An Odyssey

Last weekend I went to the dacha again. There is no electricity or running water but I have a wood burning stove and an ancient gas cooker!!  The single track road leading to the dacha is full of pot holes and stones. Just like any other road in UK these days, you might say. Yes it is, but unlike other roads it leads higher and higher into the bosky hills of Glentress. That weekend the gorse was heady with coconut and the hawthorn was in bridal flower.  Bliss!

The birds were busily happy in the trees, insects were subdued in the breeze and the air was sweet. And I was planting purple tomatoes between forget-me-nots and young gooseberry bushes.  Too early to plant outside, I hear the gardeners cry! Perhaps it is but then again, I have never planted purple tomatoes before. Parenthetically, how would I know if a purple tomato was cold anyway? 

My style of gardening is inspirational than agricultural. I like the very act of pottering and planting. I like the feel of soft earth crumbling between my fingers and, if things happen to fruit, that’s a bonus. It is more the journey than the destination that appeals in this case.  Perhaps, it is the case in any journey?

Yesterday I was discussing Odysseus and his complicated journey back from Troy with A. We considered the validity of the maxim that since Homer, every journey has become a potential odyssey. But, can a prosaic tour be an odyssey? Can a weekly trip to the shops be an adventure? Can a Sunday outing be Homeric?

In my Grandmother’s case the answer to all of the above is a resounding yes! And, as my dear friend said quite recently, every journey to a supermarket is of an epic proportion these days. The isles keep changing,  towering shelves of cathedral magnitude change product range in the blink of an eye, and the most disturbing of all is the scentless abundance of exotic fruit and vegetables. All taking place under a Cyclopean security procedures.   My poor friend seemed overwhelmed by his experience. I share his sentiment. I'd rather sail past Scylla every week than go supermarket shopping...

My Grandmother had an amazing talent for adventures. She collected them effortlessly and prolifically. Some of her adventures verged on dangerous but the precipice was mostly avoided or if she (with her Thumbelinas in tow) tumbled over the edge, the landing was predominantly soft.  Her odyssey took her across space and time in landlocked landscapes of Eastern Europe. She saw war and peace and then cold war, political partitions and uprisings. She heard sirens sing falsely of the new dawn and saw the love of her life crossing Styx (Acheron) and leaving her for twenty years on the other side. She died before consumerist liberation took hold of her very own Ithaca.

I can see her riding a bicycle down a steep hill only to find the brakes failing; jumping from a (slowly) moving train when it failed to stop at the station we wanted (don’t tell your mother); using a tin bath as a punt for visiting friends when our summer holiday turned into The Flood; getting lost on the road to a destination and still finding time to explore the unknown; talking into the night recounting all her adventures.  I loved being able to travel with her and grew up looking eagerly and expectantly at the unfamiliar.

As I said to my very young son years ago when we jumped on a boat which chugged in a wrong direction: “We haven’t been here before. It is going to be one of Grandmother’s adventures. How exciting!”