Rubbing...

... for Knots in the String.

We rub someone’s shoulder, don’t we, to express comfort and empathy? We rub a sore knee. We rub a babe’s back to express wind.

We rub the dog’s back or chest to give love and affection. We rub silver and brass to shine it. We rub wax on a car to polish it. The same on wooden furniture to oil it and give it a warm glow. We rub a dandy brush over a horse to remove mud and dead hair and we rub windows to clean them so that we can see life on the other side.

It’s a benign word. In a way, a soothing word, conveying much of how we live, and it’s been part of our language for 700 years.

[Early 14c, rubben … "apply friction on a surface; massage (the body or a part of it)," a word of uncertain origin, perhaps related to East Frisian rubben, "to scratch, rub," and Low German rubbeling rough, uneven," or similar words in Scandinavian (compare Danish rubbe "to rub, scrub," Norwegian, rubbe, all of uncertain origin.) https://www.etymonline.com

Of course that’s excluding the idea that we might rub someone up the wrong way or rub salt into wounds, rub their noses in… (well you get the drift), or that one might not have two pennies to rub together, or perhaps, one might rub shoulders with the snobby nobs or the hoi polloi. So many rubs and, as Shakespeare’s mournful Hamlet says in his To Be soliloquy, ‘Ay, there’s the rub…’ being the problem or complication.

I didn’t give a thought to any of this last night as I unscrewed the top of my nightcream and rubbed it on my face.

Nor when I took the top off the anti-inflammatory cream and rubbed it on my neck, my shoulder, and further rubbed it into my gluteal tear, my knee and into my wrecked ankle.

Nor when I rubbed the compression sock smooth (to reduce the swelling around the torn FDL tendon).

Nor when I climbed into bed and removed the lid of the Nivea tin to rub cream into my hands and neck. And finally…finally… I took the pale green linen hankie from my pyjama pocket and rubbed my glasses clean so that I could read the Kindle. It was only as I wiped at the mark I’d left on the Kindle screen from the Nivea that I thought back over all the rubbing that had occurred from when I began to prepare for bed to when I actually lay back on the pillows in said bed. I sighed.

More than anything, I’d have liked to roll on my side and close my eyes while my husband rubbed my back. But he was asleep in another room because he had to get up in the dark to be in the shearing shed at dawn, and the pup and I wanted no part of the early start on a cold wintry morning. So as I rubbed the Kindle screen clean, I resolved to write about rubbing.

The very act of rubbing implies comfort. The featherweight of a baby lying against me as I rub a fragile little back, or the softness of the pup’s fur beneath my fingers as I rub in a T-Touch pattern along his spine and round his ears. Even the smooth surface of silver as I rub a shine back into the metal. But so too, the medicinal ease as the anti-inflammatory cream spreads over the sore bits, or the rather nice smell of the nightcream and the aromatic fragrance of the startlingly white Nivea cream. It’s a small pleasure really and isn’t life made up of small pleasures?

Other Things:

Clarkson’s Farm 4 on Amazon Prime. Where do I begin? So many don’t like Clarkson, as is always the case with a big personality and an even bigger income. I never watched Top Gear so I suppose I came into Clarkson’s Farm with no feelings one way or the other. I became a fan from Ep 1 of Series 1. Chiefly because of the attention he has drawn to the plight, (yes, plight!) of farmers right across the western world. Without farmers, there would be no food and yet farmers often die by their own hand because of financial pressure caused by isolation, climate, government taxes and low market prices. Clarkson (and Kaleb) have put pressure on urban communities and government to realise the problem. Will it make any difference? Heavens knows. But it’s heartening for farmers everywhere to know that someone with Clarkson’s giant profile is shouting the issues from the rooftops.

He's also a self-confessed twat on the farm. Visionary ideas but little practicality without the realistic assistance of Kaleb, Charlie and Hannah. It’s hilarious, and husband and self have raucous laugh-out-loud moments. Five stars.

I’ve also been catching up with Chelsea Flower Show on Britbox and making mental lists of plants for my spring garden. My latest idea is to cloud-prune a disreputable bay tree. Probably its leaf is not small enough nor dense enough for cloud-pruning but it’ll grow again and if it doesn’t, it’s been on notice for a year anyway.

I always love ballet class but I especially love it at the moment. Our teacher has taken us up another notch and is making us use our brain-muscle continuum even more. We all have consistent sore bits, our bodies are senior after all, but we want her to keep pushing us further. The image above is of the studio as we all slowly drift in for morning class. I’m strapped because thanks to my ankle (which is supposed to have surgery – when in doubt stay out), my knee is grumbling. Pauline has a sore hip, Fi too, with longterm tendinopathy, Vicki with tender calves after climbing at Cradle Mountain, and so on. But we live with the adage Use It or Lose It and that applies to the brain just as much as the body.

Each evening, my husband and I tend to exist in coastal silence. Tonight, with a weather change due, the wind shivers through the last of the liquid amber’s ruby leaves. It sounds chill and we expect the temperatures to drop. Maybe we’ll get a few more drops of rain. That’d be nice because its currently the Big Dry and our island’s east coast is thirsty. Pasture is palest celadon green, stretched thin and very short, sheep and cattle move a lot as they feed, farmers feed out hay and grain every day. Gardens are dry, the bush is crackling. Rivers are low, streams are non-existent, and water holes and dams have shrunk back noticeably. Perversely, every day is beautifully clear and sparkling blue, the winds blow westerly (bad for the east coast) and the nights are crystalline – deepest sable with a diamente sparkle through galaxies to infinity.

So I cook, I garden, I walk, I stitch. Some days I swim. And I write. Act III grows by the day:

Later, armed with a folder of exercises and her head aching from her meetings with the doctor, Sally, Michael and Karol, she waited in the entrance hall for an Uber to pick her up. To her horror, Sergei walked in, his expression smug when he saw her, absolutely no compassion in his manner. ‘Ah little wife. And how is leg? Pretty useless from where I stand, I think.’

‘It’s under control.’ She forced her voice to sound positive.

‘But you are out of dancing for future. What a pity.’ His lips curled down in mock sadness while his eyes sparked with a sabre-sharp malice. ‘No New York. No international stardom for little wife of Sergei.’

Kate couldn’t help herself. She answered back, ‘It is a pity, but it’s not as permanent as you might hope and I have the best therapy team in dancing to help me. I have supportive friends and family and what is more, the company is right behind me. What about you, Sergei? How are you?’

He sidled up to her and for a moment her heart pounded and she panicked, but then a group of raucous young ballet school students crossed the hall, slowing when they spotted Sergei and Kate, staring at the company principals with wonder and adoration. Even so, she sat in her chair and placed the crutches over her leg like some sort of shield wall defending her from anything that Sergei might do.

‘Better than you,’ he replied with that louche insouciance she had come to hate. ‘Did you know I have company’s best dancer and best f**k as my partner for New York? Good times.’ He sauntered away and she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, wishing the Uber would hurry.

Music for this week?

This.

If I have my facts right, Mr. Fontaine is an Australian who is quite the social media sensation. I love his orchestra and his music. It’s smooth, elegant and has such a subtle retro feel.