Conversation in a Victorian Tea Room

On 8 August 2012 20:11, Mary Francis <francismef@gmail.com> wrote:

Silvana (73) said she'd never laughed so much since she was at school, and it was Agnes' (75) fault. We three agreed afterwards that it was just as well Margareta, (82) is deaf. If there's ever a conversation you would have wanted to be a fly on the wall for, this was it!

We were at a Victorian Tea Room, and we're delicately drinking tea and forking our way through scones with cream and jam, having an unexpectedly good time.

Agnes is very smart both in dress and appearance, slim petite and blonde, with hilarious tales of her life in the travelling community. Most of them involving Agnes bossing her enormous and devoted husband about, keeping him on his toes by proving time and again that whatever he does to please her, he can't get it right.

It's how she tells them.

During a lull in the conversation I casually mentioned the controversy over Fifty Shades Of Grey. Without batting an eyelid, Agnes tells us she's reading it at the moment. I really hadn't expected this, we are, after all, Catholic Matrons in a Tea Shoppe!

'I'll tell you one thing, 'she said,' It's really badly written. I shan't be reading the other two!'

'What's she talking about?' asks Margareta, so I have to relay a slightly modified but still unmistakably risqué conversation about which parts of a man's body we find most attractive and generally hooting over the assumptions behind this question. Sylvana thought male bums too hairy to be attractive, but that a deep voice really turns her on. She's French, and was free with gestures and facial expressions, such as made my attempt to tone down her remarks for Margareta, redundant.

I would blush to repeat what wiles Sylvana and Agnes employ to cool the ardour of their respective mates: these are the tactics of black belt, medal- winning, wives that have both served terms of well over fifty years. I think it safe to say that Agnes occasionally employs a wincyette nightdress.

I don't expect you know what a wincyette  nightdress is! Hint: It doesn't plunge.

A film crew were filming the occasion for, 'Food Glorious Food' a prog that wias screened early last year. They took footage of me pouring tea, but they were, thankfully, elsewhere in the room for our confessions.

Fr Aidan was seated right behind Agnes, but she didn't care. 'Oh he knows what a wicked soul I have!' she laughed.

'Agnes,' I said, You have an innocent heart! A dirty mind... But an innocent heart... .

Miss Chew

I am a little taller than the gate - eight or nine years old maybe - and I stare wide-eyed and tingling with the excitement of a child who knows she is secure, and is savouring the fear.

The innocent object of my fascination is an old, old woman. I can not guess at her age, I don't have the experience. As old as God, I think. She lives alone in a ground-floor maisonette behind the patch of green at the closed end of  of our cul de sac. She stares out of her window as we, noisy, scruffy kids,triumphant  in our youth, play Tag, and British Bulldog, as fast as our feet will carry us. As night closes in , shielded by the dark, before we're called in, we play cherry-knocking. Banging loudly on our neighbours doors, then running away shrieking with laughter. What nuisances we were! How little we cared. 

We do not deliberately target Miss Chew, we  shun her, her age alienates her from us, her shuffling form draped from head to foot in black, sets her apart. She glimpses us through eyes puckered by age in a face creased and twisted by a hard, relentless life. We flinch from her. 

This is the day I learned to feel ashamed. My brother Adrian and I had the good fortune to be given sweets. Four ounces of Cadbury's chocolate eclairs, expensive at 10d a quarter, smooth and delectable. A toffee overcoat, that can be sucked gently away or bitten straight through to the soft chocolate interior. In no time, we'd scoffed the lot. A regal sweet, a rare treat. 

Left with a white paper bag and a handful of purple cellophane wrappers, we hit on a plan which we thought would afford us a half-hour's entertainment. We were living without consequences in a world that had been kind to us: we didn't know how to weigh our prank against the feelings of another. We were to learn.We wrapped   the shiny cellophane around lumps of mud, and left the 'sweets' enticingly abandoned on the pavement. 

We hid behind the privet hedge at Number 14 and waited.

More than fifty years later, I blush with shame as I relive the moment when the bent old woman leaning heavily on her sticks, made the painful descent to pick up those bloody sweets. I can see the pleasure light up her button eyes and the smile  lift her caved- in mouth as she struggled to gain her prize.

I couldn't laugh. I could find no pleasure in this frail old woman's humiliation. My brother and I slunk away, no word passed between us, then or since. 

We didn't fully understand the awfulness of what we had done, but we knew that never, ever, would we do such  a thing again.

 

Tthe Starfish Project

I am beginning to draw back a veil and peer into a  very  painful part of my life: the time I had a breakdown which led to my retirement from teaching five years ago, at the fabulously early age of fifty-eight.  

What I am appreciating now that I no longer have anger and resentment to deal with, is the amazing support certain individuals gave. There was Ray, who suffered alongside me with infinite patience, my daughters, whose love also sustained me, and Carol who made a lovely memory book for me, which I was looking at yesterday, and which prompted this post. Thank you Carol!  (She reads this!) 

Some events around that time were pure grace. Islands of normality in a sea of pain. One such was a Study Visit organised by The League of Commonwealth Teachers to the Western Cape in South Africa.

Alongside the educational engagements, there were trips to a winery, a penguin colony and the Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens - wangled by me, the eternal flower freak.  I may have some photos to post somewhere ... 

Jan Isaac, our party leader, gave me a gift that day, a beaded magnet shaped like a starfish. She knew how I was leaving my profession with a deep sense of failure, and reminded me of the starfish story:

A boy walks along the beach and encounters thousands of stranded starfish. He begins to throw them one by one back into the sea. A passer-by, taking in the enormity of the task remarks:

"That's not going to make much difference"

"It will to HIM ," replies the boy, tossing the next one into the waves. 

Making a difference to one, then another one, then another one. Perhaps as a teacher, I did. I'd certainly like to think so.

The starfish is attached to the fridge, and reminds me that failure isn't always the right word for when the world comes crashing down. Certainly in my case: I have had at least four years paid leave that I wouldn't have had, and good ones at that. What seemed like disaster at the time, now has a very different aspect.

All of the above is preamble to following-up on The Life Of Brian. 

My do-gooding with Gloucester City Mission is a consequence of my precipitate departure from the work force. Helping others is a great way to get over yourself and other assorted calamities, and I would credit the Missioners, and the Salvation Army volunteers too, with playing a large part in my healing. 

When beginning volunteering in any field, I guess you're given advice about not getting  too involved ... But Brian just seems so helpable. So I threw all caution to the winds and set about to make a difference. 

Brian is now working for us using his considerable talents gained as an estate manager before his meltdown. Just a couple of hours a week at minimum wage with meals and advice, resources and opportunities to start his own business. 

I don't know how this intervention will end: as long as Brian isn't adversely affected, it doesn't matter. I guess once you've thrown the starfish back into the sea, the rest is up to him. 

:) 

Making Meatloaf

An early start today. Daughter Kate and fiancé Darren stayed overnight and Ray has taken them off to the airport. Darren recently owned up to never having had meatloaf. So I fixed meatloaf for supper last night as they're off to Spanish cuisine for a week. I thought a little real homely American comfort food would be a great send off. (Don't talk to me about the delights of calamari, You'll not convince me.)

Meatloaf. Mmmm. Homemade, the right mix of good lean minced steak, finely chopped onions and sausage meat, spiced with a dash of curry powder, glazed with a special BBQ sauce... Move on Mary, move on, it's too early for leftovers. 

I am skiving. Apart from making meatloaf, I did nothing yesterday, and am not about to do anything today. Loving it.

A friend recently asked me how I was feeling, and I began to cry.  Unknotting, letting go, releasing emotions that I would be unwilling to name. Like pushing a reset button - you know the sort: hidden,  and needing a sharp jab to activate. You just have to do it sometimes and what a relief it is.

Well, anyway, I re-packed the baggage, lightening-up somewhat, and made meatloaf. 

Your Very Good Health

I have it. The app that allows me to blog on the move, but I am hesitant to use it. For starters, my ill-matched 'package' gives me over 400 'phone minutes and texts that I have no use for, but allows me so little data usage, I'm afraid to use my Smartphone away from wifi... Furthermore (what a lovely word. I shall use it again...) Furthermore, I am not a spontaneous blogger. I admit it, I am too inhibited. Goodness KNOWS what might happen if I took to instant escritorial enterprise! I may let fall an indiscretion, or WORSE, allow a grammatical error to slip by unnoticed. Spelling errors - highly improbable: an internal alarm sounds at the slightest hint of an errant letter.

But I'm thinking about it... 

I have just returned from the  doctor's surgery for a thyroid function test. There is much that might be blogged in a doctor's surgery. I watched a woman with a kindly face and a set of wheels steer her way into a chair, completely and inadvertently blocking the exit to the corall of smart blue seats which was occupied solely by she and I. I began to speculate as to the etiquette of freeing myself from my unintended  prison, but she departed before I needed to exercise my manners. 

The Magazines! I passed up on the hunting and shooting periodical. The lead article on humanely dispatching a pheasant didn't appeal. I am not against shooting on principle, I just can't imagine myself ever being safe around a gun. I fear I might discover hidden depths and unexpected talents.

I settled for a long-dead issue of Good Housekeeping. Noting in passing,  that 'Woman', 'Woman's Own', ' Woman's Weekly', ' Reader's Digest'and 'The People's Friend' are unaccountably absent. These worthy papers punctuated my medical expeditions over the years. I only ever read any of them in the doctor's surgery, which, come to think of it, partly explains their absence today. Women, I sighed ( being one of them) have little enough time to read magazines these days. 

I have absolutely NO interest in Celebrity Gossip at any other time in my life other than waiting to have  a pregnancy confirmed (tested by a pharmacist, wait three days, result sent to the doctor... Well it WAS thirty years ago.) high blood pressure monitored, or a limp explained. Come to think of it, I am remarkably fit... Just you wait.

However, in the doctor's, I suddenly become avidly interested in the lives of others. Today, it was a smiling Dawn French beaming down from seventh heaven, letting me in on her new-found happiness with her Biggsy. I approve. I love happy endings, being confident of one myself, and heartily wishing for them for everyone I know.Of course, until you depart this life, it can only be a 'happy meantime', but I'm content to settle for that. 

I didn't get to finish the article. A smiling nurse called me in for my blood test ( five minutes before the appointed time) and quickly drew a phial-full of the stuff. In and out in four minutes, including a very pleasant conversation on the weather.

I love the NHS. Two of my daughters work for it: one in policy-making, another in preventative care, so I have a great deal of insight - bad and good - into it's workings. I know it's far from perfect, under constant stress, and always spectacularly on the verge of bankruptcy. But I have a feeling we, the Great British Public are so committed to it, that the monkeys who run this country will leave it be. I hope so. 

An American commentator wrote recently:

Philanthropy will buy you a hospital wing. Social Justice will deliver a national health service. 

Was I thinking of social justice whilst giving Dawn French the thumbs-up? No. I'm glad I didn't have to. All I had to concern myself with was the weather. 

Maybe Writer's Block...

Isn't such a bad thing after all... 

A writer should write every day. I am not a friend of the word should, but nevertheless, I feel I ought to make a bit more of an effort. 

I downloaded a free-e-book, courtesy of Wordpress, with 365 writing prompts and today's is,' 'Write about an inspirational teacher and the impact s/he had on your life.' 

A non-starter. Though I rather liked school. I wasn't much bullied, I kept myself to myself, expected neither praise nor censure, and am quite happy to have attracted little of either. I did get a detention once, aged fifteen,  for not knowing my 9x table, and at the end of an undistinguished, and deservedly so, Sixth Form, I won the Cup For General Progress. This tended to go to the girl with working class parents who got enough O Levels to go to University. Or, as in my case, Teacher Training College. 

I will record all that I remember of my schooldays. I cannot say that I will entertain in the telling, but spanning as the tale does, 1955 - 1969, researchers, one hundred years from now, may mine this piece as Social History. Stay with me, let's see what crops up. 

September 5th 1955. I am Four Years and Eleven Months Old, I have shoulder length blonde hair with a  side parting and a bow. I am going to be taught to read using a  'Ladybird' Alphabet Chart which we recited every day: ' A is for apple a' 'B is for Ball b'. I am confident I could go through the whole bloody thing today without skipping a beat. What an achievement!  The fact that at Four Years and Eleven Months I could read fluently, counted for nothing. There was no attempt at 'Personalised Learning' in those days. I never questioned this, because, although I was precocious, I wasn't THAT precocious. Miss Greenwood: Young and kindly, put us to bed on camp beds around 2pm and we were expected to nap. I napped. I can nap anywhere at the drop of a hat, and I put this marvellous attribute down to this early training. I didn't cry, so I sat on the table with the good children who were given their free milk first.

Matson Infants is a Tesco Express these days. It had been a village school under the stern authority of Miss Aldridge, but had grown with the new Housing Estate. The old schoolroom held the Middle Infants, I was in a Temporary Classroom, that outlived the school. 

We played on the old village green. 'King Of The Castle' In and Out The Bluebell Windows... Conkers in season, football for the boys: 'Two Ball' and Skipping Rhymes for we girls.

I was severely reprimanded once, for kicking a girl who pushed in front of me to get on the bus home. I NEVER did anything that obvious again. 

I remember seven other things from my Early Years.

Delicious dinners, especially Butterscotch Tart

'Let's Move' (BBC: Still going when I started teaching in 1972) which entailed prancing around between the tables ( with the chairs up) in vest and knickers.

A lurid poster of Persephone being dragged Into the Underworld by Whomsoever. (Pluto?)  A fantastic introduction to Greek Mythology and incidentally, an insight into Romance (of a particular sort) that was even more fascinating, and probably had a profound effect on my sexuality.

Going 'Through The Rainbow': enduring the entire Reading Scheme all the way to The Violet Readers.

Never getting Maths

A Poem with, 'Pomegranates Pink, said Elaine' in it. 

Learning takes on a more serious aspect at Finlay Road Junior School, a tuppenny  busride away from home. I got myself there and back, went for lunch with my Aunty Mary who lived nearby. Lunch hours were a hour and a half long in those days, so's pupils could return home to eat if their parents couldn't afford the one shilling a day for a School Meal. I preferred eating with Aunty Mary, because I could read 'Cassandra' ( political commentator) in the Daily Mirror to 'Pop' her lodger, and eat blancmange. Aunty M dosed me up with cod liver oil every day, which grew the brain I have now, which  was remarkably prescient of her.

I was a political animal at ten. I mean, the Daily Mirror was a serious paper in those days. To further my informal education, when no-one was looking,  I read 'The News Of the World', which gave me even further insights into Romance, and a mistrust of the clergy that persists to this day.

I always had to sit next to a boy. I pretty much despised them all, I'm ashamed to say, especially Desmond, who used to play with himself under the desk. I used to watch, enthralled, but only worked out what was going on years afterwards, having stowed away the experience in the 'pending' file for the day when enlightenment dawned. 

I made an exception for Stephen Collet. He was gorgeous. Unfortunately, as Romance was all about ravishing gods and incontinent vicars, I didn't recognise Love when it first appeared... .

I must have learned all that was necessary at Finlay Rd because along with the WHOLE of Class 4A1 (all 42 of us) I passed the ' 11 +' and was enrolled in Ribston Hall High School For Girls. Few Finlay Rd pupils achieve this today, because the middle class has got THAT  all sewn up in the abolition of catchment areas and an efficient tutoring network. (I like to think that Cassandra would approve of my stance on this.) 

I still didn't get Maths. Especially Arithmetic. 

No inspirational teachers here either, though credit is due  to Miss Long for introducing me to Mozart (Eine Kleine Nacht Musik'. Even saying it was a thrill) and to Mr Watson for Ballentyne's 'Coral Island' my first grown-up book. Blood-thirsty and horrible, but I lapped it up.

I was an intellectual snob by eleven. Commended by Mr Watson for laughing at his puns (the only kid who did) and sniggering at Paul Bullock for not understanding that a ' red pale' is an heraldic emblem:He informed us that Caxton's Printing Press could be found 'under the sign of the red bucket' Ho ho ho. He was probably better than me at Arithmetic though. (Good old RJ Ounstead. History as it should be taught. Out of a book and learned off by heart.) 

We started French. We were allocated on a French name. I was Odette. Eugghh . No wonder I never took to the subject. 

High School. Pretty unmemorable. Rowed in the coxed four, skived every other form of physical activity, played minor parts in the school plays... . 

Some highly un-inspirational teachers, some shockingly inept ones. I rack my brains to recall anything at all about them:

The physics master whose shoes creaked. Miss Walsh, short with a huge bosom. She would sit, inhale, raise said bosom a foot or two, then lower it with a sigh onto the desktop. Mort, the class-snob Of a headmistress, who famously sat on the stage during assembly with her legs apart, showing pale pink all-weather knee-length bloomers... . 

Mr Kennedy! My first crush. He was a  bit inspirational! He taught well, and with humour. Biology. I can hear his voice in my head to this day:  a soft Welsh lilt: 

" A FLOW-er is that part of a PLANT con-CER-ned with re-PROD-uc-SHUN and con-TAINS the SEX-u-al OR-gans"

Maybe my passion for plants is suppressed desire... Maybe not.

My friend Carol reminded me recently that Mr Kennedy returned to his village after a  terrible disaster when a coal tip rolled down a mountainside and engulfed the School. He was from Aberfan.. 

I am asking myself, because it's only fair, "Was I an inspiration teacher?" More so than Mort, less than Mr Kennedy... I do recall one incident eight years ago when I was 'doing The Egyptians' with my junior class. "I will NEVER forget this!" Eleven year old Joshua told me. I had been demonstrating the ancient and venerable art of Middle Eastern Dancing. Though with rather more around my middle than I usually wore. It was one with sticks. 

Lord! Look at the time! I've been writing for over an hour. If you've persevered this far, thank you, and goodnight.

Front row ... Middle

Sixth Form: fundraising for Standish Hospital.

'Gladys' Second Maid. 'The Admirable Crichton' July 1968

Playing Catch-Up

I forget, sometimes, in my flutter of excitement over the number of pageviews I have from Serbia, that I write this very public journal as a personal record of what hits the fan or takes my fancy, at any particular moment. Or anyway, at THAT particular moment when time, inclination and inspiration coincide. It is a vanity and a delight, at least to me: the best outcome from joining a study group that I have ever had. 

17th August 2010. It was my turn to choose a book for the Church Book Club, and I chose, '99 Things To Do Between Here and Heaven', and Number 26 was, 'Blog'.

I am revisiting the Book right now, between writing paragraphs here, and wondering which of the 99 still undone, I might attempt. How about, Number 13, ' Bury A Time Capsule'? I would forget where it was. My colleague at Pauntley School, Liz Petley, buried one with the Reception Class, all of whom have now graduated from University and started families. When the kids, in the year 2000, came to dig it up, they couldn't find it. The school garden was peppered with holes. Looked like an invasion of ground hogs. I remember too, when the Blue Peter team dug up THEIR  time capsule. They didn't forget where it was. Oh No!  They had simply neglected to take the variations in the water table into account. It was hilarious watching Val and Shep trying to make a jolly item out of a soggy mess. I confess, I smirked out loud. 

Besides, my 'office' is like a time capsule without the necessity of taking a spade to it. I pounce on long-forgotten items, hidden away, with squeals of delight. Most satisfying, though perhaps a little accusatory, the collections of things I needed for all those hobbies I didn't persist with. A Chinese calligraphy set, with How To Book, brushes in beautiful silk covered boxes, and ink sticks embossed with dragons. All far too lovely to actually USE. A basket full of fabrics, designs, and cut-out letters for banners I am never going to make. Dress patterns and sundries, including a sewing machine, not touched for years... Books of bracing walks and gentle strolls - unopened. Unwalked.

Stop laughing! You're just as bad. 

There are things I am passionate about stashed away too. Field guides of the flowers I hunt in the countries I visit: The Jura and Julian Alps, The  Troodos, Carpathian and Cascade Mountains, The Drakensburgs and Table Mountain. Each bloom faithfully recorded: each one a tangible memory of where I was, and who was with me, and what we were doing at the time... . 

So no, no time capsule then.

I am giving serious consideration to Number 43, 'Plant a Tree'. 

My garden is a haven for wildlife. Partly. My part. Flowers, grasses, and taller items of greenery sit about in a  higgedly -piggedly fashion between fiercely manicured patches of lawn. I wouldn't cut it. I want to live in a meadow. Responsible for the practicalities that seem to be essential for running a household, my husband grits his teeth and tolerates my wilderness plots, whilst taking it out on the bits of landscape I reluctantly spare to common sense. 

We survive the tension, we live with the compromise. And then something dreadful happens. Before I left for Redmond, he discussed painting the shed. Yes, it needed painting. I didn't see a problem. 

Until I returned from my vacation to realise the loss of a magnificent pink buddlheia bush, that even now, should be providing sustenance for a flotilla of butterflies and random other far less interesting insects. My reaction will not go on record. It was not pretty. I became Mrs Basil Fawlty. Ray, who is an astute man, stayed out of range until I calmed down. Which was DAYS later. Wisely, he told me as a 'by the way' when I was still abroad, knowing I couldn't actually kill him at a distance of eight thousand miles. 

Not a woman to be messed with. He knows this. 

So yes, the pink buddlheia will be replaced, planted in a spot where it is least likely to be mown down. 

I am taken with Number 45. ' Write a Statement of Faith'

I shall have to think about that one. 

Dancing Feet

Here am I, in the Sinai desert, with my dance troupe, at dawn, performing to the music of oud and drums. It is my fifty-first birthday. As I recall the magic of this day, I am reminded of my strength and my resilience and am full of laughter. I hope this comes through in the writing.

A Work of Heart

To write this poem, 

I planted my feet,

Strong, bare feet,

Firmly, in the sand.

I raised my arms, then, 

Dropped them, as I was taught,

To my shoulders.

Aligning my palms to the strengthening sun,

I waited,

Alert, for the words

To drift, or bounce or slide

Down, 

      

       Down 

          With the music.

I lifted my head and

Listened, listening,

For the deluge.

Quietly at first...

Trilling over my fingertips

Snaking down my arms

Shivering across my shoulders

Thrumming through my breast

Shimmying with my hips

Turning

         Turning

                     Turning

Clapping with my hands

Stamping with my feet -

The poem came!

And

                    I DANCED.

The Pendulum Swings

God knows how. It's a mystery.

I expect you think I'm being metaphorical on the pendulum question. Poets have the write. But no. This post is not a plea for politicians to behave themselves, or family values to go this way, or that. It's about a remarkable timepiece. 

Three years ago I bought a rather kitschy clock in Aberystwyth. It's a glass-fronted pretty little thing with flowers and songbirds etched around its face. I gave it to Kate as a house-warming present, but somehow in her going from here to there, and back again, the clock, still boxed, ended up in the spare room with a rich collection of my daughters' left overs. 

Well, I like it. So I deboxed it, and hung it on the wall in my bedroom. 

It's a stupid clock in some ways. It has birds and flowers, but no numerals, so timing is never quite exact, and the pendulum is purely decorative. Or has been. For three years the pendulum has hung stubbornly and uselessly down. In the beginning, I tapped, pulled, adjusted, swore, tinkered and, in desperation, bashed, but to no avail. The pendulum moved not a twitch. I gave up. 

This is hard for me. I don't usually give up, and, believe me, this is not always a good thing. Eventually I allowed the pendulum BE a metaphor:

There are some fights you can't win.

Some things you just can't fix.

There's room in my life for the purely decorative

I reconciled myself to a clock with a pendulum that wasn't going to work. 

Then a window opened, the sun shone in, and the pendulum began to  swing.

Early morning sunshine struck the silver disc and reflected a shiny penny of light, which oscillated gently, left-right, left-right, on the wall over there > >>>. It was this movement that first caught my eye. It took me less than a second to  look up that way < <<< to discover the clock proudly presenting me with a fully functioning pendulum. Left-right, left- right. Tick-tock, tick-tick.

That was twenty minutes ago. It's still going. I am thinking perhaps the slight breeze coming in through the open window is the cause. I don't know, I'm afraid to touch it in case it stops. Instead, I shall revisit my metaphors:

Never write anything off.

Sometimes broken things fix themselves.

There's still room in my life for the purely decorative.

Time to get up.

Oh! By the way, Kate - if you read this -  you're not getting your clock back. 

Meaning What, Exactly?

In my absence, Dear Reader, I have been busy with You Tube, furthering my  search for Enlightenment.

I confess to feeling rather enlightened already, but that's a big fat illusion. So what? When you're comfortable with the quantum enigma, you know that illusions are pretty  much all we have, so pick one. (Note: Comfort  does not equate with understanding.) 

You Tube offered me Ekhart Tolle, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein and The Dali Lama. Oh! And for some strange reason, adding to the burden of proof for Chaos Theory,  Dave Allen. How I laughed.

I gave Richard Dawkins a hearing too. It's hard to refute him, or  take a swipe at the fervour of his secularism when bad religion does such terrible  things.

I am awash with insight. You wouldn't care who said what, so I'm letting precision go hang. One or two of these  quotes I probably made up. Possibly:

The purpose of life is to be happy.

That this mysterious universe has no purpose doesn't frighten me. 

Without consciousness the universe doesn't exist

When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy.

If you cannot accept what you're doing as 'this is just what is' - stop doing it. 

If you drink at your own funeral you drink alone  (Dave Allen:  I give you that one, to save bewilderment.) 

I bring a long-suffering smile to my husband's lips when I play a game called,'That's A Title I Want':

'Lord High Chancellor',  'Minister Without Portfolio', ' Her Holiness', 'Head Mistress', ' Sergeant At Arms', 'Director General of the BBC' ... . These are on the short-list. The impossibilities abound, and have me rocking with laughter, as I explore the differences I could make to the lives of my fellow citizens/believers in that alternative universe where I make it to the top. ( Yes, I do have a very strange sense of humour.) 

This game, which I heartily recommend to you, is played whilst lying in bed listening to Radio 4. Or any news programme that threatens you with an interview with someone who might make you seethe.  It's best not to be alone though. More fun. 

A strange sense of humour. Everyone knows by now that I am convinced   that  you can make up what you believe as you go along, and get away with it. I regard this as being a healthy and life-enhancing state of being, as it holds out the opportunity for you to reflect on your prejudices, and opens you up the possibility of change. I look upon change as a good thing. The butterfly mind is no longer a grub, that's what I think. 

In conclusion, my butterfly mind, shielded by a quirky sense of humour, has given me a special work to do. To discover which title I have today, and to play the role with enjoyment and enthusiasm. 

Don't let anyone else define who you are. That's what I'm saying. 

A New Elizabethan

I was thinking, sitting here in warm and almost-sunny Redmond, what does it feel like to be British? I get asked some wonderful questions by Americans I meet that lead me to think that they are far more patriotic than I am - and I'm talking Royalty.

I dig deep to recall why, having fought a civil war and established a republic, we went back to crowning somebody. I may have embellished my story-telling somewhat, for which I apologise, but Regicide, Restoration, Glorious Revolution and Abdication were all a long time ago, and I am a little fuzzy around the edges when it comes to facts. But, you know, I get by: nobody  complains.

My late father, whom I loved deeply and miss terribly, was a red-hot socialist and would hear nothing good said about Monarchy, but nevertheless, when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth Ii visited Gloucester in 1955, we were lining the route. I was lifted up to see this lovely lady in a sea-green coat and hat, waving a gloved hand in my direction, smiling broadly... . 

I could take you to the very spot, opposite the war memorial and monument to 'The Glosters', adjacent to Gloucester Park.

But I wasn't impressed. I was only four years old, , but I remember bursting into tears and yelling, 'She innt a queen! She annt got a crown on!' 

At school, we were pretty much all enrolled in a 'National Savings Scheme'. We bought savings stamps. The shilling stamps had the face of the boy prince, Charles, on them, the sixpenny ones, the adorable  baby Princess Anne, with a head full of bubbly curls. I envied those curls, but console myself that she grew up to look like a horse, and I didn't.

I was born a Georgian, actually, in 1950, becoming an Elizabethan when King George VI died in 1952. That Royal Tour of the new queen, is one of my earliest memories. 

Jean, in her forties, lives in a specialist care home for adults with learning difficulties. She adores the queen and regularly writes to her, with the help of my husband who tutors her. 

Of all the stories of the diligence and dedication to duty that are told about Queen Elizabeth II, HERE's one to add to it... 

Jean writes to the Queen about everything that affects her, and the Queen writes back! Can you believe that? To be more accurate, one of her Ladies in Waiting does - a personal message, from the Queen's office, to a lady whom hardly anybody cares about, sad to say. 

That's what keeps me from being a Republican. We have a Head of State that has time to read Jean's letters. 

I was there!:

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/gloucester-acclaims-queen-and-duke/query/37+55

Light My Fire

My Kindle got squashed a couple of months ago. I was saddened, because it was a gift from my family for my 60th birthday, and I think if I had, maybe, not carried it around with me and used it, it might still be with us. 

Hey-ho.

However ... My ipad and iPhone carry on where the defunct Kindle left off, and I can continue to plump up Amazon's profits with my regular, often impulsive, purchases from the one-click non-stop CloudStore.

Books. 

I thought I would miss the heaviness of them. The joyful monotony of page-turning. The second-guessing of where I left off reading, from the crease in the spine. The occasional delight of throwing a particularly awful purchase across the room. I said I would. I made airy statements to family and friends vowing that my Kindle would NEVER replace REAL books... . I lied. I am not the paper-snob I thought I was.

Do you remember the first, the very first, book you ever read? Apart from your Infant School's Reading Scream, I mean? (I went 'Through The Rainbow' with 'The Happy Valley Readers', but it WAS the 1950's.) I do. It was a Noddy Book. I read it in hospital, where I taught myself to read, aged three. I was, and probably still am, a very clever bunny. 

Thankfully, Noddy Books were written with a very simple vocabulary, often repeated, and I was not allowed to do anything taxing because I was very very sick, so I picked up the book remembering what had  been read to me, and worked it out. I am convinced that ANY bored three year old with a modicum of intelligence and nothing else to do, could achieve a similar feat. Three-year olds are vastly underestimated, in my opinion. Most are geniuses. 

I digress, I frequently do, usually, as now, because I have no clear idea of where this is going. Pause for a cup of tea. 

My SECOND book was a Ladybird Book. ( Ladybird Books are maybe still around. They were sixpence when I read them: seventy-five pence when I bought them for my daughters...) 'Mick The Disobedient Puppy' a tale that taught me that, to be naughty, it was a good idea to be clever, because then you stood a chance of getting away with it. I frequently did, possibly still do. 

Hurriedly, before I lose my readership completely, returning to the present.

I do not read books sequentially. In pre-Kindle days, I would sit up in bed with a semi-circle of books spaced around me:

A Canticle For Leibowitz

Cod

Collected Poetry Of Rupert Brooke

The Times Educational Supplement

Alpine Flowers

I am a bee-reader. I sip nectar from tome to tome. Flighty, inconsistent: Authors really have to work hard to hold my attention. I skip to find out how a story ends, I leave out the boring bits, but I do, eventually finish them. I do persist. Some of you don't. I know this. 

My Kindle library makes book-hopping SO easy, and not QUITE as much fun, I must admit. I quite liked not knowing exactly where I'd got to, and maybe re-reading something by accident. I expect as I grow older and more forgetful, I won't even notice. I'd quite like to read Terry Pratchett's 'The Colour of Magic' again, as if for the first time. 

So now, I'm wallowing in, 'The QI Book of Amazing Facts','The Hollow Something' (Not 'Crown' - that is stretching my, 'I Persist' motto to breaking point) and 'Lanark'. 

My American third-grade students had to write book reports. The most interesting format I set them was a visual one ... Take a large piece of paper and fold the corners to the middle so there are four flaps. On the back write the title, on the outer flaps draw illustrations and under the flaps comment. I am going to do this. I think my Art Studio App could handle it. Or.. Hey! I might even do it USING PAPER. 

Later.

Pulling the Plug

Last Friday, I found Ann Pennyfeather.

I try not to collect people. It seems to me that we have a past for a reason: many and much needs to stay there... . It's an effort for me to accept this , as it means allowing some - even very dear - people, who need to, to leave my stage. But there it is.

It was a struggle sometimes to watch each of my three beautiful, amazing daughters, in turn, gently untie the apron strings and step confidently forward into her own future, but when I visit them in their own homes, and see for myself the lives they are building, I am perfectly content.

Eight weeks before I got married, I went on Teaching Practice to a top-secret US Army facility near Harrogate in Yorkshire. The intelligence gathering station at Menwith Hill. Diane and I weren't told what it was, of course: we kind of guessed it from the acres of radio masts in the vicinity. We were there to work in the US Army School that operated on the base. Ann Pennyfeather was my ' Master Teacher', a highly qualified and experienced 4/5 th Grade teacher who had volunteered to take me under her wing and let me loose on her class.

I have thought of Ann often in the years since we parted. She was a good teacher, and a great mentor, and she helped to shape the teacher I was to become. I have, occasionally, searched for her before, and tried again, without much hope of success. To to my delight, her name popped up, and I contacted her. So Ann and I have been reunited, if briefly, and I was able to tell her, what I have just told you.

I was getting married, so the many eligible single young US intelligence personnel on the base were of no interest to me. This was not the case for Diane, who now, I guess, resides in Maryland. Still, I hope, happily married to the guy she met back in '71.

It was her love-life that landed me in hot water, and ruined my reputation on the base. Let me explain.

We were given the status of 'Bachelor Officers' and billeted in a large and comfortable apartment in Bachelor Officer Quarters, where, naturally enough, we occasionally bumped into other Bachelor Officers. Not as often as you might think though, for the ghostly operations on the base meant that the men worked three shifts, and were not generally around when we were.

We met Chuck in the laundry. It was evident from the first that Di and he had hit it off, and within a day or so, Di had arranged to go on a date. Wary of a tete a tete, she asked me to make up a foursome with Chuck's friend Tom. Both men owned two-seater sports cars. Tom's was a Ford Mustang, I remember. The foursome therefore travelled as two twosomes, which is where the trouble started. Di and her beau left the pub where we ate supper, first, and by the time I returned to our apartment, Di had locked me out.

The only other person I knew on the base was Tom (Ann lived in Harrowgate) so I threw myself on his mercy.

Tom was the perfect gentleman. He made me a bed on his sofa, where I slept like a baby. The next morning, he offered to take me to the Commissary for breakfast. I was grateful for his generosity, a gratitude that was quickly dispelled when Diane later told me that Tom had slept with every woman on the base who would have him, and he displayed his conquests by ... Taking them to breakfast. He was sent home, so rumour has it, for attempting to seduce the Commander's wife.

I ought to explain that I was at Menwith Hill because I 'did' American Studies at College. Part of the course was the hands-on experience of the USA that its Air Force bases could provide. I volunteered for Menwith Hill, most of my fellow-students headed for the huge bases in Suffolk. Menwith Hill was unique - technically an army base, it's operatives were civilians and it was 'policed' not by soldiers, but by the Yorkshire Constabulary. This is no longer the case. These are harsher times.

Strict instructions were given by our tutors that we were not to ask the personnel ' What do you do?' Diane, to my horror, took no notice.

Chuck beckoned us closer, looking around to make sure he couldn't be overheard:

" You hear the cars drive by your windows at all hours?"

" Yes, " Eagerly, eyes like saucers.

"Well, " Continues Chuck, conspiratorially, " We drive deep, deep underground... "

Our breath comes faster... . We are hooked.

"Our destination is a huge cave a mile under the moor. A mile.."

Our tongues are hanging out.

"In the cave there is a huge lake. Biggest lake you ever did see...."

Diane and I exchange glances, enrapt.

"Five hundred of us sit all round the lake, in shifts. guarding it.' Chuck lowers his voice to the softest whisper.

"Guarding it, BECAUSE.. " ( a little louder) " in the middle of the lake is a giant plug, and if anyone pulled it out, England would sink below the waves!"

It took a good fifteen seconds before it dawned on us that we'd been had. But it's a good story, which is why I'm telling it to you now - and guess what? For all I know, it might even be true.

Keeping Active...

Keeping Active

“Mary Ellen, You come back here, you little … ! Don’t let me have to chase after you!” I was in trouble; my mother, who loved me to distraction, only called me ‘Mary Ellen’, when I was in trouble.  I didn’t care. I let the wind carry her protest away, and left her to do as she pleased.

 I recall this as the first day back at home, back on my feet , after a spell in hospital. I was five years old. I didn’t know that the cerebral hemorrhage I suffered, following a fall, had nearly killed me; I didn’t know the long sleep I had enjoyed had been a coma; I didn’t know the reason I limped, was because my left side had suffered paralysis. I only knew that the sun was on my face, there was grass beneath my feet, and I could RUN!

I have slowed down considerably over the years, due, in part, to a love of flowers. It’s not possible to study plants at speed, so now I potter, meander, ramble , and dart about between clumps of greenery with a field guide and a camera. An activity that barely looks like activity, and drives all my walking companions to distraction.

 A chocolate box 1950’s childhood, which mine was, was an endless exploration of the capacity of the juvenile human body to walk, run, climb, wade, swim and swing, in and out of trouble. My mother stopped chasing after me when I was about seven. She opened the doors of our council house at the foot at Robinswood Hill, on the outskirts of the City of Gloucester, and let me go: “Look after Adrian mind! And be home for tea!” My brother Adrian, was twenty months younger than me, and like me , a pirate, an astronaut a cowboy and a smuggler.

I recall in particular, a warm day in early May in 1959. I can pinpoint the time, because late primroses and early bluebells were scenting the woods and hedgerows, and, with Queen Anne’s Lace, in a haphazard bouquet I had picked to take home. By now, Adrian and I had explored ‘The Hill’ from base to summit; a gentle ascent of just over 600 feet. We were investigating a disused reservoir that we had recently discovered. It was hidden in plain sight, next to St Katharine’s Church, Matson, and a stone’s throw from Matson Lane.

 The object of our attention had been abandoned many years ago; it was a tangle of hawthorn, bramble and nettle, so overgrown, that it was only our persistence in conquering the rusting defences, that had led to us finding the water at all. The reservoir seemed huge to us, though it was probably less than thirty feet in diameter. The temptation to sail across it was irresistible; we were, after all, pirates.

 This was the day Adrian nearly drowned. Naturally, we told our parents nothing of this. A tale we decided that he had lived NOT to tell, in case our misadventure lead to us both being permanently grounded.

 It seemed that fate was lending a hand in our aquatic enterprise. An old zinc bath lay half-in, half-out , of the water close to the ‘shore’. It wasn’t easy to free it, but, eventually, we pulled it clear. It must have been filthy, but we were too excited to notice, and probably wouldn’t have cared anyway. Adrian, as pirate chief, took to the water first, and paddled confidently to the middle of the reservoir. At the point furthest from safety, the bath began to sink.

I was nine years old, and really didn’t know how to panic. Neither did Adrian. He paddled faster and faster, out-distancing the incoming water by a few feet, sufficient distance to sink the bath in water shallow enough for him to scramble to safety. For many years afterwards, mother recalled with fondness , the afternoon when her two oldest children squelched up the garden path, a rusting zinc bath oozing mud, and smelling of the ditch, roofing their heads. Two pairs of wellington boots protruded from beneath it, propelling it unsteadily forward. The story the mucky pair told to explain the fact that Adrian was soaked from head to foot, came nowhere close to the truth.

 My turn to take to the water came eight years later, when in the Sixth Form at Ribston Hall High School For Girls. I was offered the opportunity to exchange hockey, which I loathed, for rowing, which I was willing to give a go. A short cycle ride to the canal, eight swift strokes forward, and, freedom!

 My sporting achievements at school , up to September 1968, aspired to modest. I specialised in coming third in events that the House Captain couldn't get anyone else to enter, and I was easily persuaded . In 1965, I streaked away in the 100m hurdles shattering a personal best (never having hurdled before in my life). My proudest moment, however, was achieving 3rd in heaving this huge weight down the field; an activity that, to this day, I have to work hard at remembering if it's called 'shotting the put' or 'putting the shot'. Both work for me.

 In 1967, I missed a place in the School Swimming Gala by not paying full attention during the, 'Someone's got to do it', plea and diving in to swim a length in the wrong stroke. I thought at the time, and still do, that my willingness to take part, so vaunted in British sportmanship, should have been rewarded, at the very least, by an, 'Oh, I say, well done!'. But no, I was disqualified.

 I was not always an ‘also-ran’. Indeed, records show, that in July 1969, I was in the shell that beat Stourport in the final heat of 'The Ladies' Coxed Four' at Gloucester Regatta. I was ‘bow’, that is, position number one; rowing backwards at the front of the boat.

Records LIE. Stourport Ladies beat us by a canvas. (If we were horses, that would be ‘by a nose’.) The referee was either biased or blind. One of the Gloucester Men's Eight compounded the deception when he misdirected The Citizen sports reporter. This was almost certainly deliberately, because the Gloucester ladies' captain had chosen to row for Stourport , and there was, in consequence, a general feeling of miff around the boathouse. I have a photograph mother cut from the newspaper. I am leaning on an oar clutching my ill-gotten gain, a Prinknash Potttery tankard. I cherished it for years, until the day I said, “Where’s the pot I won rowing?” and nobody knew.

 I married Ray Francis, a football fan, from choice, and have never regretted it, but I have had to fake 'sportgasms' on numerous occasions since our first date. March, 1970. We were huddled over a tinny transistor radio in Ray's lodgings in Warrington. The blessed Sunderland were playing against the mighty Liverpool. Sunderland scored, probably, as usual, in the last minute , where all this team's games are won or lost. Ray yelled with excitement and leaned over... Our first kiss!

In April 1971, the year Sunderland was demoted to the Second Division, we married. My sympathy for the demoted endures to this day.

 Some time ago, around about the turn of the Millennium, I decided it would be a good idea for Ray and I to share an interest. I quickly realised that flowers would never be his thing, and I was not going to want to spend time checking out the railways. So footie it had to be. I joined a 'Fantasy Football League' and, with some help from experts, and a little studying of form, I managed to pick a squad that sank without trace within minutes of going online.

There is a rider to this story that proves, beyond doubt, that no experience is ever wasted. I was attending a Head Teachers’ Conference in Oxford in 2001, and happened on a table at dinner with four boy heads and one other girl. The topic soon turned from education to football. To my utter amazement I found myself hogging the conversation: “Oh no! Don't talk to me about Babayaro! He's in my Fantasy League team and he's been; on the bench... , sent off … , fouled …, x number of times, in the past month alone!” With a few judicious open-ended questions, and a lot of tut-tutting, I held my own for twenty minutes! I was SO proud. And the boys! Thrilled! One offered to show me a ’ Chelsea’ programme from the previous Saturday, that he happened to have brought with him, and was sitting on his bedside table. An invitation I politely declined.

To spice up my sports-life, I decided, within a year, to ditch Fantasy Football and enter the real world. I became a highly inactive fan of Newcastle United Football Club, then just demoted to the First Division. As a ‘Teaching Head’, I shared responsibility for a Key Stage Two Class at Pauntley Primary School , ten minutes away from where I live, in Newent. My new-found passion for the beautiful game was a big hit with some of my students. Floyd , ten years old and a fellow ‘Magpies’ fan, was keen to know why I supported Newcastle: “ Because,” I smiled, “ Mr Francis supports Sunderland.” Clever boy, he got it at once.

Do As Your Father Tells You

 I knew my father was dying, maybe with days left to live, and I was due to fly to South Africa to introduce my English family to my African one. 'You go' He was insistent, but I couldn't make up my mind what was the right thing to do.

Dad organised his death quite wonderfully.  He had suffered with shingles for two years, and now cancer ravaged his body. We had the morphia in the house and the nurse's number ready to administer it when necessary, but dad had no pain. This is not uncommon apparently.  I was undergoing instruction for reception into the Catholic church and this particular evening I was setting off for the party at the end of the summer session. Bottles
chinked in the bag I was carrying.  'I'll have some of that champagne!' my dad whispered.

To this day, I'll never know how dad knew I had sparking wine in that carrier, but so it was.  Dad had never had champagne, which this wasn't, but still... and I was a bit
worried because of his diabetes.  The doctor laughed.  'Give him whatever he wants, its too late to worry about diabetes!'

For the last two weeks of his life, my dad subsisted on sweet sparkling wine.  Knowing where this was going, he signed a living will that stated that he wished to cease taking insulin and that when he went into a diabetic coma, he was not to be resucitated.  The doctor spoke to him privately about it and took a copy away.

I couldn't quite go through with it, when the nurse told me he was comatose I asked her to administer a dose of insulin to ask him one last time.. 'This is it dad.  Are you sure this is what you want?  He nodded, and I let him go.

I was due to fly out the next day.  I had agonised about this for weeks.  Jeanette said, 'Just for once, why don't you do as your father tells you?'

I sat next to dad working on his computer, I had one last service to perform for him.  I wrote his eulogy. I printed it off, and read it to him.  I told him what a wonderful man and great father he was, I told him how his principles and direction had shaped my life, and how I would miss him. I read it to him, and exhausted I went to bed. I prayed my final prayer for my father, 'Lord, when your work in him is complete, take him home,'

I then fell asleep.

Less than an hour later, Ray came to wake me up.  'Dad's gone' he said gently. He then went on to say that he'd waited twenty minutes before coming to tell me to make sure - 'because of Aunty Ethel'.

(At mum and dad's fiftieth wedding party, aunty Ethel fell over drunk, and I, also a little merry, couldn't find her pulse, and declared her dead... At which shocking news,
Ethel promptly sat up!)

Dad wasn't going to sit up though, or relive the story of Ethel's untimely demise.

Doing what my father told me, meant flying to South Africa. I celebrated his life with a community whom he had supported, and who sang for me, a song of love and hope
for this amazing man.

How Not To Get Mad

My brother, in his youth, left the British Communist Party because it wasn't left wing enough, and then by a series of possibly random events, largely to do with disillusionment, became a Born Again Christian. He is very happy in his beliefs, and generally comforted by them, which makes me happy too, because I love him.

Aaha! Aaha! I used to say, with the arrogance of a woman who knows the answer, when I read Pilate's, 'What is truth?' Now I am as convinced as I want to be, that Pilate was on to something.

Pontius, I don't know.  I used to know, and thought it extremely important that everybody else did too. Perhaps, if he'd lived as long as I have, Pilate would have saved his breath to cool his porridge. You can just make it up as you go along. As long as you can convince yourself, you can believe whatever you like and get away with it. Once I discovered this particular construct, I let go of a lot of junk that never made an iota of difference to me or anyone else, except as the means of separation from others, generally with the aim of engendering superiority.

I remain  a theist. As a theist I began a journey out of certainty, and I like it here.  Many of my friends are theists too; ready to stand up and be laughed at, though there are still enough of us to count. I'm not even a serious doubter. I say the Nicene Creed with fervour, and pray every day, but there's a growing list of things that I don't believe in, which can be summed up as anything that makes me mad at you. 

I'm through with being told what to believe, and to return the compliment, I won't tell anyone else what to believe either. Except, perhaps, my brother... .

So my brother wants to engage me in a little Dawkins-bashing.

'Dawkins, I say to him, 'Is entitled to be as disagreeable, contentious, angry and dismissive as he likes.  YOU are not.'

The Christ didn't say, 'Worship me.' He said, 'Follow me.'

Go on, I dare you.



Think: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Defeat?

I fixed the shower curtain back up just now.  My nearest 

and dearest frequently remark, just this side of 

admiration, that I don't know when to give up; it is truer 

to say,I believe, that  I do not know HOW to, which is 

sometimes problematical, but I have learned, for my 

sanity, not to look upon defeat as failure.

So this is the third time I have put the shower curtain 

up.  The first time was, with regard to longevity, the 

most successful effort to date. The drill would not 

penetrate,to any great degree, the hardboard that covered 

the ceiling.  I don't know why this should be so, however, 

it wouldn't, but for a fraction of an inch, three times, 

which was enough to screw in three small hooks to hold up 

the cord that held up the shower curtain and this for 

five months until a near and dear one decided to take it 

down to wash.  

The hooks fell out, wouldn't go back in, so that was that.

The second attempt was, and I am not ashamed to admit it, 

genius.  I could tell that what was needed was a rail, and 

such I could have contrived but for the sheer effort 

involved. 

We are talking about a week ago last Thursday, and I am 

recently returned from camping in a field in a small tent -

 the tent being held up by two extending plastic poles 

made both rigid and flexible at the same time by an 

elastic rope that goes through them like Brighton through a 

stick of rock. Ah-ah!  and Eureka!  I stretchecd 

a tentpole across the space, first before, then after, 

threading the shower curtain through it. Voila!  

The crack and bang that served as a fanfare to the 

collapse of my ingenious artefact was spectacularly loud, 

though fortunately neither the bath nor its occupant 

suffered any permanent damage as the tent pole and shower 

curtain descended into the foam.

Today's effort was rather more prosaic.  If I tell you it 

required 3/4 yard of 60cm wide white sticky-backed plastic, 

53cms of double sided carpet tape and a pair of scissors, I 

shall leave you to work out how I did it.

:-)