DIARY
TERRY PARRIS I'm on a moving belt. Now I know what it is to jet-set, although our jet was Easy-Jet and the set were package tourists heading home from the Costa Brava. We were going from Barcelona to Luton. My son Matthew and I had one more programme to record for Radio 4's Mothers and Sons. From my home in the Pyrenees we went by car, plane, bus, train and taxi to Matt's flat by the Thames: Catalonia-Britain-Catalo- nia in one and three-quarter days flat. Broadcasting House welcomed us with its usual calm. I've had a lifelong love affair with the BBC. I broadcast my first story for children, 'The Talk-a-lot Fairy', from the Manchester studios nearly 50 years ago. Freelance writing and broadcasting of radio scripts in between bringing up six children in Johannesburg, Cyprus and Rhodesia was always fun, but never the same. 'Auntie' hasn't changed — the same friendliness from our producers, the same intelligence.
Home with holder of the fort, my husband Leslie, I look out at fields, woods and mountains, backdrop to the nearer meadow with four galloping Shetland ponies, chased by two normal-sized ponies, followed by Chatto the gallant cart horse and, bringing up the rear, Tramontana the boxer and Tiger, her fiercely barking puppy. Four cats of assorted colours and temperaments watch from the window sill. All answer to English or Catalan. The house is, temporarily, empty of Matt's innumerable friends who are voluntarily clearing the bush around l'Avenc, a half- ruined Renaissance house in a wilderness of cliffs, chasms and caves. Matthew and his sister Belinda hope to restore it. The friends visit here for showers, food and laundry. Mark, Matt's youngest brother, is here with girlfriend and small boy, to train the Shetland ponies: as mounts for children and accustom Chatto to his covered cart for giving rides to their par- ents. We are becoming, like Catalans, a commercial family.
Tomorrow another son, Roger (the artist), comes for a holiday with his two Young children from Warwick; and there's a neighbour's swimming-lunch. This diary is turning into a family saga — but which week in my life would have been different? `Stick it in your family — al — bum' ran that rude old song. Snapshots today from l'Avenc where I went to take a picnic lunch to the voluntary workers. As I parked, a hand wielding a pair of pliers shot out of the roof of the cow barn, an ugly structure of brick and iron sheeting being dismantled by 'Quim, Belinda's Catalan husband. Their son swung alarmingly from a small crane over the roof. Another grandchild was carting rubble to Matthew where he was layering his dry-stone 'stairway to Heaven', a short-cut to a raised paddock. I spent the afternoon avoiding the affection- ate advances of a very large family dog, comprehensively rolled in manure. Her gaze was as reproachful as her pursuit was relentless: I had always been her friend.
First visitors say, 'Aren't you lonely here? Aren't you afraid . . . only the odd farm for miles . . . . ' Today my calendar said, 'Tot el mon i totes les persons que viuen en ell son la meva familia' — 'All the world and all who live in it are my family.' This swimming party today proved it. The swimming was incidental, the lunch (four hours) monumental. Our host and neigh- bour is a master-builder (the larger-than- life Ibsen type) and we were, all 20 of us, part of his family. His wife and I are great friends — I teach her English and the house is Pairal, the 'great house' of this traditional farming area: fortress-like, with mounting-block still in the entrance hall and Sr Sarsanedes's office where once there were stalls for pigs and cows. The sun shone fiercely on our swimming, but torrential rain fell as we ate our lunch. I, in my padded armchair (Catalans reserve spe- cial treatment for the young and elderly), felt like a Chinese potentate watching the downpour as a celebration of Nature. Had I had scroll and brush and command of Mandarin, I might have written a delicately illustrated poem. Before bed I had to study Freudian Criticism and Artistic Theory for an Open University exam in October. Still full of lunch, I read:
In Freudian terms, artistic creativity is a form of sublimation; both art and the artist are pathological phenomena.
What Freudian sickness made Sr Sarsanedes, master builder and restorer of houses and churches like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, work and create so compulsively? There's a Spanish phrase, `Mi vida bulle de actividad' — 'My life boils with activity.' It was always so. After breakfast under the trees with three of our four sons, plus two grandchildren, I went with my business partner and friend Neus for an interview at a newspaper office to celebrate 20 years of our Anglo-Catalan Language School. We've come a long way since we set it up (above a brothel, by mistake). Neus and I started this school when Leslie was manag- ing a British cable factory in the town of Manlleu, and I had only two school-age children left of our six. I needed something to integrate me into Catalan society. I had been teaching English to Neus, Maria Engracia (Leslie's secretary) and two priests in our house when Neus suggested we start a school together. An emphasis on speaking before writing means that our students sing, act, play games and watch videos before taking the Cambridge exams. We have become something of an institu- tion in Manlleu, although Leslie has long retired, and we now live in the country. It would seem odd to an outsider that the town has such a high percentage of English-speaking Catalans. The school's ethos is to 'open windows'. We're all enthu- siasts. I explained to my newspaper inter- viewer a novelty we introduced this aca- demic year — a 'virtual reality' class for advanced students not with head-sets but with information, slides and videos of coun- tries Leslie and I plan to visit. Japan is first on the list.
My birthday. Where have all the years gone? I'm 72. One day a proud 12- year-old 'scholarship girl' in a gym-slip and panama hat and now. . . ? Early-morning birthday offerings were a clover-leaf wrapped in tinfoil, three handmade orange cards, three formal birthday cards and a box of chocolate-chip cookies. Daughter Deborah and her husband Manel gave the lunch in Manel's family farm garden. Everyone — three sons, two daughters, two sons-in-law and seven grandchildren swam and did back-flips in the irrigation tank among surprised carp. Male physiques were compared with much laughter: the youngest son Mark, who lifts heavy bales of hay for his animals, came the nearest to Mr Universe. One gift — a six-month massage course — reminded me that 50 years of rheumatoid arthritis have never spoiled my enjoyment of life or shaken the conviction that there is a beneficent Power. On the way home we met the fourth son with presents in hand — a midnight-blue jug and a flower vase. Tomorrow I fly to Cardiff and nine days' meditation in the mountains of Wales. What a lucky girl I am!
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