INTERSTICES

My Dad used to joke that he was a collector - a collector of Fivers. In my lifetime he was not a conspicuously successful collector in that field.

He more successfully collected words. Odd ones. Arcane ones. Obscure and interesting words. Thus, at an early age, I learned of numismatics, graticules, micrometers, interstices and many more. This collection was housed in scraps of paper and notebooks, written in his beautiful, artistic hand.

He also collected small memories, often also written up in his notes. Recordings of the ordinary things in life around him, which he found, by dint of his own survival, shimmering and remarkable - the amount of raspberries or other crops yielded by his garden; the way a particular view looked on a particular Wealden evening; a sound of this or that bird, the taste of a toffee. Not big things. Small things. Small things noticed, though. Small things appreciated. Interstices, you might say, between the big ups and downs of life, the big happenings, the triumphs and disasters. An appreciation, and a contented awareness of what is happening when nothing is happening. What is going on, all the time, if only you stop to notice it.

These were his collection. Perhaps, too, his collection had a greater value than any collection of Fivers.

I find, as I return to this blog after an extended, indolent Christmas and New Year absence, that, if I have a New Year wish for others, and for myself, it is to be able to look at the interstices, the gaps, between notable events in our lives, and to collect with wonder and gratitude the million, million tiny spurs to contentment which are happening, every minute of every day just, in fact, as we think nothing much is going on at all.

May we notice, appreciate, collect and treasure.