When I was a teenager, I was shopping in a supermarket with my Nana.

I’d picked something up (let’s say it was a nice packet of biscuits), and several isles later I saw some nicer biscuits and swapped them. I put the old packet down on the new shelf, where it didn’t belong.

Without saying anything, my Nana took the old packet of biscuits back to the old shelf. I scoffed at her. I couldn’t understand it. That’s what they employed the shelf-stackers for! Why would she go out of her way when someone else was being paid to fetch and carry?

Twenty years later, I understand. She took the biscuits back because it was the right thing to do.

As my life goes on, I’m less and less convinced that we can ever ‘tell’ anyone else how to be a better person, or how to make better choices.

First of all, who knows if we’ve got it right anyway? Who are we to know how someone else should be living their life? (Or our own, for that matter.)

And secondly, people often behave in a certain way through necessity. How can we know why they are clinging to their old behaviours? ‘Mean’ people may be terrified of not having enough. ‘Lazy’ people might be truly exhausted.

If at the time my Nana had said to me, ‘You lazy child, you should take the biscuits back to where you found them’, I wouldn’t have got it. I would only have heard the ‘ought’. When I look back now, I see that she was modelling a good way to be. Not because she wanted to teach me a lesson, or because she felt she ought to take the biscuits back. It was natural to her – it was simply the right thing to do.

Maybe the best way to help each other is to focus on ourselves. If we can try and be our best version of ourselves, maybe one day we might help someone else to find their own better selves.

Our choices have consequences beyond our imagination. How could my Nana know that I’d be writing this blog post about her small action, twenty years on?

*

Vetch, Meadowsweet, Celandine

She was talking about
her Zen teacher, Katagiri.
She said it can be twenty years
before you understand.

When mum pulled my best
dress from the wardrobe
on an ordinary day,
I didn’t know she was saying
nothing lasts. Enjoy it
while you can.

And when dad told me
I gobbled books too fast
and tested me afterwards
he wasn’t telling me off
but urging me to taste things
properly. A skimmed book
is a waste of time, and time
runs out.

They dragged me on long walks,
tried to teach me the names
of wildflowers, birds, I didn’t
realise they were showing me
a new way of looking, a way
of loving the world.

Everything goes in.
Twenty years later, more,
I want to say: your words
have now borne fruit. I understand.

*

And some very relevant quotes from Rosy at Red Room (thanks Rosy)

‘Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.’ Plato.

‘When we see a woman walk along the street, how do we know she is not some brave agoraphobe flinching from the brutal sky?’ Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall.

The wind just got excited and blew hundreds of leaves from the tree as if it was a birthday candle. They travelled horizontally for a little way before starting their lilting journey towards the grass: leaf snow.

I don’t know the name for the tree I’m talking about. I am a writer – I should know the names for trees. I can tell you it’s tall, that the oval-shaped leaves are cut into curves, that it’s turning a dirty orange. I could describe to you how it sounds, or what the bark feels like against my fingertips.

None of this would give you as much information as a single word. Ladybird. Pencil. Bobble-hat. Iceberg. Ocelot. Aren’t words amazing?

Oak? (hangs head in shame)

This morning I woke to several inches of snow, and a boiler flume belching black smoke up into the eaves of our thatch, having painted all the spider’s webs black.

That’s fine. The boiler man came yesterday to do some fiddling about, and said we might need to call him again. And it gave me the excuse to trudge through the crisp snow to the log-pile, and build a fire in the woodburner.

I am now installed downstairs with earl grey, the smell of woodsmoke, warmth, a curled cat on my lap (which makes typing this bad for my back as I hunch over to the laptop), and a blank morning waiting to be filled with words. What more could any writer wish for?

PS the photo is of our snowlady – we made her last time it snowed – note her impressive cup size.

Yesterday my dad sent down a letter I’d received from Roald Dahl when we were living in Asia. It was posted in 1984, and in it he says that my fan letter was the second he’d received that week from Malaysia.

At the bottom of the short typed letter is his signature in faded blue ink. The great man himself was holding the pen that made those marks. Maybe he was even sitting in that battered old armchair in his shed, where he created Danny Champion of the World and the BFG. Imagine!

My dad also included a school report from when I was ’9 years and 3 months’. And I quote:

Fiona is an excellent reader for her age. She reads in a fluent, expressive manner with very good comprehension of the text. Her creative writing is always a pleasure to read and contains some imaginative ideas.

Fiona’s individual work in the gym and on the games field is sometimes rather half-hearted. She is a little timid in her approach to apparatus work and seems rather wary of the ball when practicing ball skills.