the day exploring big sur and the central coast, taking time for a long hike in julia pfeiffer state park and stops to explore various coves and beaches that intrigued me driving past. i was sitting on one of these watching the waves when i started noticing fragments of green translucent stone in the sand and suddenly twigged why it was called jade cove. at another place where i stopped to watch the sunset i was startled by a honking sound and looked down to find the beach covered with dozing sea lions.
as i continue south from san luis obispo the wilderness will increasingly give way to smog and sprawl. around tea time i’ll pass through the gravity field of los angeles, the apogee of everything i like least about california. i should reach san diego around seven this evening, just in time for the kick-off of the emerging technology conference. unlike the past two years i’m not speaking this time so i hope to hear more sessions rather than furiously tinkering with my own.
this whole trip has been something of a rite of passage. on previous visits i’ve studiously taken public transport to get to all my meetings around the bay area. most people looked at me in horror when i told them, an effect that only encouraged me. however this time there were so many appointments to keep it was simply impossible to do it without… a car. so i rented an anonymous silver-coloured korean machine and spent the week hammering up and down five-lane roads and learning the peculiar etiquette of american road-culture. there are two main highways running south down the peninsular from san francisco, 101 and 280. these quickly established themselves as poles in my sentiments towards california. 101 is the most convenient route for valley commuters, running straight through the soulless unending development on the east side of the peninsular. it always seems to be congested and packed with ill-mannered drivers in porches or range rovers. 280 on the other hand runs through the spectacular countryside on the west side of the peninsular. traffic generally seems to move more freely and the drivers are more courteous. within days i was doing everything possible to avoid 101, though this involved playing a variety of tricks on my satellite navigation gadget to quell it’s increasingly curt admonitions to get back on the shorter route. i started the week totally dependent on the thing and slavishly followed every instruction it snapped at me, obeying even when it decided that the best way to get out of san francisco was to drive right through the centre of chinatown. it felt like an accelerated teenage rebellion when i progressively started to ignore instructions i didn’t like and finally turn the volume down to zero when it really got irritating.
i’m ashamed to admit it but having the car did give me a tremendous sense of liberty and independence. i feel as though i’ve been corrupted in some unspeakable way.
: c :
[ 00:26 tuesday 19 february – haggerston road, london ]
another installment of photos: ninety-four spread across six sets. this is the final batch from the complicated multi-stage journey i made in september-october, followed by october’s quick jaunt to budapest.
: madrid and environs (ix 2007) :
9 photos exploring central madrid and the mountains to the north with andrew and cristina.
: marrakech (ix 2007) :
29 photos of everyday life in marrakech. changing weather, daily cycles of work, tourists in the central market and craftsmen in the backstreets.
: ouarzazate (x 2007) :
7 photos crossing the atlas mountains in torrential rain to last significant town before the desert.
: into the desert (x 2007) :
34 photos driving down the draa valley and into the desert. ancient mud-walled villages, date palm plantations in the oases, finally the parched beauty of the desert itself.
: ceuta, algeciras & gibralter (x 2007) :
5 photos of the colonial muddles on both sides of the straits of gibralter.
: budapest (x 2007) :
10 photos of budapest in the autumn.
: c :
[ 23:57 tuesday 12 february – haggerston road, london ]
a few weekends ago i rented a van and drove with my aunt clare to my grandparents’ house near hampton court, on the thames south west of london. it was a bright chilly day. i hadn’t been in the house since mary’s funeral in august and it was much changed. most of the furniture and chattels had already been removed. all that was left was a forlorn shell populated with emotional phantoms. everywhere i looked i saw the objects that had stood there, events that had happened there, associations stretching back across the long years.
the reason for our visit was to pick up the bits and pieces apportioned to us when everything was divided amongst the family. in my case this consisted of a mahogany bureau, a wrought iron standard lamp, four folding wood and canvas garden chairs, a 1940s pye wireless and gramophone, a tattered persian rug, two wooden salad bowls, a yellow and white porcelain tea service, photos of grandpa from prep school and cambridge, several sets of silver cutlery (including a fish service, a fruit service and a beautifully engraved cake knife), eight champagne saucers, a port decanter, a georgian silver tea pot and milk jug, a stone from the houses of parliament damaged during air raids in 1941, a woven woolen blanket and about forty books spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
it took just a few days for everything to find its place in my flat. the effect of having these things here with me is marvelous. each item is saturated with memories. whenever i look at them or touch them i feel the presence of lloyd my grandfather and mary his beloved second wife, then a little more distantly monica my grandmother who died when i was twelve. beyond that many of the items belonged to my great- grandfathers ernest armstrong and walter scott hill so they too make their presence felt. stretching further back the names and lives are less familiar to me so the ghosts are less distinct.
i now feel despair at all the things i left behind. piles of books, grandpa’s canvas kit bag from the navy, more photographs. the thought of these treasures being dumped in a skip or sent to a charity shop appalls me. i must return and gather them all.
: c :
// charles armstrong // 