Oysters With My Father

"I'd like to see Paris and die," my father announced, rather unexpectedly one day. 

My mother had travelled no further than the Isle of Sheppey in her entire lifetime, and made no secret of the fact that she had no interest in going anywhere more exotic. So, after her death in 2002, dad had taken stock, and decided to take off.

He got himself a passport and applied to join a trip organised by The Gloucester Citizen, to Berlin, but that was cancelled for lack of numbers, and dad set his sights on the city that never sleeps (Or is that Chicago? I don't know, but I like it.)

For some inexplicable reason, I can't actually remember how we got there: but my money's on Eurostar, as my father was a railwayman, in one o his iterations, and remained a great fan of the iron horse. 

My sister and her family came too. we budged up in a budget hotel not too far from the Gare du Nord and set about exploring.

Versailles was extravagent, but exhausting. I remember queuing on the stairs, with a rest stop in an alcove, and glitz. I don't remember dad being particularly impressed.

Inevitably, we got lost, but for a reason that no-one could have anticipated. We were on the Metro when an an urgent announcement sounded and everyone started to leave. I stretched my utterly inadequate French to its limits,and dug deep.

"You know what people, I think 'incederie' is, 'bomb', and I think we should follow these guys ... "

The Metro then closed down for a spell, and after  a fruitless search for our hotel, during which Dad became very tired, we piled into taxis.

Dad insisted we stop at a wall that was pocked with bullet holes, where Resistance fighters had been executed, to have his photo taken. I thought this a rather macabre request, but then realised, the Second World War was HIS history, and THIS was his homage, to men and women whose heroic stories he'd heard as a teen, and who died fighting for him, too.

Ray and I took him for a meal at a restaurant, where dad was treated as a hero. it was so special. I ordered a table and exchanged greetings in the same inadequate French that had spotted a bomb, but the attention of the waiters was entirely on my father. They welcomed him in English, helped him choose his food and drink, and made him feel like an honoured guest: he revelled in it. It gladdened my heart to witness it.

We did all the other things, too, The Louvre, boat trip down the Seine, but the outstanding moment for me was the trip up the Eiffel Tower. 

I had one of those moments when I stopped time. I took in every detail of being with my father, who unknown to me, WAS to see Paris and die, ravaged by cancer and gone within two years.

There was something so beautiful, so incongruous about sitting opposite my father in a restaurant half-way up one of the most iconic structures in the world, slurping down oysters. 

The six-inch model dad bought to take home is mine now. It sits on my window sill and carries me beyond the mundane to the hour when time stood still, and I ate oysters with my father.

Night Post

I read on Twitter that tonight I would, along  with everyone else, be passing through a meteor shower. This seemed reason enough to execute a plan I’d been hatching since the purchase of a rather fancy hammock in March  - to sleep out under the stars.

So here I am.

 

I have spotted five meteors so far, and I’m thrilled. 

Things haven’t gone entirely to plan. A fabulous lightning storm to the north-east has been quite a distraction, visually, and a monster combine harvester less than a mile away has provided  a very noisy backdrop to what should have been a quiet night. 

It’s 11:42 now and relative silence has descended, clouds that appeared about fifteen minutes ago have floated on, and I’m about to resume my stargazing. 

Goodnight! 

“Left Bereft”

The Labour Party and I have come to a mutual agreement. I won’t pay for dodgy legal settlements, and they’ll stop taking my money.. We’ve split up. And it’s painful. 

I don’t feel anything but relief for not worrying about when my lifetime commitment to combating  hate-speech and discrimination would suddenly morph into rabid anti-semitism. I won’t miss being labelled a trot for wanting a decent standard of living for everyone. But I’ll miss the amazing buzz of the Party Conference alive with the excitement of being in a hall full of engaged people set alight by the radical policies introduced by Jeremy Corbyn 

Most of all, I’ll miss chairing my local branch with its dozen or so activists, that turned out for two elections doorstepping reluctant voters, cheerfully manning the Party Stall at the Oniin Fayre, blissfully unaware that back in Labour HQ the money we were paying in, was funding bureaucrats not only actively sabotaging our efforts, but willing to go on television and lie about their own. What mugs we were! 

The Labour Party is sensible now.They don’t do excitement. The poor are back in the box, the hungry relegated once more to food banks. And I’m gone 

Have you?

Do you want to connect with other “Lefties Who’ve Left”? Let’s do it! But first some rules. Just two to start. Others may evolve. 

We’re a support group. If you want to fight, go do it elsewhere. 

No hate-speech. 

EVERYONE from the left is welcome. 

How to get involved:

If you’re on Twitter, send me a direct message @maryeffrancis If you’re not, leave a comment here.

If you choose to be confrontational or rude, I’ll ignore you. 

Payback. 

Going Viral

Three months into the New Normal, and I'm stocktaking.

My Covid19 test result came through today within 36 hours of collection. I do not have the virus.I knew I didn't have it: but faithfully recording every symptom on the App supplied by the research team at King's College, London, has got me tested twice in three weeks. In research, a negative result is as useful as a positive one, as eny fule no.* 

The kit arrives from Amazon: a small flat-pack box, two plastic bags, one bio-sealed, a piece of absorbent material a long swab, a return label and a few bar-coded labels for identification purposes, a book of instructions, and a small test tube with about 10ml of fluid in it. 

The testing ballet involves a deep poke at the back of the throat, a swipe round both tonsils, and a nose-gouging that goes so far up, I think I reached my brain. Hands are ritually washed on two occasions. 

The challenge is in assembling the flat-pack box. The directions for the folding and tucking of it, which are more challenging than you can possibly imagine, are helpfully printed on the bottom of it. I have not mastered the art of holding a box at eye-level to read and fold simultaneously. I suspect I might.

As an introvert, missing out on the socialising has not been especially painful, though it will be a relief to get SOME back. There are meetings I chair that absolutely nobody appears to be missing, which is a lesson well-learned, and I get the Church all to myself, as I do the Health and Safety Checks, which is great, though I am mourning the loss of fellowship and Holy Communion. 

The biggest sacrifice for the benefit of staying alive, is missing my family. I don't even want to write about it, except to say how amazing the reunions will be!

I have achieved many small things. I fixed my old Singer sewing machine, if temporarily, as the tension's gone to pot again. I made a banner for Church, I set up a website for Newent Labour Party, sort of paying it forward, as I haven't posted anything on it for weeks ..., I finished a baby jacket I started decades ago, and abandoned on dropping a stitch, and I have begun a new hobby:making sweets.

I spend fine days in the garden. I have grown rhubarb from seed, peppers (from shop-bought ones) and sunflowers (from birdseed) are coming on too. The experiment of growing potatoes in a bucket isn't doing too well, as the plants are 'going home'as my dear mum used to say of artefacts that are not going to make it. My bramble patch is doing well, ie growing through the honeysuckle, and the perennial alpine strawberries are thriving too. I miss the strawberry hunts I had with Sam last year, and two years before that. Next year.

Wet days, I binge-watch stuff on the tv. Ray and I have worked our way through Wallender, Doc Martin and Belgravia. 

i am rather ashamed of the fact that I haven't made a better fist of recording, 'What I Did During The Pandemic', in the manner of Samuel Pepys. (Did he ever get to dig up the Parmesan Cheese he buried in his garden whilst fleeing the Fire of London? I must Google it ...) 

like all bad things, this too will pass.  In 1954 Gary Salisbury, my playmate and next-door neighbour, died of polio. I have to remind myself, in the midst of this, that mine is the first generation that have lived,until now, without a plague. People lived, people died, then some kind of normality returned until the pestilence returned. So be it.

* Nigel Molesworth. Gold star if you placed it.

A Poem: Midsummer Moon