The heartbreaking persistence of nature

Perfect sultry day, air thick as honey. A day for lying on the grass folded in the arms of a lover. For stroking damp hair from a sweated forehead. For cool crisp white wine and soft summer fruits dipped in sugar. For watching leavening clouds growing dense as charcoal. For laughing as slow swollen rain drops explode on the skin and running for cover under newspaper umbrellas. For ice creams, choc ices, kiss-me-quick hats and long cotton skirts. For barefooted footsteps, flip flops and wriggling scarlet varnished toes in the sand.

A crow stands on a chimney pot, king of all he surveys. Ragged jet wings and glistening beak full of discarded sandwich crusts. He feeds his young as tenderly as the gentlest cow nuzzles her calf, then arches his wings and leaps into the air in an act of faith as old as time. To us earth-stuck creatures, who can gaze only with envious eyes as he soars and swoops with a natural grace, his flight is a miracle.

In the high street, engines grind and rumble as cars and lorries inch their way towards the end of the work week. Office workers run lunch time errands, hair slick with sweat and make-up melting on burning cheeks. Music seeps through open windows, snatches of conversation, of badly tuned radios and exotic languages. Pigeons squabble over market remains on the edge of the pavement. Fresh black graffiti on the face of a white painted building, mismatched curtains hang limp at its dusty windows. A man chews his nails as his van waits to turn at the lights, his mind fixed on the long cold beer and the quick hot kiss to welcome him home.

Sunset on the beach and the hazy mist of night time heat blurs an invisible line between sea and sky. Herring gulls strut and peck on the shingle bank picking out oysters and winkling crabs. It is quite quite still; even the incoming ocean raises barely a ripple in the storm heavy air. Swifts chase overhead darting on the trails of hazy insects and the bulging vapours of mesmeric midges. Oystercatchers call to each other from the hem of the tide among the driftwood and the bladder wrack. The pink orange sun erupts through a rift in the clouds, its colour staining the sky as it starts its final descent. A giant blazing disc dropped with infinite slowness into a timeless slot machine by unseen hands.

We make our way back through the gathering twilight. The dogs have spent their effervescence and trot contentedly side by side, chewing sticks and stopping to sniff at the promenade news. The gulls are still fishing out of sight in the darkness, still calling to one another, still prising open shells. Groups of boys show off tricks on skateboards and bicycles, the nearby girls pretend not to notice as they talk and giggle just a little too loudly over cans of flat Coke. We say goodbye to our beach walking companions, then home once more in the quiet still evening. A moth scuttles up the window pane and the dog snores his contentment from the cave of his bed. A night at the end of a perfect summer day.

Picture: Surf City Sally's Sea Shell Emporium by Richard Cardona http://www.richardcardona.com/blog.html

The birthday surprise

"I thought 'are we going to the zoo?' " my mother says, peering round at me from the passenger seat of the car, "and then I thought 'no we can't be; it's too late' "

I can't quite make out my sister's face. In fact, from where I'm sitting in the rear of her smart red Mini Clubman, I can only really see the back of her left arm, a tuft of hair and one elongated triangular black leg of her sunglasses.

"Would you have liked to have gone to the zoo, then?" my sister asks.

"Well no, not really. Well, yes I suppose I would, but only if T and W were coming. Spend an afternoon looking at the animals..."

It would seem that my sister and I are not considered satisfactory zoo companions. Given that the zoo is not where we're going, that's quite ok.

A small pause while she ponders and my sister takes the coast-bound slip road of the A2, the car ringing its way round an almost full 360 degrees before straightening once more and heading on down the dual carriageway. It's about 6 o'clock and the sky is June blue. Open fields of matte beige corn and zingy zesty yellow rapeseed pass us by, studded here and there by thick dark felt-leafed islands of oak and ash. Some white bleached hulks of long dead elms are among them too, the scarred and twisted remains left behind by the fatal kiss of Dutch Elm Disease.

My mother interrupts her own pause. "Morris dancing? Are we going to a display of morris dancing then?"

"Morris dancing?" My sister's voice manages to pass through several registers of incredulity in just two words. I can feel her eyebrows arching through the back of her head. I laugh.

"Morris dancing? Blimey no. You'd be on your own there I think" and we all chuckle as we individually try to picture ourselves watching infinite numbers of folk dressed in peculiar white outfits with bells around their knees clonking ribbon-covered sticks and shouting hey nonny, nonny nonny no whilst a band of no discernible talent whatsoever plays a never-ending chorus of discordant tunes.

"No," says my sister finally, "we're not going to see morris dancing".

And so the guessing game continues all the way to Canterbury. All the way into the foyer of the Gulbenkian Theatre. All the way to our table in the cafe. When my sister had suggested this treat for our mother's birthday, I thought it was a great idea. I am also exceedingly impressed that my sister has managed to arrange it all without revealing to her where we're going or what we're seeing. Mum's still guessing, squinting now at the show posters hung in huge glass frames around the walls.

Her eyes alight on one with writing big enough to read from our table. "Ah! Is it the Mikado?"

"No, it's not the Mikado. Shall I show you the tickets now?" says my sister, pulling out and unfolding the concertina of paper from her handbag and handing them to mum. Mum delves in her soft sage leather bag and puts on her specs. "Germaine Greer! Wonderful!"

And so it is that we take up our plush red seats in the auditorium half an hour later, a couple of hundred women (and a few brave men) to spend an hour and a half in the company of a living legend. When Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch she'd have been about 30 years old. Now aged 70, Professor Greer walks onto the stage in a black dress and silver flat soled shoes to tumultuous applause. She's here, as part of the Theatre's 40th anniversary celebrations, to deliver a talk entitled 40 years of feminism and fun.

If those words seem mutually exclusive in a sentence, then in real life she dazzles. She speaks for three quarters of an hour or so without notes - witty, erudite, entertaining - and then invites questions from the audience to which she gives her full attention. The microphone roams around the room as people put their hands up; I detect a frown grip Germaine's brow when a man asks a question, but she rolls on taking the audience with her and with frequent gales of laughter. The last question, from a dark-haired woman, is extremely moving. She pays tribute to Ms Greer for changing her life. Germaine is clearly moved by this, we all are, and when it's time for her to go, the applause lasts for several minutes after she's disappeared behind the stage curtain.

We file outside and my sister queues up to buy a couple of books. Mum, a few years younger than Germaine, has loved it. All three of us have. We chat all the way home, discussing the things that were said and thinking about our own experiences.

Mum's actual birthday is on Monday. We're also not going to the zoo then either.

Friday Fling

“Do I look like a middle-aged lady wearing this?” Liz asks me as she opens the door. We stand quietly for a heartbeat, stare at each other. “No, you look great. And anyway, if we do we might just as well embrace it. We are middle aged ladies.” And we laugh and hug our greetings as we always do.

Liz does indeed look great, her small and slender womanly figure wrapped in a sleeveless printed cross-over top, new jeans with a thin belt, and a pair of spotty peep-toe high heels. Her hair’s swept up and back in a soft blonde roll, the fringe just brushing her glittering blue eyes and gently sun-freckled face. She looks very glamorous. Much more so than me, dressed as I am in a black shirt, stripy jeans that I bought from the Red Cross charity shop, and my good old favourite pale tan cowboy-esque boots that I bought seven years ago in Salt Lake City.

We’ve arranged to meet to go for dinner tonight at The Ship, Liz’s local pub that also happens to serve the most wonderful food. When we push the door open, the small bar area is cramped with bodies clutching glasses and raincoats after the unseasonably chilly wet day. A few bobbing multi-coloured helium balloons, emblazoned with a four and a zero, are in the hands of a couple of children; several more balloons are dotted about on the tables when we duck under the curtain into the tiny restaurant section. But there’s one round table free, so we sit there and look at the menu as the birthday party take up their seats around us.

When the waitress comes we place our orders and raise our wine glasses (red for Liz, white for me) in a toast to each other. She’s off to Colorado on Wednesday to be matron of honour at a friend’s wedding, staying in Denver for ten days or so before moving on to see another friend in Cincinnati. We talk about the trip and Liz describes her packed itinerary which encompasses both familiar rituals (the wedding, the hair and make up, the post-nuptial celebrations) and the unfamiliar (a bachelorette party). I’m sure that she will have a wonderful time and I’m quite envious not to be going too; still, I’ve leant Liz The Philosopher and the Wolf to read on the aeroplane so a little bit of me will be travelling with her, in spirit anyway.

Our meals when they arrive are freshly cooked and searingly hot. The pieces of chicken from Liz’s fajitas sizzle among char-grilled red and green peppers on a small iron dish beside a plateful of soft floured flat breads. My creamy fish pie comes in a square white bowl, topped with mashed potato and pale orange melted cheese. I’ve had a fancy too for some chips all week so have ordered a side portion, all chunky and long and golden crispy yellow.

When we’re done, Johnny the pub’s landlord finds us a table in the crowded bar and we fetch another glass of wine on the way. A solo musician strikes up at the far end. He’s got a selection of instruments – violin, banjo, guitar – and starts a rousing uproarious set of traditional Irish tunes sprinkled with a little country and a few harmonic minor tunes of more recent origin. After a few rounds of REM, The Dubliners and The Devil Went Down to Georgia, several women have kicked off their shoes, are holding up their skirts and Irish dancing. We alternate between clapping and singing along and talking in the lulls and above the wonderful infectious music until Johnny calls time.

It’s cold and damp when we get outside and we scuttle across the road rubbing our hands against goosepimpled arms. We’re nearly at Liz’s house when we remember we’ve forgotten to pay, so laughingly turn back and go in by a different door. No-one has noticed our accidental eat and run, and we settle up with the barmaid before heading outside once more. Liz and I embrace by my car and I wish her bon voyage for her holiday. I’m sure she’s going to have a ball.

Sunday lunch at the Neptune Cafe

"It's Whit Sunday, you know" my mother said, pausing to look at me meaningfully over the top of her glasses before dropping her eyes to examine the black leatherette menu once more. Quite why she bothers to read the menu is unclear; it never changes and she always orders the same thing anyway. Quite why she also bothered to remind me it was Whit Sunday I'm not sure either. It's a long time since I went to Sunday School.

We were sitting opposite each other in Bill's Neptune Cafe in the High Street. It's a Sunday lunchtime ritual we've fallen into some time over the last year or so, meeting up after she's been to church to chat and enjoy some food served on white oval plates at tables covered with colourful checked plastic cloths. The chairs are spindly with red rubber stoppers on the end of each thin metal leg, their backs and seats upholstered in beige vinyl. A huge old brass gas lamp, with white gauze mantle just waiting to be lit, hangs from the ceiling among the fluorescent lights. The walls are decorated in cream wallpaper with small pink diamonds, the outline of the woodwork of door and window frames fuzzy and blurred by archaeological layers of raspberry gloss paint. Each table is laid with laminated place mats showing photocopied scenes of the Island in days gone by. If one of the smartly dressed Sunday-suited families pictured eternally strolling along the promenade taking the sea air were to step out of their photograph and walk into Bill's, they'd feel right at home.

The Neptune Cafe is one of a tiny handful of traditional seaside cafes that's left in the country. No fancy cappuccino machine here, no rotisserie chicken hopelessly circling, no pre-packed Italian biscuits, no triangular ready-to-go sandwich packs, no bucket-sized paper cups, no artfully mis-matched sofa groupings, no pot pourri'd bathroom with tinny piped music, no over-heated prices. Just a small, narrow time-travelling cafe serving home made dinners and puddings with custard.

Tracey brings us our mugs of tea (one with one sugar, one without) and asks my mother if she'd like her usual. Of course she does, with chips too please, she adds just in case Tracey might have forgotten this essential ingredient. She tucks the small notebook into the pocket of her navy blue tabbard and retreats to the kitchen, weaving through checked tartan shopping trolleys as she passes tables full of pensioners.

Reassured that our food's on its way (cheese and mushroom omlette with salad for me, roast lamb and vegetables - with chips - for mum) we fall into our habitual exchange of news. B's worried about her son because he can't find a job; she gave L a lift to church this morning; K took the sermon - you know, that wonderful reading about the dry bones; she's been clearing out the garage; C took away that old water tank and some rubbish; will the old pots of paint and motor car oil still be ok to use; do I still want to go up to Ikea for her birthday; Roo was on the phone last night chatting about her exams. And then our food arrives and we stop talking for a while.

When we're done, Tracey takes our empty plates and our pudding orders and brings us two more piping hot mugs of strong tea. Our bowls, when they arrive, are brimming with bright yellow custard. Eventually, our spoons rest in the bottom of the empty white dishes and we drain the last of our tea. I go to the counter to pay Tracey, tell her we'll see her next week, and step out into the dazzling breezy bright sunlight of a seaside Whit Sunday afternoon.

Whitsun (or Pentecost) is celebrated seven weeks - or 49 days - after Easter Sunday. It's also related to the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the ten commandments at Mount Sinai. But it's not just a religious celebration. According to Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, legend has it that King Arthur always gathered all of his knights at the Round Table for a feast on this day.

I think that the old King could have done worse than to have brought his men to the Neptune Cafe.

Bring me sunshine...

Family gatherings have a habit of throwing up odd confessions, odder relations and rattling the deep-set bones of cupboard-dwelling skeletons. But I have to admit that my mother's revelation that she liked the music of grunge-rock gods Nirvana was more unexpected than finding a Methodist minister playing poker and drinking moonshine in an all night strip club.

The three of us - mum, Roo and me - were munching our way through delightful homemade organic burgers in the Wibbly Wobbly cafe on campus late on Friday night when the first melancholic minor harmonics of Come As You Are rolled over us like aural surf. She stopped, Luscious Lamb Burger poised in hand, cocked her head to one side and listened intently.
"I like this song. Who's it by?" she asked Roo.

And so was set in motion the little tableau that followed on Saturday morning, the three of us - in Roo's student halls of residence room this time - listening to The Best of Nirvana on CD for a full hour or more, Roo and I lounging at either end of her single bed and mum in the armless armchair drinking tea. Eventually prising ourselves away from the sounds and stories of Kurt Cobain, we trundled off campus and drove the few miles into Lancaster itself.

The city is set on a hill and radiates with a subtle golden glow from the soft yellow sandstone of the houses, shops and offices. We parked at the bottom and walked slowly up through the stalls of the open market that runs up and down the spine of the high street: breads, cheeses, game, sausages, curries, doughnuts, fresh English strawberries and a hundred and one other delights to choose and buy direct from the producers. We had no mission in mind other to look, buy and enjoy, and - in my case - to visit a bookshop.

Lancaster is well provided with bookshops and I had, late the previous evening, stood and lingered outside the university branch of Waterstones willing it to open especially for me as Roo took us on a tour of the campus. A couple of hours and a few shops later we staggered out of the high street with our purchases into the beery embrace of a local pub serving food and football played out on a range of giant screens. None of us being football fans, we had no clue what the big game of the day was except it ended in a huge trophy and much swapping of stripy shirts.

Striped shirts, as it turned out, might have been rather more appropriate attire than we realised for our next stop at Lancaster Castle. Picking up the brown visitor attraction signs as we left the car park, we circled and dipped around the city's compact one-way system in search of the fortifications that we could see up on top of the hill. For a while it seemed that whichever way we took we just couldn't get any closer. Along the river bank we went, past beautiful waterfront apartments and a recently engineered harmonic arching bridge painted the palest sky blue. Down a country lane next to the canal full of ducks and coots and reeds. Through twined streets, up precipitous slopes, across cobbles until we began to think we'd imagined it. And then, suddenly, the castle was in front of us. Curiously quiet and deserted of visitors, we pulled up on the steep forecourt and peered at the huge wooden door studded with square headed bolts. Her Majesty's Prison, Lancaster Castle, read the stern navy blue sign. Lancaster Castle is a prison, as it turned out, not a tourist attraction. Now that would explain the lack of directions.

Still laughing at ourselves and our castle gaffe, Roo suggested we drive the few miles out to the seaside town of Morcambe. Like many British seaside resorts, its grandeur and glamour has perhaps faded a little in recent years in the luring headlamps of package holidays abroad. But if tourists don't flock here in quite the numbers they once did, the town is making a huge and visible effort to tempt them back again with refurbishments and street artworks. The beach is gentle and sandy and curves against the promenade in a welcoming crescent of soft-breaking waves and thousands of seabirds. The horizon is made up of a stunning vista of the hills of the Lake District.

But perhaps the town's most dazzling possession is its glorious tribute to its favourite son, Eric Morcambe, born here and one half of the much loved comedy duo Morcambe and Wise. The life-size bronze statue of Eric, complete with signature glasses, captures him in his heyday doing the steps to their classic show-closing number, Bring Me Sunshine. The nation mourned when he died at a premature 58 years of age in 1984. The memorial to this national treasure, built in 1999 and 15 years after his death, was unveiled by The Queen. A memorial too to gentle comedy for gentler days perhaps.

Bring Me Sunshine - the theme tune of Morcambe and Wise

Bring me Sunshine, in your smile
Bring me Laughter, all the while
In this world where we live, there should be more happiness
So much joy you can give, to each brand new bright tomorrow

Make me happy, through the years
Never bring me, any tears
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

Bring me Sunshine, in your eyes
Bring me rainbows, from the skies
Life's too short to be spent having anything but fun
We can be so content, if we gather little sunbeams

Be light-hearted, all day long
Keep me singing, happy songs
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.


Words - Sylvia Dee, Music - Arthur Kent


Photographs: At the top - mum, Eric Morcambe and Roo. In the middle - bronze seagull from Eric's memorial garden. At the bottom - Roo

The sandwich tray of Fate

I’ve never been one to turn up my nose at the accidental largesse that Dame Fortune strews in the haphazard pathway of my life. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say it is my honour-bound duty to make the most of Fate’s fickle bounty when I stumble upon it. For what else is a weed but a wildflower in the wrong place?

And so it was that the ethereal warps and wefts from which the tapestry of life is woven did conspire, at just the very moment when I was feeling late afternoon hungry, to procure for me a tray of abandoned sandwiches. Like the streamers and ten-penny blow horns littering the pavement in the bow wave of the carnival parade, the guests had sated their lunch time appetites and departed leaving behind piles of untouched food and dull-looking documents in their wake.

There is in my experience a strange primeval cloud that descends upon the modern brain in moments such as this, an urge so strong and so instinctive that it blots out in a micro-second ten thousand years of civilisation. And in that flicker of intuitive logic does the Stone Age cave man, skin deep within us all, cast off his modern cares and clothing and stride forward in his primitive glory. Would that ancient straggle-haired ancestor have paused for more than a heartbeat before consuming the food he found by chance in front of him? No. And nor did I.

A couple of dainty triangles of chicken and pesto on tomato bread and a mug of tea later and I could feel the rumbles dying away like yesterday’s echoes. But there were still piles of sandwiches left and it seemed criminal, to my inner cave woman self, to leave them there to be trodden by flies and thrown away in the bin. And so, with deft application of kitchen towels and a pristine plastic bag, I secreted the rest of the tray away to bring home for later.

The dog and I dined well tonight, sharing our supper of chicken and tuna and egg standing in the kitchen. I’ll throw the crusts that I removed (and the water cress he delicately rejected) out for the birds in the morning. The dog’s fast asleep at my feet now, just as his own ancestors would once have been in a Stone Age dwelling not so far removed in essence from the house we share. Neither of us will need to go hunting with Fate again, for a few more hours at least.

***

I’m off to visit Roo at Lancaster for a long weekend, setting off tomorrow morning and returning late on Sunday night. Can’t wait to see her, and my mother’s coming with me as well on her first trip to Roo’s university. We’re staying in some guest accommodation on campus – the first time I’ve done that in, oh gosh, a long time.

***

Luckily, Kaos is quite a lean dog so his scoffing of the sandwiches this evening doesn’t really qualify as a dieting disaster - unlike some of the animals in this little gallery from today’s newspaper. George the hedgehog (that’s his picture up there, next to a regular-size friend) was "placed on a crash diet after he weighed in at 2.2kg - four times the weight of a normal hedgehog. Staff at the Wildlife Aid animal sanctuary placed him on a strictly-controlled cat food diet."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/may/13/overweight-pets-animals

Sort of a top hat day

Having a bit of an inverse Irving Berlin day today involving the forced replacement of emotional seepage with a stiff upper lip.

That’s the trouble when you’ve allowed your right brain to gain the upper hand: emotional leaks and tremblesome lips. No such problem with the trusty logical left side, domain of practicality and good old British reserve. So how does one prevent a quiver from becoming a river, a little cloud of gloom from becoming a thunderhead of doom?

Step into the sunshine and take full advantage of a day working at home to spend an hour lying in a joyful red reclining chair in the bright breezy garden. Watch the wet washing billowing and flapping on the line in a most satisfactory way. Shut your eyes and observe the little pin pricks of light shining through your lids. Trace the trails of the tiny black dots as they dance and wander across the inside of the thin closed membrane. Listen to the sounds of the wings of the sparrows as they land on the bird feeder. Whirring? Purring? Laugh at their pickiness as they reject and drop discarded seeds with disdainful beaks. Pluck out some moult hairs from the dog’s haunches whilst he snores. Throw the beach-found blue rubber ball when he grumbles at you for doing so. Make a cup of tea in your favourite bone china mug with the pictures of bees on it. Smoke a few cigarettes and remember that although it’s your last pack of duty frees you haven’t paid full price for 20 since February. Pinch out a few baby weeds and hope they’re not the seedlings you’ve been nurturing. Return to the desk with a bowlful of muesli topped with yogurt and honey. Drink more tea. Continue work where you left off. Smile.

Job done.

I'm puttin' on my top hat
Tyin' up my white tie
Brushin' off my tails

I'm dudein' up my shirt front
Puttin' in the shirt studs
Polishin' my nails

I'm steppin' out, my dear
To breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with class
And I trust that you'll excuse my dust when I step on the gas

For I'll be there
Puttin' down my top hat
Mussin' up my white tie
Dancin' in my tails


Extract from Top Hat, White Tie & Tails by Irving Berlin (1935) from the musical Top Hat (nominated for four Academy Awards)

Rooks and apple blossom

The weather gods had colluded today to deliver the first day of summer. That it was a Monday too seemed appropriate; perhaps they too work a regular jobbing week. Gone were the weekend's chilly winds and misty outriders, shunted into the sidings by bright sunshine and skies with train-chuffed clouds drawn straight from a child's paintings.

A few brave early blossoms on the twiggy cooking apple tree in my little garden were just starting to uncurl as I left the house this morning. Several more spindly green shoots from the wild flower seeds I sowed a couple of weeks ago and another frond of clematis too, a slender waving tendril seeking anchor from the wall. But the honeysuckle is proving so far to be the champion of this chase to the sun; it grows taller and bushier each time I look at it.

The students were back at full strength on campus today, eyes blinking at the unaccustomed morning light after a few weeks of sleeping until afternoon if Roo is anything to go by. Some of them were towing huge suitcases on wheels and working like columns of cheerfully chattering ants as they helped each other across the grass with bags and boxes of belongings and into their flats. At mid morning, I went down to the campus shop in search of muesli and a change of scene. I'm trying to be virtuous after those three weeks of over indulgence so was pleased with myself for managing to forgo a bar of chocolate, although an ice cream wouldn't have looked out of place among all the colourful tee-shirts.

Lunchtime provided the perfect opportunity to saunter to the post box and then to sit in the park for three quarters of an hour. It's the first time I've had the chance and the weather to venture there and I can see that plenty of exploring of the seemingly endless green space lies in front of me. For today, though, I was content to find a bench and read and watch the world go by as I crunched Polos and smoked a couple of cigarettes. Not far from where I was sitting was the remains of a maze. It had been made of straw and the inner spiral was still intact, the outer parts now straw-less but carved into the grass nonetheless from the length of time it had been there. A year? Two perhaps? Temporary entertainment certainly but long enough to leave a bare grey-brown trace in the turf.

From the variety of mature trees I'd guess maybe that this had originally been planted as a specimen garden when the mansion house was still just that and in private ownership. The mansion retains its indoor 'winter garden', a huge domed green house bursting with tropical species to the extent that large fleshy leaves press up against the windows and the glass runs continually with condensation. Outside, rooks have set up nests high in the tallest of the trees and were pecking around importantly in the grass as I watched them.

And then suddenly, from nowhere, an unrecognisable squawking caused rooks and me both to look up startled. A small flock of parakeets were flying over, pausing for a moment for a rest and to be admired among the tree tops before continuing their journey. I have seen parakeets (and even, once, a huge blue parrot) flying freely before in this country, but they somehow seemed even more incongruous in south east London. Perhaps the proximity of the tropical hot house lured them in. Who knows?

Sweet sorrow

A burger. He's always got a burger in his hand, or the olive from a drink, or the wrapper from a burger and a drink. Did you notice? Brad Pitt, I mean, playing the part of Rusty in Ocean's Eleven*; he's always eating, or drinking (or both) whenever he's on screen. Jake and Elwood order up fried chickens and white bread when they call at Aretha Franklin's fabulous Soul Food Cafe in the Blues Brothers. Kojak spent the entire1970s sucking on a lollipop; one can only hope that Telly Savalas liked them too.

Well that's been Roo and I for the last three weeks. Not surrounded by glamorous American actors (although Brad, if you're reading, you're always welcome to drop by) but continually eating. Curries, cakes, chocolate, crackers, cheeses, chips, chicken kebabs, cereals, yogurts, grapes, spaghetti Bolognese, cauliflower cheese, bread, butter, boiled eggs mixed with mayonnaise, tortellini, pasta bakes, blood oranges, bananas, mini-pizzas, fish pie, steak pie, braising steak, baked jam roll, ice cream, custard, roast beef, turkey, cheesecake, apple crumble, naan bread, rice, fruity suet pudding...

Well, you get the picture. There's something about being in each other's company that seems to compel us to consume our body weight in food on a daily basis. Almost like one of those demented eating competitions where entrants have to devour sixteen pounds of jellied eels in thirty seconds or something for no reason whatsoever except the prize of a cheap t-shirt and a bottle of indigestion tablets. Which is delightful (eels aside) and fine to a point - that point being when one's clothes start to feel a little tight in places that they aren't meant to or didn't only a few days before.

And so it was today that, in a lull-before-the-cake-free-storm fashion, I polished off the last of the Easter chocolate and re-stocked my fridge with things of a duller but more virtuous nature. Admittedly, after our feast-a-thon of the last few weeks it wasn't really a challenge to find slightly less decadent foodstuffs. No, my challenge now after polishing my sweet tooth to a high glossy burnish is to try and convince it that yogurt and fruit really is as tantalising as cake and custard.

Hmmm... One can but try.

And I am going out for lunch on Tuesday.

And Wednesday.

And dinner on Friday evening...

*Rusty was probably doing the same in Ocean's Twelve and Thirteen but I couldn't bear to sit through either more than once. Unlike the first installment which I've enjoyed many times.

Roo's return

I’d been woken the first time by the leaping around of the dog like an Irish dancer burling to the relentless tattoo of the window cleaner knocking at the front door. The second time by snuffing a fat brown moth up my right nostril. And now by the demented cricket-like metallic chirping from Roo’s alarm clock.

The dog went through his repertoire of morning stretches as Roo herself appeared at my bedroom door, hair tousled and eyes small and sleep-full. I put my arms around her, both of us still soft and warm from our beds and silently aware that this would be her last time waking up at home for several months. Last night, we’d celebrated her 20th birthday a few days in advance of the event with a wonderful evening of food and conversation at my sister’s. Broccoli and cauliflower cheese, meltingly rich and deliciously savoury and accompanied by golden crispy roast new potatoes, all made with great skill by my sister’s husband and followed by a tray of fresh cream cakes.

We’d brought home three cream cakes left over from the feast and ate them now standing in the kitchen in our pyjamas as the dog tucked into his own - admittedly less exotic - breakfast. Roo scuttled back upstairs to dress and finish packing while I faffed around, filling the sink with too much hot water until the bubbles frothed right over the top and threatened to engulf half the room. Luckily I was rescued from the actual doing of the washing up at Roo’s request for me to go with her to the computer shop in the High Street to buy some essential piece of shiny technology. Back home once more and she somehow squeezed the new kit into her suitcase along with three wedges of cheese from the fridge (Red Leicester, Cheshire and Feta) and several de-packaged Easter eggs.

Too too soon it was time for the two of us to make our way to the station. It’s a walk of only a few minutes from our little house, skirting along the bottom of the ancient public green known as Beachfields Park that gives a home to trees and birds and red-cheeked children all year round and to the dazzling travelling funfair in August and November. Roo’s not travelling light back to university this time following our shopping trips and wants to practice wheeling both cases by herself. The suitcases trundle obediently along behind her, full of clothes and books and shoes, her new computer gadgets and several pounds of dairy goods.

And then we’re at the station itself, full of people wrapped up against the brisk wind that chills in spite of the pin sharp sunshine. We huddle close together on the platform and I know she’s nervous about the journey ahead as she fiddles with her bag straps and pulls her hands in and out of her pockets. The train arrives in slow motion and hisses and sighs as the doors open to disgorge a hundred passengers in hastily retrieved winter coats and scarves. I board with her for a moment, lifting one of the cases as she stows the other, and then step back out of the door and onto the platform.

We stand like that for a few minutes, her on the inside, me inches away on the windy concourse, saying our goodbyes. The train starts to rev and rumble, the huge engine and the hydraulic doors powering up in anticipation of departure and we embrace each other for the last time. And then the doors slide shut and I watch Roo mouthing goodbye through the window as she takes her seat and the train hauls away. I start to walk, trot, run beside the moving train, waving and calling out until its speed outpaces me and I’m left alone on the platform. Hot pricks of tears jab my eyes and I turn to make my way home from the now deserted station.

The dog’s waiting for me curled up behind the door when I let myself in.

Talk to the wall

I really should be tending to the plate of chicken chow mein congealing in front of me but I just can’t keep my eyes off the woman a couple of tables down. I try to force my gaze back to my paperback and my fork to my food, but it’s no use. Her forehead has captured me and I am trapped, transfixed and mesmerised by its silent Siren song.

I really only came down to the refectory for a change of scene and a yoghurt. Don’t get me wrong; my new office is very fine and I have a grand view from the sliding full height glass door on the third floor. If I put a foot onto the forbidden balcony and swivel my neck to the left as far as it will possibly go I can even glimpse the park that lies beyond the utilitarian yellow bricked halls of residence. But a person can only take so much solitary reading on a spiny flocked charcoal chair and I’m in need of a break.

The woman is in earnest expressive conversation with a companion sitting opposite. Or rather, most of her is. Her forehead doesn’t budge even as her arms gesticulate and her mouth mouths words that I can’t quite hear. She is certainly striking, dressed completely in black and with an impressive bouffant of wild curly hair that elevates her height by a good ten inches. From her skin tone, her lips, the slight impression of jowls just starting to melt from her jaw line, I estimate that she is maybe in her mid fifties. Except for her forehead, which, shiny and smoothly isolated in its own age zone, is just beginning to breech its early twenties.

Perhaps sensing me looking, she glances up at me and I see her eyes scan my face for a seed of recognition. I smile back, hoping that she’ll attribute my not-quite eye contact for a lazy eye or similar optical malady. Failing to find a flicker of familiarity in my face, most of her face frowns a little and she turns back to her companion. I shovel a mouthful of cold noodles and take a swig from my bottle of Diet Coke and it reminds me of that long-running tag line for fizzy orange Tango: “You know when you’ve been Tangoed”. Except in this case, I think, “You know when you’ve been Botoxed.”

I’m feeling restless so decide to mix it up a bit by taking a different flight of stairs back up to my office. To distract my mind from the effort of hauling my overly full self up the endless grey treads, I count the stairs. Six half flights of gleaming black-edged tiles with a turning point landing at each juncture, one facing into the building and one facing the modernistic gable end of occluded glass and exposed brick wall. I count, and then re-count. Eleven steps per half flight, sixty six to the top. How strange; if one uses the wider and grander main flight in the centre of the building there are seventy two to reach the same destination.

Back at my desk once more I peel three blood oranges and read the newspaper online. Snatches of dialogue from the training course running in the meeting room opposite waft in from the corridor. A crow caws noisily outside. I check my mobile phone to see if it’s home time yet. It has been something of a quiet news day I think.

I took this photo of the 'talking wallpaper' in the refectory on my mobile phone.

Gold lame and lilies

It’s funny the things people give you. I don’t mean a sore throat or earache or the cold shoulder – which are not in the least amusing – but unexpected gifts. Like a small yellow ornamental gourd, for instance, presented to me last summer by the father of Roo’s boyfriend via a convoluted chain of delivery that led from his back garden vegetable patch to my desk top. The boyfriend is now an ex but the gourd’s still around, all golden and mellow next to the telephone.

My mother’s a great one for gifts of the unexpected. She always has a little something for me whenever I see her, but, like a slightly unconventional street conjurer, I’m never quite sure what she’s going to pull out of her bag. Sometimes it’s a fairly conventional thing, like a nice cushion for the armchair, some newspaper cuttings or a paperback book. Occasionally, it’ll be something more exotic and edible, such as a giant tin of canned prawns, delicious mozzarella-stuffed cherry peppers, or the jar of sweet pickled pumpkin cubes in brine that’s resting in my fridge at this very moment.

But if I’m very lucky, she’ll have picked me up a bargain from the eccentric-central land that is the church coffee morning or jumble sale, and then there’s simply no knowing what the bag might contain. A couple of slightly used candles, for instance, a pair of gold lame tights (last worn circa 1982), a collection of box-less films that I’ve never heard of on DVDs that came free with the Sunday papers, a seashell, or a miniature tribe of knitted woollen fairytale characters complete with beards, crowns, tunics and red capes. I am always amazed by her generosity even if it is, admittedly, sometimes more of a challenge to find an appropriate home for some things than others.

When I met Roo from the railway station on Saturday night, she’d brought home with her a beautiful bunch of lilies for me all the way from Lancaster. Lilies are my favourite flowers, so of course I was most delighted with them, but not only on that level; I was also exceedingly impressed that she’d managed to carry them through 330-odd miles on several trains (and right across London on the tube) without them coming to any harm or crumpling whatsoever. I put the lilies in a vase on the mantelpiece and have been watching the buds open all week. The smell is divine.

Roo had also brought me home a little pack of playing cards but I’m going to save those to play with until after she’s gone back to uni. I can always make up the numbers in a few hands of poker with the knitted fairytale folk; I’m pretty sure they don’t cheat too much.


I took this photo of the lilies using my mobile phone - they're much more of a vibrant orange colour than they look in the picture.

Sunshine on a Monday

I celebrated my penultimate day of freedom with a late night’s reading and a later morning’s rising before scuttling bath-damp and bleary eyed to the hairdresser just in time to take up the chair for 9 o’clock.

As a hairdresser, Shelly suits me perfectly. She never chastises me for split ends, does not look at me as if I’m deranged for not using straighteners, doesn’t try to persuade me into a different hair style than the one I’ve chosen, and, best and most prized of all, doesn’t mind if I don’t engage in conversation beyond the perfunctory sentences necessary to be certain that we’re both heading towards the same hirsute goal. I take off my glasses as I sit in her chair and the world and my brain swim out of focus for the next two and half hours as she goes about her professional ministrations of foils, colours and sharp sharp scissors.

She hands me a batch of magazines to read whilst the colours are taking and disappears to tend to the set of a fragile looking curly white-haired woman at an adjacent mirror. I’d meant to bring with my book with me, carry on where I’d left off last night, but I forgot in my rush and I’m grateful for the magazines. I don’t read women’s magazines often; somehow at some time in the long past I just lost the habit. The selection she’s given me are enthralling entertaining in a slightly voyeuristic manner, relaying as they do stories of wedding day punch ups, lost children and faithless lovers. I feel quite breathless at the intrigue of it all and am sorry when I’m called to the sink to be rinsed off and shampooed by the salon’s junior. But her hands are deliciously firm on my scalp and the warm water and massaging of my head send me near to the edge of a trance.

Back once more to the chair and Shelly snips and shapes expertly with her scissors. The short fine hairs slide down the black nylon gown and collect in my lap and I wonder fleetingly if a skilled person could spin this into a yarn and knit something with it. But I cannot knit and I’d feel foolish asking, so I look in the mirror when Shelly asks me to and thank her for doing a great job. When I go to put my glasses on, I find that the unguent she’s used has stuck some of my hair to my face and I have to peel it away to allow the arms of my specs access to the top of my ears.

My sister has sent me strict instructions to call into the bakery on the way past to buy a fresh cream Belgian bun, and I add to this a selection of cakes to take home for Roo, my mother and niece. The greengrocer next door has a special offer on blood oranges. I buy sixteen of them, and two pounds of tomatoes, to even out the weight from the bag full of cakes in more ways than one. Roo’s alarm clock is peeping when I get to the house and I call up the stairs to her as I have done for as long as I can remember. She calls back and shuffles into the shower in her dressing gown. I listen to the water gurgling down the pipes as she washes and smile with pleasure that she’s home for a few weeks.

We’ve arranged to meet them at the Neptune Café at 12.30 and they are waiting for us when we arrive. Tracey, the café’s owner, has placed an extra chair at the table set for four so that the five of us can sit together. Roo sits next to her Grandma on one side, my sister next to her toddler daughter on the other, and I sit in between my wonderful family of girls on the spare chair at the end of the table.

It’s two o’clock by the time we’ve finished eating and the sun is bright on our faces as we make our way back to my little house. Milky coffees with sugar, tea, cakes and biscuits accompany an afternoon of chatting and laughing. The dog is wary of the toddler, squashes himself next to my legs in an attempt to look invisible. My niece is inevitably drawn to him as a moth to a flame, and the two three year olds advance and retreat from each other in an elaborately choreographed inter-species quadrille. She climbs the stairs to use the bathroom and comes back down naked in the way of toddlers the world over. It takes bribery and fuzzy felts to make her put her clothes back on.

The sun is till shining when they leave and I sit outside smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of tea. Tomorrow will be my last day of leisure before starting my new job on Wednesday and I hope to spend it outside once more in a last day’s work in the garden before it’s ready for planting. I hope the sun will come out for me again whilst I do so. Whether or not it does I know I’ll enjoy the day.

A closet geek goes shopping

Being something of a closet geek (yes, I was the one in your class who actually liked maths), I always rather enjoy it when the newspapers run stories based on maths or statistics.

Sometimes such articles are predictably backwards-facing “in my day” types, written along the lines of ‘how much easier public examinations are now than…’ - the ‘than’ in question being whenever the author happened to be at school - and are often followed by an example from a recent exam paper so that you can test yourself. I have two Pavlovian responses to these features: to try out the test in question; and to disagree wholeheartedly with the writer. In my world view, any student who sits and passes a public examination deserves praise for the achievement regardless of the decade it took place in; whether or not the article’s author is a genuine card-carrying genius or still carrying the long-cold remains of a school days chip is a moot point.

The other kind of statistical newspaper feature that piques and quivers my maths geek antennae is one that attempts to compare how we live now with previous generations. There is no doubt that this comparison is a hard one to make and not least because things fluctuate in both actual and relative cost. It is also something that we have observed it in our own lifetimes. Just as a personal for instance, I can recall as an 8 year old buying a packet of crisps for 7p at the corner shop. When I bought a pack last week to go with my lunch, it was 54p. That’s close on an 8-fold increase in price over 32 years. But in personal real terms, the 7p packet of crisps in 1977 was a much larger proportion of my weekly disposable income (pocket money of 25p) than it is now. I might moan about my pay, but it’s certainly more than £4.32. Although admittedly, it doesn’t always feel like it, but that’s a different story…

Fortunately, the Office of National Statistics takes a somewhat more scientific approach to the concept than relying on memory and the pocket money of 8 year olds to make this calculation. In the spring of every year, the ONS takes a notional ‘shopping basket’ of 650 items to represent what the average British household spends in a month, and, using some fiendishly complex weighting and calculation, comes out with figures for the level of annual inflation – the Retail Prices Index (RPI) and the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) .

What’s interesting to me about this, though, is not so much the maths (admirable though that no doubt is) but the contents of the notional basket and what it says about us. For instance, when the RPI was first measured in 1914, the basket included candles, mangles, back-lacing corsets, tram fares and shirt collars. It’s probably fair to say that most people’s monthly shopping no longer includes most of these items, and so the ONS has to attempt to maintain a kind of consistency between the shopping baskets from year to year, adding or removing items to try to keep it representative of real life.

And the list of what gets added into the basket and what gets removed each year is fascinating stuff. This year saw the addition of rosé wine, hot rotisserie chicken and internet-based DVD rental subscriptions, whilst MP3 players and rentals from real-life DVD hire shops were removed. In came Freeview boxes and MP4 players. Out went wine boxes and shag pile carpets; in came hardwood flooring, Parmesan cheese, double cream and free-range eggs. Last year, CD singles and 35mm camera film joined tram fares and shirt collars in the great historical shopping basket in the sky.

Apart from the cheese, cream and free-range eggs, I have never bought any of these items. My shopping basket regularly brims over with candles, corsets and mangles though...

Rascally Robert and some honey from the bees

I welcomed this rainy, blowsy Saturday with good spirits and a proper decadent lie-in. Specifically, a few cigarettes, several cups of tea and a bowl of cereal taken sitting in bed with my laptop on my knee and the dog curled up the floor beside me. Bliss. But warm spirits not withstanding, winter has returned temporarily and when I left the house to meet my mother I wished I was wearing my dog walking hat.

I'd just about warmed up in the car by the time we picked up my sister and her little girl before travelling the short distance to Eastchurch for a public open day at Shurland Hall.

Shurland Hall gets its name from the De Shurland family who were granted the land and first built on it in the 12th Century. According to local legend, the 14th century Sir Robert De Shurland was a bad lot. Rich, arrogant and generally a thoroughly dislikeable man, he took the law into his own hands after a trivial falling out and killed a monk. Fearing retribution – divine or otherwise – the reprobate Sir Robert decided to ask the King for a pardon and the opportunity to do so presented itself when the King’s ship happened to be anchored nearby some time in the late 1320s.

Royal pardon granted, the rascally Sir Robert somehow got into an argument with a witch on the ride back home. She was furious with him, cursed him them and there, saying that his favourite horse, Grey Dolphin, would be the death of him. He laughed in her face and scoffed at her curse, but those were superstitious times and even the haughty Sir Robert was concerned. As soon as he got home he killed Grey Dolphin and cut off his head. There was no way, he thought, that a dead horse could be the cause of his demise.

Curse and pardon both long forgotten, Sir Robert was walking on the beach a year later when he tripped and fell over something on the shore, stabbing his foot as he did so and dying soon afterwards from blood poisoning. What had caused Sir Robert to stumble? Why, nothing other than the skull of the faithful and blameless Grey Dolphin of course.

Although probably not cursed, the current Shurland Hall has stood derelict for many years. This Hall was originally built a couple of hundred years after Sir Robert met his fate. It was constructed during the reign of Henry VIII and was visited by the King and his short-lived new bride, Anne Boleyn, during their honeymoon in 1532. 450 years later, my mother was a teacher at the nearby Eastchurch Primary School and I can remember my sister and me scrambling up the crumbling walls and climbing through the holes where the windows should have been when we were children. In fact the Hall was in such a poor state of repair that it has been on English Heritage’s “Buildings at Risk Register” for a long time.

Happily, the stunning house is in the process of being restored using traditional methods and materials, and it was fabulous to see the progress that’s been made. We climbed the beautiful oak spiral staircase right up onto the roof – complete with turrets – and were rewarded with magnificent views right around the tip of the island. Boy, was it breezy up there. The restoration project is well underway but still some distance from completion, and aspects of what we saw today (stacks of plaster board, joists, laths, sawdust, rolls of lead and such) reminded me of the work we carried out at the barn. I had wondered if the restored house was going to be lived in or run as a visitor attraction; I was delighted to find that Shurland Hall will return to domestic use and will be sold as a 5-bedroom house when the work is finished later this year. What a place to live that would be. I’d better start buying those lottery tickets…

After all of that climbing and general admiration of a wonderful piece of history that’s being restored to life, we were all feeling a bit peckish and decided to visit the nearby Flynn’s Bee Farm for some sustenance of a sweet kind. The farm itself not only produces honey but makes all kinds of hive-related health and beauty products for skin problems and such which it ships all over the world. We had a lovely cream tea in the tiny tea rooms and spent a happy hour or so browsing the crafts and wildlife-related stuff that was on show. I bought loads of things, needless to say, mostly edible and including a jar of authentic Sheppey honey. No bees around today at the bee farm though; they’re sensibly tucked up in their hives waiting for proper spring to return.


You can read more about the history of Shurland Hall here: http://www.eastchurchpc.kentparishes.gov.uk/default.cfm?pid=2886

Flynn’s Bee Farm – www.flynnsbeefarm.co.uk


The photograph of Shurland Hall was taken by Sherry Wildish

And then there were none

Even under normal circumstances I’m not keen on making a big splash when I leave a job. I’m not saying it’s wrong to do so by any means; it’s just not my way. After all, under normal circumstances, you’ve taken a conscious decision to leave the job you’re in and move to another because for some reason the job you’ve got just doesn’t fit you properly any more. Under normal circumstances.

I guess redundancy is not really normal circumstances. That it might be common circumstances at the moment is certainly helpful and reassuring in the shoring-up of self-confidence dimension but otherwise - at an individual level - doesn’t really cut the mustard. I should say that I’m not remotely bothered about leaving this job; the only thing that had concerned me was finding another before my somewhat fragile finances fell down the gap in between like the TV remote control accidentally falling down the back of the sofa. You know you’ll find it again, just will it be quickly enough to catch the documentary you really want to watch before it turns into a cardboard soap opera.

But I have –luckily – found a new job that starts next week and have already shaken the dust from my feet of this one. So my reluctance to have any kind of leaving do was even more heightened than normal. Nevertheless people had asked me if we were having a final get together, and so a few weeks ago I’d invited our little team along for a lunch at the Tudor Rose pub in Sittingbourne. After all, it would give us all a chance to say goodbye to each other for the last time, and any excuse for a pub lunch is good to go as far as I’m concerned.

The first previously accepted apology came on Tuesday. A colleague would be elsewhere, in another part of the county, she said, and couldn’t cancel. Perhaps we could catch up another time? Of course, I said, yes, we’d catch up another time, gave her my personal number too, and know full well I’ll never hear from her again. It’s a polite end of work charade that suits all parties I’ve found and I’m happy to play it. The next apology was brought along by another colleague upon arriving at the pub. A washing machine problem, apparently, so he wouldn’t be able to join us lest the water ran into the flat below. And, added my news-bearing colleague with a flourish, he said his household insurance has just run out. My absent colleague does clearly not read as much detective fiction as me, otherwise he’d know the surest way to spot a fib is one that’s dressed up in a fur coat and diamonds and way too much detail. The final apology didn’t actually arrive at all; or rather the colleague who’d confirmed he was coming along just didn’t show up. Which is at least as blunt and as honest as one could wish for.

So in the end our final get together was four of us, sitting round a rectangular table in the large square conservatory at the back of the pub. One chose not to eat, electing instead to sip Diet Coke and watch as we three shovelled forkfuls of delicious pub grub and made conversation in between. As she stood up to go, another colleague also got to her feet pleading pressure of work, wished us well and put a tenner on the table for her food. The two of them left together, making telephone gestures with their hands and mouthing ‘keep in touch’ through the window as they walked to their cars.

The two of us looked at each other and asked for the bill, which we settled in cash and walked outside into the early afternoon sunshine. She starts her new job the day before me and we’ve grown quite close over these last few months. When she said she’d keep in touch, I have the feeling that she actually might. I watched her get into her car and drive off to collect her young children from her parents’ house.

I stood there for a moment longer in the car park, alone and smoking a cigarette, then I too got into my car and drove off. And then there really were none.

Goodbye to all that

Some of the guidelines our parents issue us when we’re little don’t translate well to the adult world of work.

‘Don’t talk to strangers’, repeated sternly and mantra-like from the lips of our feverishly worried mother as she buttons up our straight-jacket itchy duffle coat and wipes our face with a damp and slightly smelly hankie as we prepare to embark on the perilous journey to the corner shop for a bag of penny chews, for example. It makes perfect sense in her adult-to-child paranoia transaction because it is logical and it will keep us safe from harm; our mother has forgotten that all adults look alike to our child’s eyes and that a stranger isn’t strange once he or she has smiled and said hello. Except for old Mr Smith of course who can’t smile any more because something happened after the war and whom we can’t help but find a little bit sinister in ways we don’t yet have the vocabulary for, but who isn’t in any event a proper stranger – although he certainly is strange – because he runs the corner shop with his portly wife who wears only stained beige cardigans…

Roll the time dice forward by a few decades or so and we might in fact find that we earn a good chunk of our monthly pay cheque precisely by our ability to talk to strangers and to talk strangers into things. Indeed, some of us might even earn our keep by talking to very strange strangers in close quarters and without the protective armoury of tightly-fitting winter outer wear or spit-cleansed faces.

“Respect your elders” is another one. It is perfectly right, proper, fitting and appropriate that our childhood should be passed in a slightly heightened state of free-floating anxiety lest we have accidentally omitted to call the lady whom we know to be Lillian by her given adult-to-child name of Mrs Jones. The terror that can be induced in us by inadvertently finding out the first name of one of our teachers at primary school and daring to say it out loud when we’re busting for the loo and can’t prise her attention away from the picture window is probably listed somewhere as a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

Respecting one’s elders does work in the adult world too as a general rule, with the exception on some occasions of the workplace where the elders in question are behaving with all the logic of a hormone-crazed baboon set loose from a winter of solitary confinement into a compound of fecund and spring-ready fellow primates.

One saying, though, that I think holds good for both child and adult is to do with the weather. Specifically the observation that “March roars in like a lion and leaves like a lamb”. Imminent climate catastrophe not withstanding, this phrase is as true now as it was when I was little and counting the days until my Easter eggs arrived and I could stop giving up whatever it was that I’d given up for Lent encouraged by the peer pressure of Sunday School. (Probably chocolate at a rough guess)

I no longer give up chocolate for Lent (or go to Sunday School for that matter; being 40 and all I think I’d stand out a bit). But March as a month sure is changeable. The beach this morning was pure balaclava weather, forcing me to keep my lips tightly sealed to stop the freezing wind from setting off all of my dental nerves like a miniature in-mouth firework display of synaptic activity. Yet by the time I reached the office building, the sun was shining, the grass glowing with growth and the sky full of cawing rooks carrying singular twigs to their nests high in the bare tree tops.

It was not Easter either, but it was the end of my own personal Lent; for today was the final time that I shall set foot in that office building. My last remaining colleague and I met with our director and the chairman of our charity and went up to the café to have a cup of tea and a doughnut. We talked, we laughed, we got sugar over our fingers and around our lips and at last the pretence of the previous few months was over and we said our goodbyes. We embraced, we pecked each other on the cheek in that slightly clumsy British way and we wished each other well as we departed in our four directions.

In keeping with the nature of the month that draws soon to a close, I took one last look around our old office and slipped away quietly into history like a lamb.

Not quite 10:15 Saturday Night

If I said “7 o’clock, Saturday night” to you in a slightly longer-winded version of the perennial deep-and-meaningless-but-great-fun word association game, what would leap to your mind?

Let me take a wild guess that “browsing the generous selection of reduced price oven-ready meals in the chiller aisle of the Co-op in Sheerness High Street” would not be the phrase that fell first from your lips. Or probably even fifty third. Or one hundred and twelfth for that matter.

I’d arrived back home around 6 feeling peckish and a little tired having spent the day at the third instalment of my yoga foundation course. The course is run at a school hall in Sandwich, about 50 miles from here. It’s an ancient and pretty little seaside town in itself, although I feel its postcard appeal is somewhat diminished by the presence of three giant grey concrete cooling towers and the mega chemical works that festers and bubbles just a heartbeat away from the high street. It's also a place I can never quite get my bearings of. I always manage to find my way into Sandwich without a hitch; it’s the getting back out again that’s the rub. I have a suspicion that the seemingly benign inhabitants move the roads around whilst we’re OM-ing and stretching away in the school hall; in any event, even on this - my fourth - visit I still managed to find yet another unfamiliar route home without even trying.

And so it was that I was standing there in the Co-op, tummy rumbling and a little weary after a day of yoga and driving, weighing up the pros and cons of discounted cottage pie against spinach and ricotta cannelloni, when I was accosted by a tall fair haired gentleman about my age.
“Hello Katy!” he grinningly bellowed from four feet away, before proceeding to examine the contents of my basket with great scrutiny. His hand alighted upon a small packet of baby new potatoes, which he frowningly picked up out of my basket and held up at shoulder height.
“You see these potatoes? You could have bought a packet like this for the same price.” he said, grabbing a larger pack of spuds from his own basket and holding the two bags up together so that I could truly appreciate the difference in size. “Bigger bag, you see, but the same price; better value.”
“Oh. I, err…”
“Great to see you Katy!” he smiled, walking off for two paces before spinning round and kissing the palms of both his hands, blowing the kisses at me, shouting “Love you! Love you!” and disappearing around the two-for-one price promotion on cat food at the top of the aisle.

I have no idea who the chap was, but, I reflected to myself on the walk home, it’s never a bad thing to have a handsome(ish) mystery admirer. And it’s even better to know that I’m not the only forty year old who was spending their Saturday evening shopping in the Co-op.



Post script: The occasional pedestrian-slash-domestic Saturday night is not solely the preserve of those living in Sheerness it would seem. The Cure even wrote a song about it: 10:15 Saturday Night was the opening track on their 1979 debut album Three Imaginary Boys. If you’re not a Cure aficionado, here’s the first verse to prove that I’m not making it up…

10.15
Saturday night
And the tap drips
under the strip light
And i'm sitting
in the kitchen sink
And the tap drips
drip drip drip drip drip drip drip...

Coffee morning

Maggie and I share a birthday, early December, two Christmas babies. This amuses her no end and she reminds me of it each time I see her. She did this morning as I joined my mother and little niece for the monthly coffee morning in the church hall, turning round to me and asking me if I knew she’d be 80 next year.

She doesn’t look it. Or perhaps more accurately, she does look it but she doesn’t act it, retaining as she does an infectious sense of joie de vivre and a set of sparkling mischievous eyes that I suspect have been her life long companions. We fell to chatting of this and that and nothing over home made bread pudding and strong tea served in mismatching mugs. Behind us on the wall hung a poster and a range of church notices. One of them was a photograph of a group of children and young people from a school in Kenya whom the small congregation support through their fundraising efforts.

It tickled me enormously to see that a couple of tall and gangly boys at the back of the group were holding up a hand made paper banner that said ‘Thank you Sheerness Methodist Church.’ It’s hard to imagine two places further removed from each other than these, and yet in spite of the distance and a multitude of differences – from language to lifestyle and everything in between – the two groups have forged a connection that enriches the lives of both. We were talking about the Kenyan project when I spotted Irene come into the hall. Dressed in a green anorak and matching headscarf and pushing a large tartan shopping trolley, Irene’s tiny frame was swamped in the confusion of fabrics as she made her way over to us.

Irene was clearly upset when she sat down. Her shaky hands poured three sachets of sugar into her cup and some of the tea slopped into the saucer as she stirred with a spoon and much agitation. As she took a few sips from her cup and her heartbeat steadied, I looked at Irene’s face. Her eyes were red rimmed and misty yellow, the skin on her cheeks flecked with pigment and drawn down to the bone beneath, her lips pale and slightly purple tinted. At last she took a breath. “I couldn’t find this place. Oh it’s so hard to find isn’t it? Why have they moved here?”

I have known Irene for many years. She was one of my Grandmother’s close friends and I remember how I looked forward to her regular visits to Gran’s house, with her husband Howard, because she particularly liked caramel wafer biscuits. Gran would buy them specially and I’d help her to arrange them with the custard creams, bourbons, shortbread fingers and jammy dodgers on a plate covered with a paper doyley. The neat foil wrappers of the rectangular caramel wafers shone brightly next to the beige and brown crumbliness of the others on the white oval plate. In the contrary way of a child, I never especially cared for the taste of the caramel wafers but I loved their glamour. I loved Irene’s glamour too, since she wore gold earrings and her hair swept up into a neat chignon clasped with an exotic clip.

Howard was a quiet man as I recall, already in his late 50s or early 60s by the time he floated into my consciousness. He and Irene would come up to my Grandparents’ house every Tuesday evening. Whilst Gran and Irene sat and chatted and watched the television in the living room, Granddad and Howard would sit at the dining room table and play games. Scrabble, ultra-competitive and strict in its scoring and played in silence except for the clack of the tiles in the green letters bag, would cede to the gentler games of cribbage or mah-jong when I joined them at the table.

Granddad and Howard both died in the early 1980s and Gran a couple of years ago at the age of 89. Irene, a little younger than them at 82, has terrible problems with her short-term memory and it distresses her a great deal. I don’t see her often and hadn’t realised quite how bad the problem was until she said that she couldn’t find the church hall, a location that she must have passed literally thousands of times in the decades that she’s lived here.

It feels particularly poignant that Irene’s aware of her loss. I’d – wrongly as it turns out – assumed that the tragedy of memory loss was shielded from its unwilling host by the discrete veil of forgetfulness and the brain’s theft of its own ability to reflect inward on itself. You always hope that, should you live to see 80, that you’ll be like Maggie - still full of life, still reciting humorous poetry from memory, still baking cakes, still taking holidays, and still raring to make the most of every day. Like our own birthday date, I guess its something that we don’t have a choice about.

Utilities Friday

I woke enthused with that Friday feeling and sufficiently demented by the sound of continual dripping and gurgling from the bathroom to propel me into a pyjama-clad investigation of the toilet cistern. This of course meant that I first had to clear away everyday essentials from the lid, including a collection of rather attractive seashells, three odd earrings and a partly completed ‘buy 6 coffees get one free’ offer ticket from McDonalds.

The cistern lid was also, I have to confess, rather dusty. In general, I like to think that the thin layer of dust acts as a kind of secondary defence mechanism against intrusion by burglars. Should a ne’er-do-well manage to slip past the dog by the cunning distractive application of a fine rump steak, his incriminating traces would in any event be captured if he were to foolishly place his hand upon almost any surface. Including, as it turns out, in the bathroom. Although how dust manages to accumulate in a tiny room the size of a rug is a mystery beyond my comprehension.

I am not entirely un-used to the secret inner workings of the low-level flush having been party to the installation of several loos when the ex and I were converting the barn. However, I had not previously investigated this one and so removed the white ceramic lid with great care as one might conduct an experiment with radioactive rods in the confines of a miniature nuclear reactor; you don’t think anything will go wrong if you drop it, but probably best not to risk it lest you disappear into a great melt-down hole of your own creation and pop out wearing rubber gloves and looking startled somewhere in China.

The problem I could see at once. The one-armed floating ball-cock was not rising quite high enough after completion of the flushing cycle to shut off the in-coming water valve. The net result of which was both a continual thin trickle of water into the toilet bowl and the generation of a seed of homicidal lunacy in my brain as it failed to shut out the dripping sound. Lifting up the ball-cock did the trick in terms of stopping the trickle, but I didn’t feel that standing holding it was really a satisfactory answer to either a) how to spend the rest of my life, or b) how to actually fix the problem.

Closer inspection of the valve itself revealed a number of small white plastic screws and nuts. I tightened, I loosened, took one off and put it back again and generally fiddled around until – lo! – there was silence. Water trickled no more. Even when I flushed it three times just to check I wasn’t delusional. Even when I flushed it again, now dressed an hour later, the toilet regained a dignified and reverent hush upon completion of its necessary ablutions.

I was working (in the loosest sense of that word) at my computer a bit later when, with a small pinging sound, the whole thing shut down. The CD-ROM drawer had been spontaneously sliding in and out of the tower unit at random intervals for a few months and so at first I thought that the pc had departed to the great motherboard in the sky. But the disappearance of the green digits from the oven clock and the silence of the washing machine persuaded me that this was, in fact, a good old fashioned power cut.

The electricity was still off a couple of hours later as I walked into the high street to meet my mother for lunch at the Neptune Café. I was feeling peckish and a little bit worried that the power failure would mean the café was closed. Peering through the window from the pavement outside, the café appeared completely dark. But the door opened to my touch and I was greeted by warmth, the chatter of conversation and the smell of good home cooking.

After a morning of trouble with water and electricity, I was relieved to find that the Neptune Café was indeed cooking on gas, even if we dined in the dark.