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A day with a view

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Today we met, and we remembered.

It was a day for dog walks, for family, and for visiting small graveyards tucked into the folds between the buildings.

The tides ebbed and flowed, and the sun came out in sudden shafts. Life itself felt as if it was moving all around us. Skeins of geese poured across the sky unaware of the sadness below, while children, suddenly bored, burst into cartwheels and play. They were excited to be there, and to see this new grouping collect and connect – strangers they had never known, who might re-emerge in faded photographs when they, the children themselves, were old.

The great wheel of life was turning and we turned to – happy to be together.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The Christian Watt Papers edited by David Fraser

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Another treat of a book to travel with, and it feels right to be taking it to Inverness and the Moray Firth.

Eland included a short press release with this copy, and it emphasises that the ‘voice’ in the book is that of Christian Watt. She was born in 1833, and it is her words used, as found in the papers and notes she left when she died in 1923. Apparently she was encouraged to write as a type of therapy to help her through the loss at sea of a son, her husband, and four of her seven brothers. The family kept all her work together and after her death passed them on to David Fraser, who organised and edited the collection ready for publication. The first copy was published in 1988, with this edition coming out this year.

I have only just started the book but already the voice and its context are drawing me in. The hardships endured sound terrible. Christian Watt was not even nine when she began work as a domestic servant. She then returned to work back by the sea where her family where from, and eventually married a fisherman.

The introduction to the book ends with these words: “The times through which she lived were hard, and the folk they produced were not only hard but brave and tender. It is fortunate indeed that they come to meet us through the words of so worthy, witty and fluent a chronicler.”

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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To travel or not to travel?

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Today I met a young man who I assumed had travelled. He looked the type – a man who knew himself. He was relaxed, neither rich nor poor, and clearly happy in the company of others whoever they were.

We got talking. Our starting point was who was from where, and what what. He was a Londoner. Born in London. Schooled in London. Living in London. Working in London. Never going to leave London. It sounded as though his family had been stitched to the city for generations, and he loved it with a passion.

The conversation made me wonder – if you live in a big city full of the world, is there any need to travel? He seemed so rooted and at ease, and, as he said himself, one of the lucky ones because he fell out of school into a job he loved and hasn’t wanted to go anywhere since. So why travel? I looked at him and couldn’t think of a reason.

It was only right at the end of our chat that he told me he was about to go to the Far East for a holiday.

I was glad to hear he’d have that experience, but as I walked away into the strangely warm October day I wondered if his trip would unsettle him. I hoped it wouldn’t. Or, if it did, only in a good way.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023