Dowse and out

I spent a few days in Mallorca recently and instead of coming home brown, I came home black and blue. Fell off (through) a ladder which wasn’t very clever. I did replace a roof tile and take down and chomp (ready for burning) around 30 dried palm fronds though.

I was only there for a few days, but long enough to make the place habitable for Sally for her last proper sojourn there as resident before she turns the casa over to Orlando’s children. I also managed to spend quite a bit of time watching two hoopoes in the neighbour's yard. Wonderful looking birds! The house, though, is too difficult for Sally to maintain, so it’s good that it is going back to Carlota and Robert now. There’s so much needs doing! Oh - and this was how the garden looked before we had a good tidy.

That’s why I was up a ladder, trying to clear the weeds off the bathroom roof, and that’s where I came a cropper as the ladder slipped its feet and I descended ungracefully and vertically through the rungs.

But black and blue notwithstanding, it wasn’t just Mallorca that prompted me to write this blog post today. I had an interesting couple of days this weekend too.

Firstly, I spent Saturday in Kingston helping out at a summer fair for the Aurora Health Foundation. This is a small local charity that works with people who were abused as children. It’s a valuable service and one that is desperately seeking funds, as are so many of these independent charities today. But they provide services that you can’t get anywhere else – counseling, complementary therapies, all sorts of things that the NHS can’t provide, even if they wanted to.

I spent my time singing mostly – sitting in the corner with my guitar and mumbling my music. I enjoyed the day not because of the singing, but because of the amazing atmosphere of cooperation and fun that there was. Everyone involved in the day was volunteering their services. What a nice bunch of people to meet. I also liked seeing the parakeets that are wild in that part of London. Noisy birds, but oh my, so colourful!

Late Saturday night my phone beeped at me. ‘Are you awake?’ – well I am now! My friends who had been to Glastonbury had been diverted and were near our house, could they stay over as they had to be back in our town in the morning? Well, of course.

So I set them up in my son's room, on his double bed. Meanwhile, an hour later (2am), Penni came by after a late night London gig. She stayed downstairs. So when my daughter came down in the morning, it was with some surprise to see five of us sitting down to breakfast.

The reason my friends were over our way was to visit Therfield Heath and go dowsing. I'd had a play with two dowsing rods and they wiggled wonderfully at the kitchen table! However, on the heath - where we had a very windy and slightly damp picnic - I was not so successful.

In an area on top of a huge water table, ripe with natural energy lines (St Michael's and Mary Ley lines go through our town, as does the Greenwich Meridian and two of the oldest Roman roads in Britain) I detected nothing. My pendulum did not swing except when caught by a gust of chilly wind, and my dowsing rods remained immobile in my frozen hands.

Looks like I'm not a natural dowser. The others in the group were tripping gaily over the ancient tumuli and planting little flags where they felt energy responses in the earth. And I wondered what it was I was missing - like being at a party and the only one sober, or in a room where everyone is speaking a different language.

I enjoyed it though - a different experience. As I wandered back across the heath to go home, there was a heavy metal rock band in a trailer playing to an audience of about three down by the sports club. There were dog walkers and children tumbling down the hills, rolypoly style. Kite fliers enjoyed the wind and the larks were christening the cool air with their melodies. Good thing that red kite I'd seen this morning wasn't around or they'd be dinner!