I can't believe I did that - part 1, 1973 - 1989

Looking back on my life doesn't mean that I think I've done everything I'm going to do - far from it! It's more a taking stock - who am I as I approach 70, and what life experiences have helped me become that person?

Once I'd started the looking back process, I realised that the life I've led is probably hors normes. I certainly haven't taken the '40-years-at-the-office and then retire' route; in fact my sum total of being an employee amounts to a piddling 15 years ... which is probably why I've never really related to or got my head around the concept of retirement and why my parents thought I was a selfish, lazy drop out (AND why I have such a pathetic pension)! But even from a very young age, my biggest fear was that I'd die with regrets for what I didn't do but had wanted to, or who I wasn't but had wanted to be. And so I've (mostly) followed my heart.

I've had so many different experiences since I was an adolescent that I feel very blessed to have lived so much already. In this post and the next ones, I'm going to honour that by writing about a few of the things I've done that have inspired me, and have made me into the person that I am today. I suspect some of my more recent friends might be surprised to learn more about the different paths I've taken over 50 or so years - others, maybe not so much.

Summer 1973

In the summer of 1973, when I was 17, I spent 10 weeks living in Finland with 3 different families - it was a 'cultural trip' organised by the Lions Club (of which my dad was president) and the Leo Club (of which I was vice president). Quite a lot of the time was spent in summer cabins by the lake, where I learned the joy of daily sauna and to take my clothes off without shame, but I also saw the midnight sun, learned to drive a tractor, picked endless kilos of strawberries with two Yugoslavian girls, and hung out in Turku with the student son of one of my host families. I was pretty independent before that, but I came back very much more comfortable in my skin, and I've always thought of that period as one of the happiest and most formative periods of my life. I grieved deeply for weeks when I came home.

Summer 1974

The day after my final A level exam I left to spend 4 months working in a small family run hotel/restaurant/bar in Arolla in Switzerland, at the end of the Val d'Hérens, at 2000 metres altitude - the first outsider ever to have done so. 

The Hotel de la Poste, at the top behind the yellow post buses, in the 1970s. 

Everyone did everything, including the 85 year old grandmother who had never left the valley, spoke an unintelligible dialect and still wore traditional dress every day. Nobody spoke English, not a word. To say it was a culture shock for an East London/Essex girl who'd never cooked, cleaned or even picked up her clothes from the floor would be an understatement ... especially when I learned that I'd be running the bar and restaurant pretty much single handedly! After some serious wobbling at the start things started to click and I had an amazing, if exhausting, time. The patron taught me to make raclette and fondue, I learned to smoke Disque Bleu and switch between French and German, and didn't speak English for 4 months. Without a doubt all this was behind my enduring love of mountains, of waiting on tables, of hospitality and of cooking for others - all of which were to be leitmotifs in my future life.

July 1984

After a couple of years deeply involved in the humanistic psychology/growth movement that was thriving and vibrant at that time (most weekends would find me at a workshop somewhere, ranging from bioenergetics to primal to meditation to encounter to dance and drumming and much more), especially around London where I was working, I travelled with my partner T to Rajneeshpuram, the Osho ashram in Oregon. There, I received a new name to mark a new beginning, a new identity, to celebrate choosing to live differently. The name Kalba is derived from Arabic, and signifies heart or soul. I began using my new name everywhere in life; a little later on I chose a new surname too and changed both first and second names legally, by statutory declaration - which means that for 35 years I've had a birth certificate that bears no relationship at all to my passport or any other means of identity.

1985

After 10 years working for the Department of Health and Social Security, latterly in health policy under Ken Clarke, I simply couldn't go on doing it and be myself. A new life was calling. T and I moved to Scarborough, where we bought a big house and opened it as an early vegetarian guest house/meditation centre: The Red House. 

Around us in Scarborough were a lot of others on similar spiritual paths, and although we all lived separately we were a community, spending a lot of time together, eating together and co-organising events. The Red House also hosted regular workshops and bodywork trainings with some of the 'big names' in the growth movement, weekly meditation sessions and other events. It was a fantastic time, with very many lovely guests staying with us again and again because they loved the food and the atmosphere, and a house full of great energy. Although it was probably the most alive and vibrant period of my life, sadly in the longer term it didn't make enough to pay the mortgage and long story short, we ended up moving to Sheffield in 1989 where both of us went back, reluctantly, into the world of paid work. But it was far from my last foray into either the world of hospitality or into community.