So this word, this word, Blythe, that kept appearing in my dreams, softly, softly, softly coloured the word, not in flashing red or pink neon, but in soft pastel painterly tones, and I could feel the horsehair of the brush as I heard the word again and again and again, pressing over my eyelids as I slept, and I knew I was asleep.

because I had that sense of closure. A reading life, a writing life with writer and teacher Sally Bailey. So I'm sitting in bed in January on my boat and all around me is the sight and the sounds of condensation. Here's my finger running over my porthole window wiping. I'm trying to let in the sunlight. My porthole is

A small oculus filled with water drops. Last night was very cold. Minus three, they say. Minus three. And I was a little creature in her burrow, wrapped up in blankets with a hot water bottle, which lies beside me still. My small flabby beast. It's like a little prey, a little animal I keep close to me. Small animal of prey. And now my porthole window.

is still partly obscured by water drops, but I can see the river flowing rapidly and the sunlight bouncing off it, and the willow tree gleaming and glistening, a solid green on the other side. Today is very sunny, and it is my first night and day, day and night, after two weeks away, and oh, I missed, I missed my beloved Kerion. Despite the difficulty with the cold,

There's nothing too difficult about putting on an extra blanket after all. But I wanted to tell you about a dream I've had. A very pleasant dream. It begins with the word blithe. Blythe. A very beautiful word to say. Blythe. It slides off my tongue and then ends in the th and the silent e and sits there at the end. Like a little insect. Blythe.

Waiting to hop and go somewhere, blithe, to follow a blithe plot. You can hear the wind whistling through as I push my tongue, blithe, out through the edge of my mouth, where it rests, my tongue on my teeth, blithe, blithely. Let me tell you about my dream. So this word that kept appearing in my dreams, like a character or a sensation, blah.

A painterly feeling, a painterly word. I was word painting in my dream. My early morning dreams and Blythe came to me not in flashing red or pink neon but in soft pastels. In painterly tones and I could feel the horsehair of the brush crossing my eyelids, pressing in, pressing in as I heard the word again and again. Blythe brush, Blythe brush.

Blithe, blithely brush, blithely brush the paint the colour of blue, eggshell blue, pressing into baby pink, the colours of a nativity, the colours of eggs at Easter, painted gently between tender fingers so as to ensure the shell of the egg does not crack, a child holding it gently in the cup of her hand,

painting with a small horsehair paintbrush. I held an egg like that. I held an egg gently. Once in Switzerland, aged eight, and I painted my egg in blithe colours. And in my light feathery early morning sleep, I could feel the touch of the paintbrush over my closed eyelids and it took me back to Switzerland in the spring.

All those years ago, and I was painting, and I was an artist, and I was a child artist, and I was in charge of a nativity, a blithe nativity. Myself, a child abroad in someone else's spring, a foreign spring, a spring where they spoke French and sat around tables neatly and nicely and ate lapin, artista, they ate rabbit.

But even that was done blithely, although I refused the rabbit. I would not eat the rabbit. I would not eat the bunny rabbit. Aged in that spring. And I was surrounded by big sash windows with shutters flung open and light filing in. And I was living inside a house like a church, filling with light. Huge white dormitory windows.

Houses like boxes on hillsides and on mountainsides. Houses that needed painting to protect them from wet snow. Even in April the snow was there and now it was melting into the sun. Golden light filing in through the large dormitory windows and somebody opened the window. Somebody flung open the shutter in the morning and woke me up gently.

blithely. And I went downstairs into the farmhouse-style kitchen with the flagstone floors under my feet stone, stone, for a chocolate for breakfast with a thick slice of bread covered in chocolate again. And I was most surprised, aged eight, to be eating chocolate twice at breakfast.

pain au chocolat, pain au chocolat, and I was pleased to be able to speak in French every now and then. Occasionally at breakfast time, I could say the word pain, pain au chocolat, pain au chocolat, dipped choco, choco, chou, choco, chou, chou, hot chocolate.

And it was a gentle awakening to foreignness and otherness and different languages and different sized windows and different sized houses and people who ate rabbit at Easter. But there was a blitheness to my dream and there was a softness and it was the softness of melted chocolate which is almost always, certainly, blithe. And I know that that word blithe

has an old English root suggesting a happy disposition, a joyful kind of soul, cheerful and gentle. How are you today? Well, I'm feeling very blithe. I've just had hot chocolate for breakfast. Dip. I've dipped my bau chocolat in my hot chocolate for breakfast. And now I am looking out of these large

Large dormitory windows and the light is filing in and there is a lovely, kind, friendly lady called Madame Cavin. Madame Cavin. And another lady behind her called Madame Grosjean. And they are kindly women and they are cheerful women and they are there to care for me. A cheerful and gentle state.

A cheerful and gentle state of mind. An external manifestation of a self enthralled to joy. Joy? And why would I not be joyful at breakfast eating pao chocolate, dipping it into my choux chocolat. And I will become a person spreading good cheer and lightheartedness. I will be like those women in the kitchen on the flagstone floors. One of them is now making

pasta with a machine and she turns a handle and the handle spins out flat, flat yellow dough, flat yellow dough. I can hear the mangle turning. There is a sound of the mangle turning and she is singing to herself, Madame Grosjean, and she is speaking French and Italian, French and Italian.

And you know in the old high German, Blythe is Blidie. And Blidie is a Blythe person who is gay and friendly. And Madame Cojon, which is a French name, was very Blythe. In her kitchen, where I sat watching her making pasta with a machine,

with a metal handle turning and the pasta came out like small neat sheets made of dough pastel light light creamy colored and you know in the gothic form of blive blips there is a hint of mercy yes a hint of mercy a hint of mercy as in porsche's famous speech in the merchant of venice

Mercy, mercy, mercy, it falleth like the gentle rain from heaven. Portia, the merchant of Venice. And so you see a blithe person is not one seeking revenge. In her there is no bitterness, no bitterness, only good things.

cheer and that paintbrush is spreading good cheer over my eyelids and pressing down the colours of a nativity pink and blue, the colours of a baby's bottom, the colour of that pasta being pressed out like a small sheet you might put over a crib or a basket or a set of eggs, Easter eggs, Easter eggs.

Easter in the spring. And so you see my sleep, my sleep was producing as it so often does, my sleep was producing a kind of word painting and I could hear and feel the horse hair brush brushing over my eyelids leaving soft feathery colours.

And I could hear the word being said out loud: Blythe, Blythe, Blythe, Blythe, by, by, by, I, I, I. And I was seeing something, and I was seeing, and I was feeling softness. Softness. I was seeing and feeling softness. A soft, soft,

Soft spirit, a gentle soul, and she was blithe. And that child artist was blithe, and she was painting her Easter eggs in the spring all those years ago in a blithe house with light. Dormitory windows somewhere in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. La Suisse, la Suisse, they say.

And I wonder now, I wonder now, whether we can create a state of being blithe, blitheness, or whether it is something we're born with, born with, born blithely. Or whether we can acquire that state of being cheerful and friendly and gay, gay, happy, light-hearted, playful, laughter.

Laughter, I laugh, often more loudly than I used to. I love to laugh. One of my friends once said to me, you love to laugh. And I do. And I do. And these days I erupt into laughter unknowingly, unwittingly. If we were to be perhaps more portentous for a moment, we might say it is something neurological. Pseudo-bulbar erupting laughter.

erupting from a lesion in the cerebral cortex descending to the brain stem those centers of laughter and tears but what does it matter it is more to me like an underground spring gushing an underground spring gushing over a geezer letting off tension joy and delight a muscle tickled

Not a lesion in the cerebral cortex, no. No, and in any case, I take pleasure in the eruptions. My laughter, when it comes suddenly, is a starling murmuring loudly, "Upwards she goes, my laughter, upwards she goes." And I think to myself in my state of being blithe, I've become a gentler person in the last few years.

more friendly, more kindly. I take things more slowly and perhaps that is essential to be blithe, not to be too quick, not to be too quick to judge.

Not to be too quick to see the darker side of life, to keep that paintbrush running over my eyelids in her downy, feathery, soft pastel colours. Blue and pink and yellow, the colour of Easter eggs in the spring. Blythe, Blythe, connoting friendly. To receive the world and all that is in it with more friendliness.

And more mildness. If you are Dutch and you go to the old Dutch root of the word, they tell you that 'bladir' 'bladir' is mildness. Mild. Meek and mild. Perhaps not meek, but mild. More tempered. More gentle. More gentle. More gentle. And I'm thinking again of those women in that kitchen in Switzerland.

there are more than one. But I'm thinking in particular of Madame Grosjean as she used to make her pasta and as she used to stand over her hot stove making food for an entire household of people. How much that seemed to hold everything and everyone, the entire world all together in a blithe state of friendliness and how it was that

Neighbours came in and relatives came in and we sat about and I listened to them speaking in French. And it didn't frighten me because I felt the warmth. I felt the warmth of their friendliness. And even now as I speak, I'm trying to sound, to feel the mildness. The mildness. To breathe more deeply and feel that gentle spirit.

which is the root of blithe. A gentle spirit who is not necessarily indifferent to the rage in the world, there is so much lapping at our shores after all, but to be open to hearing and being drawn into the blithe, the friendly, the joyful, the merciful. And I have just discovered the most beautiful poem, a poem which I had not clearly or distinctly heard

well enough before this season, a poem by Edwin Muir called 'The Annunciation' which I hear and see as a blithe encounter between two spirits or souls, one an angel and one a girl, as in the painting by Fra Angelico. And as I read my poem by Edwin Muir, I'm going to imagine that the angel and the girl

arrive somewhere in the middle of my porthole where this golden metal bar runs between. That is the sound of my brass metal bar being wiped by my hand. In between two panes of glass there is a golden metal bar lit up by light at the moment and I'm going to imagine the shape of Fra Angelico's painting.

which is structured around a meeting point in eternity between a human, a woman, Mary and an angel. But you can make of that girl and that angel whomsoever you wish. The angel and the girl are met. Earth was the only meeting place for the embodied never yet travelled beyond the shore of space.

The angel and the girl are met. Earth was the only meeting place, for the embodied never yet travelled beyond the shore of space. The eternal spirits in freedom go. See they have come together, see! While the destroying minutes flow, each reflects the other's face.

Till heaven in hers and earth in his shine steady. On my golden bath, the girl and the angel have arrived. Just there in the center of those two oval shapes, panes of glass, they touch and shine. Steady there, he's come to her from beyond the farthest star. From beyond the farthest star.

Feathered through time, feathered through time, feathered through time, and when I hear that line, I feel the touch of the horsehair paintbrush running across my eyelids, feathered through time. Immediacy of strangest strangeness is the bliss that from their limbs all movement, and so the angel and the girl are still.

They are frozen in time, they do not move, yet the increasing rapture brings so great a wonder that it makes each feather tremble on his wings. Outside the window footsteps fall into the ordinary day and with the sun along the wall pursue their unrelenting

Sounds perpetual roundabout, rolls its numbered octaves out, and hoarsely grinds its... But through the endless afternoon, these neither speak nor movement make, but stare into their deepening trance, as if their gaze would never, as if their gaze would never break. They stare into that deepening trance, where neither speak

nor movement. And perhaps in the end, that's what it is to be blithe, to have arrived at a place of complete contentment, where there is no longer any need for movement or for speaking. Only the ordinary day, with the sun making its way along the wall through the endless afternoon.

And I suppose that's what my dream signifies in some sense. The endless morning or afternoon of feeling deep and a resting place. And that place is the colour of pastels pressing down upon my eyelids. Blue and pink and yellow. The colour of the sun as it hits the wall

of that house in Switzerland all those years ago and as it hits the wall of my berth on my boat this January morning waking me up to the blithe light and sounds of the sun because the sun creates movement. Thank you for listening to A Reading Life, A Writing Life.

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