Deserts, dreams and angels

Oh, what is it with me and deserts?  I don’t know, I just don’t know but they pull me, they pull me, inexorably.  They soothe my heart and they scour my soul.  I had been promised desert on this trip and so it was to be.  But I wondered, I wondered.  We were a large group.  Deserts are solitary places.  I needed time.  I needed to be.  I needed to meditate and get back in touch.  Was it possible?

We drove to the Dead Sea, past Jerusalem (I still can’t quite get my head round glancing out the window and seeing a road sign to The Mount of Olives) and, strangely, we weren’t talking on the bus.  There was an easy silence so I put on my iPod and let it go on shuffle and – hmm – it landed on my shamanic drumming track and I figured, well why not, it’s as good a place as any to journey for guidance… and it was a strange journey for sure.

When I opened my eyes the dust had began.  Past Bedouin settlements, dust-coloured shacks blended into dust. Past dust-coloured camels, gazing with total disinterest from dust.  The Judean Desert.  Midbar Yehuda.  

And then the rock began…striated sculptures, Lego of the gods.  And then, oh, and then, a haze, a shimmer of blue. Sky? Sea. The Dead Sea.  The lowest point on the Earth.  Jordan on the other side.  I love these water boundaries – it reminded me of a very different one on Lake Ohrid in Macedonia – with the Albanian border snaking through the waves.

But this was Ein Gedi.   And we met Giora and Barak who loaded us into LandRovers and we bounced our way up and into the desert…

Scrambling down the banks of a wadi; walking along the arid bed of a sleeping river until we came to a sheer cliff face, a natural auditorium with clear acoustics…sat on rocks and then – magic.  This guy who’d appeared pretty well out of nowhere, hitching a lift on our bus, took out a guitar and started to strum and sing.  Beautifully. 

He sang this…

And then he sang Faith...

And then A Horse with No Name (of course)...

And Barak carved open a water melon and it was the sweetest flesh I had ever tasted.  And, truly, I could have sat there and dreamed for ever…

The guy’s name?  Raphael.  Hmm…

PS

He didn't play this one but it's a damn good desert song, no?

Ghosts

Oh I just give up! We had feedback from our two viewings on Saturday. The first turned us down because we don’t have enough land. The second because we don’t have enough bedrooms. OK, fine – good valid reasons, but why can’t they read?? The property details say really clearly that we have ten acres and that we have five bedrooms. Surely it’s not rocket science to figure out that ten acres won’t house your huge herd of beef cattle or that you won’t fit your family plus aged parent into the bedrooms we’ve got? What do they think will happen? That, by some weird miracle, by the time they get here to view we will have decided to buy an extra forty acres or so? Or that the morning they decide to view we’ll have woken up to find – gosh, what a surprise – the bedroom fairy has been and tacked another one on the end of the house?

Sorry, this is a huge rant but I do just get so cross. We raced back in order to tidy up the house. We ate sandwiches rather than have the smell of cooking permeating through the house. We locked ABSO Jack in the car for two hours. OK, so that’s our choice but really – what’s the point?

In fact I got so cross with the whole affair that I lost the plot a bit earlier this morning. Jack was going totally bananas which alerted me to the fact that there was a Landrover sidling up the drive. It got to the stables, turned round and headed back down the drive. Right, I thought, that’s it! Bloody househunters! Convinced it was someone having a sneaky look. OK, that’s fine, but if the householder catches you at it, surely it’s only polite to explain what you’re about? So I stood there, in my slippers, shouting, ‘Hello! What’s going on?’
Absolutely no response. Landrover halted down by the far field gate. Brake lights went off.
Then, OK, did a bit of jumping up and down and a bit of fist-waving. Awful but true.
Then, horrible dawning realisation: it was our neighbour, coming to bring feed for Murphy who’s turned out in our field. Face goes bright red. Fortunately he’s profoundly deaf so probably won’t have heard a word. Please God he’s getting short-sighted too – or I’ll never live down the leaping up and down.

On a cheerier note, that reminds me of our old house and old neighbour. We used to live on the Somerset Levels in a gorgeous old Georgian rectory (well, a chunk of it). We could only afford it as it had been carved into two and the old tennis court had been sold off for a building plot (so sad as it lost us our view). Our neighbour in the new house built on it was a bit of a nightmare – one of those people who always know best and feel the urge to tell you how to do everything. He’d hang over the fence when Adrian was mowing the lawn and give him tips on how to mow – and then (even more offensive to my dear real ale snob of a husband) offer him a can of Fosters!
Anyhow, one Christmas Adrian bought me a slide – one of those short-lived aerobic crazes that they hoped would follow on from step. You put on slippery overshoes and basically slid backwards and forwards along this mat. Actually it was good fun and damn good exercise. I had mine behind the large sofa in the living room and one day I was merrily whooshing from side to side when I noticed our neighbour looking over the fence. He caught sight of me and I waved a little ‘hello, yes I know you’re there now please leave me in peace’ wave….but he stood there with his eyes popping out.

A few days later I bumped into him and he gave me a weird look.
‘What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ said I helpfully.
‘Um. How do you do that weird sliding thing?’ he asked. ‘I saw you in your living room and one moment you were at one end of your sofa and the next you were up the other…..it was like you were on ice – how d’you do it?’
Tempting to say I could fly – but I took pity on him and came clean.

Talking of ghosts, I have to say that that particular Rectory was very weird. I never actually saw anything but it had a definite feeling. And there was one place on the stairs where something (?) always tried to trip you up. It was so uncanny. It was a huge wide staircase and there was no loose carpet or anything yet, if you didn’t pay attention, you’d nearly find yourself pitching down the stairs. Everyone who stayed said it was spooky and one night we had a hilarious farce. My friend Nicky was staying in one of our spare bedrooms. I couldn’t sleep and so decided to go through to the other spare room (next to Nicky) and read. I lay down, got out my book and then heard this awful dragging sound, like something being hauled across the room. It scared the hell out of me, and I spent the whole night half-awake wondering what would happen next.

Next morning at breakfast Nicky looked as rough as me.
‘I couldn’t sleep a wink,’ she said. ‘I thought there were burglars, so I hauled the tallboy across the door. But then I kept hearing sounds from the room next door but I knew nobody was sleeping there…..’

OK, now I’ve cheered myself up a bit. While I’ve been writing this Murphy has been galloping and bucking his way up the hill looking very frisky. I shall try to harness some of his energy when I go to the gym this afternoon!