Mum's the word

 "Look at what the little buggers have done...!  They've shit all down the wall!"  Mum was looking out of the side door and up towards the roof.  A beautifully constructed nest under the eaves was adhered to the apex with mud; the housemartins were well and truly at home here.  How lucky we were to have them - again!  Another Summer of their chattering and swooping and the wonder of tiny chicks to come.  Another Summer of having to sprint down that section of outside passage to avoid an unwanted messy shampoo from above, poo being the operative word.  But Mum, did you really have to say that to my new boyfriend on one of his first visits here?!

That was my mum, though.  She didn't worry about stuff like a few swear words, bugger and shit being her favourites.  Sod and bloody too.  Nothing stronger.  But it had been like that since my last few years in primary school and for a long time I was highly embarrassed by it - my friends' mums never swore. However, I think it probably endeared her to the boyfriend.

Anyway, yes, that was my mum.  And I was thinking about her the other day when I was sorting out some old portfolios and in amongst some of my ancient artworks was a very small selection of hers, even more ancient, which I had kept since she died.  It's a sad irony that her death was the catalyst, and provided a rare opportunity, for me to risk a complete change of career into something artistic.  At 35 with no dependants, the bereavement was the reason for my epiphany and I was young enough to take that chance, old enough to weather a failure.  You could say that the stars aligned, but... Mum, the one I had to thank for so much, wasn't there to witness it.

She was such an artist herself, always encouraging me, even taking me along to her art classes when I was a small nipper, where I could casually observe Joan and Daphne and Gerry magicking up vases of begonias in watercolour while I drew made-up story characters, princesses, cats, children and houses on scrap paper in biro.  Elbows.  Elbows were problematic, I drew arms which curved around with no joint until Mum's tutor stepped away from his paying students and showed me the  trick - dare to draw a sharp angle!  What a difference - never forgotten.  Then Mum witnessed all my personal projects through the years but never got to see me make it my livelihood.  She would've been so chuffed.

Before I put them all away again in a new portfolio I took pics of some of her larger studies from the '60s and '70s and thought I'd put them on here as a way to help preserve them.  There were so many more and I wish I had them, but they're now long lost to time.  

Bugger!

Senses

I could not believe the colour of the sky today...

I mean, just look at that!

The snow of last week has melted and even though the cold air was cutting and I was wrapped in a thick fluffy coat, the overly long sleeves of my jumper pulled down to envelop the cuffs of my gloves, that feeling of soaking up the warm sunshine on my face seemed like an act of defiance.

I strode briskly up to the church, through the graveyard and then along to my favourite place, this long avenue of lime trees.   I love the way the huge clusters of mistletoe adorn the trees’ branches like giant green pom-poms.

When I walk like this, I drift into a sort of autopilot mode; my mind goes into freefall; I'm sure most people find the same when walking alone.  I love these moments of solitude in my head. 

I started thinking about all sorts of things – about WWI soldiers (we’d watched the incredibly poignant film ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ last night) and about Henry Moore’s sheep drawings and about the blister on the back of my ankle and what it might look like when I take off my sock.  (Not good, as it happens.  Raw!)  But then all those thoughts trickled away, just trickled away…. they had been too busy…  and I started to notice only how heightened my senses had become, out here, in the cold, in the sun, in the moment.   Everything so vivid. I could hear a bluetit up in the branches, then a mistle thrush.  I could smell the manure from the fields, hear the crunch of gravel beneath my boots and the squeaky wheel of a tricycle ahead in the distance as a small child navigated his way between potholes, I could see the rooks on the gate, their plumage illuminated by the sunlight. 

I just went with it, feeling in every sense totally, dazzlingly, alive.  (Sorry to be so corny.)

Inevitable then, anyway, that this song should come into my head!

Angstagram

It’s official.  Everyone else is better at everything else than I am.  I know this because I’ve just been looking at some random Pinterest and Instagram pages in the course of some research and all my fears were confirmed.  Everyone has beautiful homes, beautiful children, beautiful gardens, makes beautiful things, has beautiful pets, beautiful clothes, beautiful hobbies, bakes beautiful cakes and, although there’s no visual confirmation, I think we can safely say they probably have beautiful bowels capable of excreting the most perfectly formed faeces.  

It has become apparent that I’m just not up to scratch.  A snapshot of the desk I'm sitting at now would reveal an old birdfood catalogue tucked into a notebook, a scrunched up tissue, a blunt pencil and a chipped plastic ruler,  a random postcard from Madrid and a flash drive still in its torn cardboard packaging.  I am sitting here in my bobbly old jumper and slippers with worn-out soles, contemplating whether or not to defrost the freezer which has an ice monster growing in it so big that it could no doubt restore the melting polar ice caps single-handedly.  Only it’s full of crumbs too.  Beautiful pets?  Could you count my newly-acquired composting worms?  I’ve got some nicely rotting vegetable peelings to feed them in a moment.  Alternatively I could finally remove the last traces of blue polish from the tips of the nails on my big toes because it has been on them since… August? Or was it July? 

I was thinking of opening up one of those photo-sharing accounts to share some images of my beautifully imperfect life.  Would anyone like to see it?  I could show you the inside of my oven!

The Artist

He reminded me of someone from a different era – like that early ‘70s art scene that permeated my childhood, the one with bearded men and batik throws.   It was as if he had been plucked from that setting and that time and placed in the present without having traversed the interim years.   Wild black hair, second-hand velvet jacket, the huge rubber plant in the flat, chipped stoneware bowls, Leonard Cohen and Frank Zappa on C90s.  Thirty years' worth or more of magazines, mostly already cut-up ready for use, on every available surface. The smell of paint mingling with the smell of mildew and recently baked herring.  And his art everywhere, on every wall and piled up on the floor: works in progress, finished pieces, huge canvasses, boxed constructions from reclaimed household objects, book-like collaged miniatures, pertinent words scrawled in inky black spidery script.  He taught me about the artists he loved and who inspired him - Kurt Schwitters and Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Duchamp – well, so much Art.  He always spelled Art with a capital A.  He said it with one too.  I'll be honest - he frustrated me at times, his life was messy, his choices often unwise, but friendship endured.

Well, it would have been his 58^th birthday today.  Sadly he was the second of two of my friends who died last year, and his death was most unexpected, so it still feels a little unreal.

But I don’t want this to be a sad post, there is enough misery in the world and I need to keep myself upbeat. 

Instead I’ll celebrate his birthday by sharing some of his work, now hanging on new walls in different homes.  Isn't this the lovely thing about Art? -  it lives on.

Reading matter

Books and toilets.  Do they go together?

I’m kind of thinking they do, judging by the amount of books I get to half-read while other parts of my body do different things.  If it’s not too much information, it’s through having a healthy digestive system that lately I’ve managed to cover whole chunks of the Morrissey Autobiography,  Bill Bryson’s ‘Little Dribbling’ and ‘Going To Sea In A Sieve’ by Danny Baker.  All out of sequence, though – ends before beginnings, forewords halfway through and simultaneous middle chapters – I’ll never be able to enter Mastermind with any of the above as a chosen specialist subject because I’d get all muddled up.  Fortunately Mastermind isn’t on my bucket list but I still fantasise about specialist subjects – don’t we all?  Anyway, like a disjointed dream, somewhere in the back of my mind Bill Bryson and Morrissey have morphed into one and are travelling around Britain writing a fanzine.  

Our books tend to migrate to the bathroom (where our only toilet is) in almost ghostly ways. I’m not sure quite how they end up there, on the windowsill, on the little wobbly stool or tucked in among the towels – some books that I hardly remember even owning in the first place.  I thought we’d got rid of the Doctor Who hardback ages ago; I’d forgotten all about Kraals and Mechonoids - now I’m up to speed.   

So visiting our loo is like visiting a library with random shuffle.  One week The Doctor, next week The Haynes Manual for the Fender Stratocaster.  That one didn’t hold my interest so much but for a while Mr SDS could regularly leave the smallest room with some new nugget of info about the floating tremolo or whatever.   I’m afraid I could only give a Gallic shrug in response, still, at least he was happy.

Anyway, I wonder how widespread the books and toilet combo is.  I grew up in a house full of books, although they weren’t upstairs in the bathroom where the pink suite was grounded by deep purple carpet tiles - deep purple! -  carpet tiles! - and we had goldfish to entertain us instead.   (The goldfish must’ve found us entertaining too - what a view they had from their thigh-level tank at the end of the bath.)  However, the downstairs loo (or 'cloakroom' as it was politely called)  - little more than a cupboard really - provided plenty of light reading including this:

and this:

and sometimes my Mum's John Noble mail order catalogue.  

That was a little too heavy and floppy to handle easily, especially when otherwise occupied, but my Mum’s logic could be questionable at the best of times.  (She once cast a replica of my Dad’s head in bronze,  actual size and complete with his short-lived beard, and displayed it on the sideboard.  All I can say is thank god it wasn't in the loo).

Not my Dad's head

When clearing out my Aunt and Uncle’s house last year I was happy just to browse the spines of the old paperbacks on their own designated shelf in the loo – poetry books, classics, Penguins – the tiny room had become a place of learning and escape, a tranquil retreat, even if the seating choice was limited. It was nice to think of them being avid loo-readers, and she a retired GP too.  Which leads me to wondering if there is ever a question of hygiene?  According to the Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, there is what you might call a ‘theoretical’  risk but it’s not very big -  just don’t forget to wash your hands.  And so I've concluded: yes, it’s okay to read books in the loo. 

 But probably not okay to take a dump in the library.

The January greys

I’m not a fan of January; it doesn’t have a lot going for it, does it?   It’s no May.   May is a favourite; a month full of promise and the knowledge that weeks and weeks of longer, warmer days stretch out way ahead.  May reassures me with its carefree message of, “Don’t worry, we’ll do it in the Summer, there’s loads of time yet! Relax!” and its multiple sneak previews of what’s to come – new leaves on trees, new leaves to be turned over.  Yes, loooaaaaads of time yet. 

Nor does January have the sweetness of wistful goodbye kisses like my other favourite month, October. October paints over the faded greens with juicy reds and lurid yellows and delivers surprise presents every now and then: those mild, sunny days when you exclaim, “I can’t believe it’s October!”  I think of it like a lover reluctant to end our Summer fling.  Oh, October, you tease!

January is none of those things, it’s just shades of grey interspersed with, well, other shades of grey.  This year I’m finding it harder than ever too.  To be honest, I'm feeling a wee bit down.  It's impossible to disassociate some things: January is the month in which two of my good friends had their birthdays, and last year it was also the month in which one of them died, the week after Bowie.  The other friend’s unexpected death followed just a few months later (I may write about him again soon too).  They were both only 57.  I miss them hugely and there’s a big part of me which still can’t quite believe they’ve both left - and of course all of me that wishes they hadn’t.

Anyway, in Januarys (Januaries?) past  I would have sent A a customary email on his celebratory date, saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY (nothing if not original), each character in a different colour and font, kind of like rainbow-coloured Never Mind The Bollocks lettering, which he would have completely got.  And he would have replied with a little note of thanks and surprise that I’d remembered.   “Must pop over for a cup of tea soon,” one of us would have said (it was always me going over to his house, he had the bigger kitchen), and in the meantime more messages would bounce across the ether, exchanging snippets and opinions, video clips, what was in the news, our latest wildlife updates, random notes on art, music and books, little bits of gossip about what was going on in the village, sometimes a bit of rockbiz goss too from his own/sibling connections.

In January three years ago the closest we got to rockbiz goss was that someone new was due to be moving into the big (and very expensive) historic house just down the street from us both.  “I’ve been told he’s a ‘punk rock musician’”, A told me.

Well, of course, we went through the list of possibilities.  Who would we like it to be?

“I wish it could be Mark E Smith but I think he’s too attached to the North”, A emailed.

"It has to be someone with some wonga, doesn't it, so that rules out a few I'm sure... but not someone with enough that they'd move to California, so that rules out a few too.  (I've been thinking... maybe Captain Sensible?  He's already fairly local I believe???)  Haha, I can't wait to find out!" I replied. 

 (Yes, I still have the emails...these are verbatim.)

News soon followed that our new 'punk rock musician' neighbour was called Jimmy.

Jimmy Pursey?  we both mused, somewhat incredulously.

Then an update arrived from A that it wasn't a Jimmy after all, but a Tommy.

Tommy...  Tommy....nope, drawing a blank here.

Then another update, "No, scrub that, it's not Tommy, it's Terry!"

Cue further email exchanges about Terry Chimes, who is apparently now a Chiropractor.

But by the time I popped over for a cuppa tea and a real-life chat, it transpired that the new resident was neither Chiropractor nor punk rock musician, instead someone neither of us had heard of and whose connection to the music biz was not to either of our tastes at all…  a session keyboard musician who composes music for TV....  A long way from Mark E Smith, that's for sure.

Life is full of disappointments!

Not my new neighbour

And well, like disappointment, you just have to accept death, don't you?  There's nothing we can do to change things and we're only going to experience more of them because, if it's not our own trip into oblivion, it will be that of others we know and love (sorry).  So I hold onto the memories and the fondness, the hopeful Mays and the sunny Octobers, and the little snatches of chat about non-punk rock musicians, amongst other things.

If A had lived to see this birthday I’m sure we’d have been sharing more similar conversations, both in email and real life, and this January would not be quite so grey.

The Fall:  It's A Curse

For A

The graveyard shift

Something dawned on me recently; it’s probably blindingly obvious to most people but for some reason it hadn’t been to me until that moment.   I was taking a short cut through the churchyard and casually observing the gravestones standing there, like a small crowd of quiet, still people, when it suddenly struck me that that's exactly what they are. 

A small crowd of quiet, still people:  neighbours, friends, strangers;  old, young and in-between; shopkeepers and factory workers; families grouped together  - like a gathering at a village fête.    Although I’m not religious, the significance of headstones suddenly registered in a whole new way, and I found it kind of comforting.  I saw the graveyard in a different light, like a place full of life rather than death.

The local graveyard

Then last month I was down at the City of London Cemetery again and the analogy really hit home.  It’s huge.  The 'population' of headstones is more like a large town than a gathering at a village fête - there are 150,000 graves there.

It’s the biggest of its kind in the UK – set in 200 acres of grounds (I can never picture quite what an acre actually is, but someone told me it’s roughly the size of a football pitch).  It also has 7 miles of roadway intersecting its vast parks and gardens, and 5 chapels.  You might imagine there are quite a few notable characters buried there but a little research didn’t produce many names – although I did find two of Jack the Ripper’s victims and Bobby Moore’s ashes.  The enormous variety of the memorials – the humble, weathered stones alongside some contrastingly new and really quite blingy structures, the assortment  of different traits, cultures, tastes and religions of the people beneath expressed in their monuments – well, they looked just the same to me as the shoppers I’d walked amid earlier on an East London street and the passengers on the platform at Liverpool St. Station.  I suppose it’s obvious when I put it like that.  Anyway, there’s definitely something about this correlation that I find uplifting: the inanimate representations of all those diverse human beings now mingling so peacefully in the cemetery.  If only we could always be so peaceful in life. 

---

I had to take a taxi to the station on the way to help clear my aunt and uncle’s house (both now buried in the above mentioned City of London Cemetery, in a serene, woodland area, unmarked by memorials but represented fittingly by the wildness of nature) and was chatting to the cab driver about the task ahead.  He’d had to do the same thing himself with an aunt’s belongings not long beforehand.  “She’d never married nor lived with anyone and had no other family,” he explained, “but she kept a lot of stuff!”   

It’s strange when you sift through someone’s most personal and intimate possessions, isn’t it?  In some ways you can feel like a voyeur, an imposter.  So Cab Driver and I talked about that, and how a lot is changing now, as so much of what we'll leave behind in the future – photos, music collections, documents, even contact details for friends - may only be accessible via our hard drives and phones… passwords permitting.  There's something to bear in mind!  Anyway, up in the attic amid his aunt’s general paraphernalia, he'd found an old suitcase.  It was closed tight, and for extra security bound crossways with thick string like a parcel.  Attached to it was a hand-written note:

  ‘Please destroy after my death.  Not to be opened’

“Ooh!  I wonder what was in it… did you ever find out?” I asked.  But Cab Driver was an honourable  man and had followed his aunt's instructions without even taking a sneaky peek.

So, what could have been in there?  Secret letters from a forbidden lover, perhaps?  That was my first and favourite thought.  Or perhaps documents relating to an illegitimate child?  Or even evidence from an unsolved crime?  Or maybe just a private collection of….. well…  what?!

I'm tempted to do the same myself, just to bring some old-fashioned mystique to the proceedings when the time comes. 

The farewell

My friend's funeral was held on Thursday.  It was actually a rather wonderful and strangely uplifting event, in the way that these things can sometimes be.  So many people... so much love.  The prevailing conviviality helped a great deal to offset some of the sadness.  As everyone gathered in the bright winter sunshine just before the ceremony, two crows flew up into an adjacent tree and cawed loudly.  Knowing his admiration for these birds, that just seemed perfect.

If there's one regret I have, it's that I didn't spend more time with him when he was well.  We take each other so much for granted, don't we, and it seems there's always a tomorrow.  Still, I must console myself with the thought that whilst I can't help but wish there'd been more of them, at least every single minute that I was lucky enough to have in his company was a joy.

Notes from a semi bohemian suburban childhood #1

I didn't like it.  Perhaps as a younger child it felt slightly threatening, having to share my space with a stranger and, more to the point, having to share my mum with one too.  Car doors would open and after a brief exchange a heavy-looking haversack (and sometimes dirty boots, plastic bags, cardboard signs with 'Wigan' or 'M1' written on them in marker pen) would be loaded onto the back seat beside me.  Then we made the next leg of whatever journey we were undertaking in Mum's green and white Triumph Herald with a new passenger on board.   For however many minutes and miles required, the attention would be focused on them - more often than not a young man, occasionally a young woman too - whose back of the head was all I could see, until we dropped them off at a junction or a lay-by some way closer to their final destination.  Mum could rarely drive past a hitchhiker without stopping to at least check if she could be of any help.

So, as a child, I didn't like having to give lifts to strangers, but my mum was a warm, gregarious woman who enjoyed engaging with people of diverse backgrounds - especially young people - and as I reflect on this with the benefit of these extra years, I now envy her.  I wish I had her ability to chat with ease to anyone, the same openness of her heart and the generosity of her gestures.

One day, by which time I was a young teenager and my mum now separated from my dad, she came home from a long journey and spoke enthusiastically of a hitchhiker whose company she'd enjoyed for several miles.  It seemed as if a special kind of friendship had been formed even in that short time and in spite of them being disparate characters - she a middle-aged mother and he a young, long-haired hippie type by all accounts, but with the added exotic credentials of being French and also (or so he told her) having some Native American ancestry.  From what I remember her telling my sister and me, it didn't matter that they were ostensibly so different as they talked about philosophy and art, about spiritual and cultural beliefs - deep and stimulating conversation from the sound of it, and as far away from the usual bland small talk as you can get.  Mum was most enamoured of him, her eyes flashing with excitement as she described him and shared his stories and insights with us, just as her passenger had  with her earlier.  "And I told him to come and visit us any time, if he's ever in this area," she concluded.

 "Mum!" my big sister and I exclaimed, in a manner more suited to that of a parent admonishing their child, "You mean you gave him our address?!"  We were not impressed.

"Well, yes of course," she confirmed, unperturbed by our reaction.

This was Mum all over.  Trusting.  Maybe too trusting?  But she had helped out waifs and strays before (and perhaps I'll write about those too in another post); it was just in her nature.

It was about a year or two later I guess, hard to say as the passage of time seems to move at a different speed when you're younger, nevertheless it had been many months after Mum's encounter that I came home from school and she said we had a visitor.  He had turned up out of the blue, having walked some distance through the town (and perhaps the county), carrying a piece of paper with our address on and eventually finding his way to our front door.  And he was welcomed warmly, sleeping on the camp bed in our living room for just one night before continuing on his wanders, the perfect house-guest, grateful, kind and honest, no money went missing, no privacy was breached (mutually!):  a hitchhiking French hippie with Native American ancestry.  It was a sweet, simple reminder of what it is to truly trust a stranger.  Proof, I believe, that most people are good.

And on that cheery note - Happy New Year!

Not mum's actual car

To blog or not to blog

I haven't been in a very bloggy mood lately so I may stay subdued for a bit (mind you, having now said that, there's always the chance I'll be unexpectedly overcome by a strong urge to do exactly the opposite. We'll see...)

But life has been bizarre lately; I've met some interesting people and had quite an extraordinary, exciting experience, yet it's also one of the saddest and most distressing periods I've lived through in a long while, as I witness the deteriorating health and cognisance of my dear friend and try to come to terms with it all. Both the ups and the downs, even just within the last week, have been somewhat extreme. Part of me wants to talk about it more, but part of me doesn't, so for now perhaps it's best just to be quiet!

I'll still be dropping by all the usual much-loved places whenever I can - so I'll see you there, if not here!

It is right it should be so:
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go

W Blake

The next table

We're having a meal down the pub, when I'm aware that two couples, 60s-ish, typical middle Englander types, are seating themselves at the table next to us. Over the following hour or so, without any effort on our part, we learn so much. All about the A14, for a start. And the finer details of waiting for trains. My chips are far more interesting, they could have waxed lyrically about the pleasures of nestling next to a portion of peas, but the loud voice to my right is a dominating force and I am unwillingly but unavoidably pulled to its endless, know-it-all monologues about roads, Sainsbury's and weddings. Why are boring people invariably SO loud, too?

“And the Americans, they can't spell, can they?” the diner says to his companions, whom I suspect are there under sufferance, even (or perhaps especially?) his wife. “Like the way they spell 'colour'” he continues. “C – O – L – O - R.  No 'U'!  And centre! They spell it C – E – N – T – E - R... ”

I mean, he actually has to spell the words out proudly, and with great emphasis... like he needs to... like anyone wouldn't know?

I can't see the man himself; he is to my immediate right and to clock him would require me to make an obvious 90 degree turn of the head. It's enough that my ears are being assaulted, so I save my eyes for appreciating the alpine peaks on my lemon meringue pie and exchanging knowing glances with Mr SDS.

Yes, it could be so much worse – he isn't spouting abusively nor expressing his allegiance to right wing extremism – however, it's just so tiresome, and by the end of the evening I really have had enough. As I turn around to pull on my jacket I come face to face with this verbaliser of inane, high volume tedium and, maybe you had to be there, plus it may not be much at all, but that's when I find some very small degree of consolation.  It's the moment when I notice his huge napkin – and it's tucked into his collar widthways, with corners pointing out jauntily to each side, like a stupid comedy bow-tie.

Friendship

Today has been emotional as I visited a friend who is very ill. I prepared myself mentally as well as I could, having read up about the condition; I knew I had to see him, I didn't want to leave it.  Whilst so desperately sad to see a friend in such a different state of health to how I've previously seen him, I am so very glad I spent time with him and stayed strong in his presence. The look on his face when he first saw me enter the room was so lovely, so uplifting and precious – that special twinkle in his eyes, I wouldn't have appreciated before today just how much I could value that.

I don't want to dwell on the sadness of all this though, so instead let me tell you about how we met. A few years ago, not long after I started blogging, someone I didn't know at all left a comment. I was curious as to who he was and how he might have found his way to this site. As he later explained to me, he saw it on a blog list and was immediately intrigued just by the name because he's interested in birds. When he looked through my posts, he was surprised to see how much else resonated. Likewise, curious about my new visitor and interested in his comment, I ended up perusing his blog too and found we had so many topics in common that it was almost uncanny.

A little bit of lovely inter-blog banter ensued. It was clear that we shared interests and experiences in music – punk in particular – as well as in nature, and in art and illustration. We discovered we'd even had the same art tutor for a while, even though at different establishments. We found out we'd both been born in London, both have connections to certain bands, that we like spiders and insects, that we admire the same illustrators, like much of the same comedy, that we'd both had certain family loss experiences and so on and so on, and then we realised that we even live in the same county.

Whereabouts in the same county? I wondered... I left a cryptic comment once, referring to the village I live in just by its initials: “Maybe you know it? It's full of antique shops,” I said.
The reply was quite cryptic too. “Yes, I know it. A fine place.”

Mutual trust established, our comment ping-pong then evolved into email exchange. As our rapport and familiarity built we started to reveal more about our locations. Right. We not only live in the same county but, can you believe it? - we live in the same village!

And then guess what? We not only live in the same village, but we live in the same street!

Thus the virtual friendship became real – I only have to cross the road and walk a few hundred yards down, after all! - and over a few years we've shared many cups of tea and lively, lovely conversations, borrowed each other's books and films and enjoyed one of those easygoing friendships that is simple, unintrusive, unpressured, equal. The best kind, when you don't need to see each other all that often, when nobody is offended if you don't reply straight away to an email, but when you do meet you rabbit for hours and don't want to stop.  I'm so pleased we've had that - and it all started here.

Family ties

Sadly, I have a funeral to attend this week, for a lovely elderly relative.  It will be a fairly untraditional and very low key affair; she was from the secular and somewhat eccentric intellectual side of the family - my dad's.

I'd love to think I could be even just a little like her in my final years - still attending educational courses, travelling and embracing new technology into her early 90s and keeping healthy and youthful until very recently.  Funerals are so hard, aren't they, and this will be no exception, especially as I feel desperately sad for the husband she leaves behind -  my dad's brother.  In recent years, I've seen more of him than I have my father.  And this is where it gets weird and is the reason I feel the need to write something here... because my dad may be at the funeral too...

So, I was trying to work out how many times in total I've seen my father since he and my mum divorced around 35 years ago... There can't have been more than about a dozen occasions and the last time was around 2005.   He lives the other side of the country, frequently forgets my birthday (as he did again this year); he's only phoned a handful of times and then only when there's been big news (like when he was getting married!)  Oh and one time to ask if I could record something off the telly for him when he was at a conference in Japan....  that may not sound so odd until you know that it was completely out of the blue - we hadn't been in touch for a couple of years beforehand and I didn't know he was in Japan.  So our relationship seems pretty non-existent.   I know that on paper, or in the eyes of anyone more judgmental, it might seem like he's not a good father, yet I feel the need to explain that he is a good man - he's just, well I don't know, but I think perhaps he has a degree of Asperger's. He's highly intelligent, something of a mathematical genius in fact (god knows where those genes went - down the back of the sofa?) and I know he has a kind heart and a very gentle nature.  He's just 'different' - and I really don't think he knows how to 'be' when it comes to interacting with his two daughters.  I simply think that we are not a part of his world, but - and it's difficult to explain - there is nothing deliberate or harsh about that, it's just the way it is.

Anyway, I'm just airing this now because tonight I'm full of so many mixed emotions at the thought of seeing him, particularly on such a sad occasion, that I'm already steeling myself for it.  I may report back, or I may not -  but I've realised that however bizarre and confusing it might be,  I actually really do want him to be at the funeral, because I don't want the next time I see him to be at his.

Selig

Last week the charms of Ipswich lured me to its heart once again. I may be exaggerating. Anyway, I decided to give myself a day off and my friend there was at a loose end, so I hopped on a double decker bus and travelled the highways and byways of  * 'Silly Suffolk' to its county town to meet him for lunch.

Now I didn't take my camera this time, so you're just going to have to imagine things. Like the road that's about halfway between here and Ipswich which goes by the wonderfully evocative name of Wilderness Hill. If you know East Anglia, you'll know that hills are not our most prevalent feature, nor is our countryside particularly wild (although Stowmarket town centre on a Saturday night may come close). A more apt name might be Mild Bump.

After an hour of flat fields punctuated by mild bumps, Ipswich comes into view. I'm looking out for the house I saw last time with its sinister message to 'KEEP AHHT!' Ah, there it is! This time I notice more detail. There's a boarded up window to the side and more writing. It says

 GAURD DO

It's just a wild guess but... d'you reckon the literary genius concerned had run out of paint? Or did they just run out (on hearing the sirens)?  Either way one can presume that they uttered a few expletives like “flipping heck” before returning to their flower-arranging, safer in the knowledge that neither they nor their 'GAURD DO' would be disturbed. And I've just had to 'correct' the auto-correct for the second time as I spelt that.

Some graffiti on the side of another nearby building has a more positive message. Taking up the whole space, in letters that must be at least a foot high, are the words

  I LOVE M ?

The question mark made me smile. Is it there to tease... to tease every Michelle or Mary or Mark who walks by, to wonder if it's for them?  Or is it a desperate expression of mixed feelings?  “Erm, I think I love M but, I'm a little put off because they've got terrible spelling and a bit of an attitude problem.  Still at least they lent me their spray paint”.

Anyway, lunch was fine. I asked my friend to source somewhere cheap, easy and unpretentious. “You're going to love the inside of this place,” he announced and took me to a grand-looking building in the centre of town. I did love the inside. It's curiously schizophrenic. In previous lives it had been a theatre and a picture house; there are chandeliers, balconies, sweeping staircases, a high ceiling and elaborate archways. That's if you look in a generally upward direction. At ground level, though, there's something more spit and sawdust about it. Tacky, even. I quite like that. We got a sandwich, side dish and a pint all for £5.99 and I was the barmaid's "sweetheart", "love" and "darling", several times over, which was nice, as she was quite macho.

Late afternoon I headed back to the Bus Station, following an elderly woman in a purple T-shirt. Groovy colour, I thought. Shame about the slogan on her back:

'Take back control of our country.

Vote UKIP' 

 I had to look away.  Maybe she was the one who wrote 'KEEP AHHT'?

The bus got back at 5.30pm and I went to check the time of the last one onward to my village. Oh. 5.23pm. That's how it works around here. So I walked home, about four miles. I don't often walk those kind of distances, especially not in the rain, and especially not in heeled patent boots. Never mind, it was good exercise, I should walk more.

Mr SDS arrived home from work a short while after I did, carrying a strange looking device under his arm. “Yeah, the customer offered it to me - she doesn't want it any more and I thought you'd like it,” he said with a smile.

“What on earth is it?”

It's a walking machine... Ha!

Still, I love it. I said I should walk more. (It's either that or get a dog.  I mean, 'DO...')


* 'Silly Suffolk': a corruption of the name 'Selig Suffolk'.  'Selig' is an Old English word (also German) meaning blessed, happy, fortunate.

Waiting

Lately I've become something of an expert in waiting. Waiting for deliveries, waiting for answers to queries, waiting for the go-ahead on work projects, waiting in queues at the bank. Yesterday I waited nearly an hour for my optician appointment. “Thank you for being patient” he said when he finally saw to me. Have you noticed that they always say that - “thank you” - but never actually apologise or explain? No matter, there was a copy of Tatler to look through, several times, which I found so appalling that it was entertaining and after perusing its photos of the aristocracy, I'm still smiling at the sight of Countess Spencer's voluminous hair.

So after the horrible eye test I've been coerced into spending a disproportionate amount of my income on new glasses. Using one of those two-for-one offers which is never really as good value as it sounds, I've a black frame and a turquoise frame on order. I may regret the turquoise... When I got home I couldn't remember what they even looked like so I searched for them online; I found the black ones and then noticed the website's sales blurb that accompanied them:

'Resonant with smouldering embers and charcoal matt black, making this the perfect frame for the unassuming type who is ready to let loose'

I wonder who writes this stuff?  I'm looking forward to letting loose, though!

~~~

We couldn't resist playing some Aphrodite's Child on hearing about the death of Demis Roussos.

Aphrodite's Child: Magic Mirror

Dear Demis was undoubtedly groovy at one time although, as a fond friend remarked, in our minds he will always be linked to Abigail's Party.

By the way these are not my new glasses...

Mike Leigh's play is of course a masterpiece in uncomfortable but compelling viewing. I suppose it taps into the curiosity we generally have about what goes on behind the scenes in relationships and the strange gratification that comes from discovering that things are rarely as straightforward as they might seem.

That was resonant to me last week when I met someone I haven't seen in 8 or 9 years and we were trying to catch up in the time it takes to have a quick coffee. In the course of our general chit-chat she announced that her life had changed, most dramatically, on one particular day in April 2009. “But I won't bore you with all the sordid details...” she said. “No, of course..,” I replied gently, but the voice in my head was going, “Oh do! DO! Tell me everything, the more sordid and detailed the better!” and as I sipped the rest of my coffee I waited for her to drop me some little morsels that I could catch hungrily like a dog jumping at its owner's feet for titbits.  I'm still waiting...

~~~

Tomorrow I may have to wait in all day for a courier to collect some artwork, as I'm told he could come any time between 9am and 7pm.  I will not be reading fucking Tatler.

This could be some kind of feminist rant

'Miss World' finalists 1969

I absolutely adored Miss World when I was a kid, back in the days when it was a whole night's family viewing. It was one of the most watched programmes in Britain, broadcast into our 1960s/70s brown and mustard living rooms via the BBC before it was deemed too outdated and politically incorrect to show as mainstream entertainment. I loved the array of young women representing exotic countries I'd often never heard of, with their varied hairstyles and their imaginative national costumes. I had no concept of what “36-24-36” meant, no thought as to whether or not a contestant's breasts or legs made her more attractive or more likely to win (nor perhaps to my Dad's embarrassment at seeing curvy 20-year-olds in swimwear strutting their stuff on screen while his wife and daughters ooh'd and aah'd over their personal favourites. Pan's People on ToTP probably made his cheeks redden a little too.) I just loved their pretty faces and outfits, and to my naïve pre-teen self it was equivalent to an exciting, glamorous, gorgeous parade of beautiful dolls.

Like most young girls I'm sure, I wanted to be like one when I grew up. I longed for a mass of shiny, jet black hair and wished I had an olive complexion...well, that was never going to happen... but it was an innocent enough ideal. Then I got used to the fact that I was just the way I was: pale-skinned and fair-haired and, as adolescence foisted its preoccupations with image upon me, I found that experiments with blue eyeshadow, Stablonde and an under-wired bra could at least temporarily enhance the features I was born with.

So now it's all changing. You don't have to stick with what you're born with, do you? You can get it all sorted. Lips and breasts appear to be the most popular things to transform, and you can do it while you're still young, while you're still growing as a person, with pure, fresh skin and a healthy, fully-functioning body.  You can pick your new anatomy as if from a menu: those tits and those lips and how about that buttock augmentation while you're at it. Wow, what a great idea. What a great fucking idea.

I feel myself getting agitated and saddened even just writing this. I'm trying to articulate why the increasing desire for unnecessary cosmetic surgery troubles me as much as it does, and I feel this wave going through me, a jumble of thoughts and words jostling to be expressed, not just from some inner feminist angle, but as a compassionate human being. There are so many layers and strands to it that I must try and be eloquent and understanding if I'm going to say anything, but at the same time it makes me feel some kind of desperation. I felt that the other day when I was directed to a story in the news about a model called Victoria Wild. She has spent £30,000 on plastic surgery to make herself look like a 'sex doll'.  You can read the article and see her pictures here - or just do an image search on her name.  I think you'll find her new look shocking.

Mr SDS says to me, “Why are you worrying about it? Why even think about it? If people are stupid enough to do that to themselves, that's their problem, not yours...” and I know that basically of course he's right – but I suppose it's the bigger picture here that disturbs me, not just the more extreme individual examples of Victoria and a few other young women like her.

The bigger picture brings up so many questions that I struggle to find comfortable answers to. For a start I wonder how this exaggerated look could ever be perceived by anyone as being some kind of zenith for female sexual attractiveness. Then I question the increasing normalisation of cosmetic 'enhancements' and the fact that they are so readily available. And then I consider the underlying motivation – that any young woman can still be led to believe her only value in society is as a sexual object, to the point that she would resort to such lengths to reach such a disproportionately placed goal.

Insecurity is a word that gets liberally banded about when the subject comes up and I don't doubt its presence. I'm sure all women have at some point in their lives felt insecure about their appearance (and no doubt a number of men too). As a teenager it seems that one of the most important things in life is one's sexual attractiveness; that's fair enough, we all know what hormones do. Fair enough too is the naïve assumption at that age that our all-important shagability rating might be based on the most obvious physical attributes. I understand the relevance and desire for beauty – we can't help that some aspects of physicality are more appealing to us than others, and most of us would probably rather be better-looking than we are, it's how we're wired.  But, as well as the infinite variations in personal taste, part of the process of maturity is the understanding that appearance isn't the be-all and end-all. If your inability to grasp that, or your insecurity, or if the pressure on you from society is such that you'd volunteer to have parts of your body cut open, that you'd undergo potentially life-threatening anaesthetic, risk post-operative infection and/or be injected with toxins, then surely those issues should be psychologically addressed, not physically indulged?  (Please note, although I'm sure you already realise, I'm not talking about the need to rectify genuine deformities or disfigurement.)

The woman mentioned above says that, since her plastic surgery, she "has never been happier”. Prior to this she apparently had an inferiority complex.  Her comment obliges me to feel it's not my place therefore to try and contest that or to prevent her from finding a solution. How mean-spirited it would be of me not to want her to be happy in whatever she opts to do. It's her body, her choice, her life, and not mine.  And thus, there's a general expectation that the response of a tolerant, open-minded person must be to support this and not to judge. We're proud of our liberated society and the fact that women in particular, oppressed in so many ways throughout history, can do as we please with our bodies and make our own decisions, whatever they may be and however opposite they may be to another's.  But does that really include this strange obsession for mutilation?  I don't see this as liberated, not properly, healthily liberated - it's too skewed.  How often do you also hear a woman say "I did it for myself, not for anyone else!" . And I do believe that she believes that.... although, when you put it in context, it often boils down to the same thing - it's the hope of endorsement that boosts the ego, the confidence that comes from meeting expectations.   So, cosmetic surgeons continue to advertise their service as just that – a service, to help you feel better about yourself, to be what you've always wanted to be, to be in control. To be sexier - preferably in a way that focuses on ridiculously stereotypical ideals. Although I know it's an extreme example, it doesn't seem too many steps away from helping an anorexic to lose weight because they believe they'll only feel good about themselves when they're thinner.

Of course I know it's also about making money from people's insecurities... which makes it even more desperate.  But at what point did we as a society allow the sinister 'quick fix' of surgery to replace the option of counselling, advice, acceptance? And when did the unnatural become seen as desirable? To compliment a woman on her fake breasts is surely no more meaningful than telling someone with a wig that they have lovely hair.

Oh, I'm exhausting myself... I should be more detached, I know. It's not hurting me personally, nor anyone I know.  I think I'm just feeling it for womankind...   We got so far - I don't want us to fuck it up.

Besides, don't we all know, deep down, that the sexiest part of us all is our mind?

Help the aged

I was at the dentists yesterday, waiting to check in at Reception. The customer in front of me had to fill in some forms and the Receptionist was carefully explaining what she had to do. In a very high voice, one of those voices which contains a pre-recorded smile, she slowly spelled it out: “Now, you need to read this through, yes? - do you have your glasses? - ok, and then you need to write your name in this box here, you see this box at the bottom here, yes? And then you take it with you and give it to ...” etc, etc. and of course I wasn't surprised to see that the person she was speaking to as if they were four years old was more like 80. I shivered, not at the prospect of opening wide and dribbling in front of my lovely Iranian dentist, but at a possible future I – and you, my dear friends! – may face. Being talked to like a baby. Oh no!

The old lady, who seemed perfectly compos mentis, duly toddled off with her form and the Receptionist cast an aww-bless type of glance in my direction. I know she was well-meaning, patient and kind, and I'm sure the same traits will apply to the mere whippersnappers upgrading my new remote-controlled Google hip joints in the years to come, years that are not quite as far away as I'd like. I realise the world will no doubt seem faster and madder and even more confusing but I still don't think that, assuming I'm in sound mind, I'll want to be spoken to in a manner which insinuates that the best things in mine might be playdough and piggy-back rides.  On the other hand, perhaps that's best? Perhaps you just have to act it up a bit, swallow what pride you have (left), leave your hearing aid at home deliberately and let everyone treat you like a toddler on Calpol. Then go home and have the last laugh...?  I don't know.

Smelly cheesy platform boots sniffing?

A random post deserves a random title. You know in Blogger stats where you can sometimes see what search words someone's entered which caused them to end up at your place? I have no idea why 'smelly cheesy platform boots sniffing' helped one particular visitor to find their way here today, or what they looked at when they did, but I suspect they were disappointed. I hope they found what they were searching for elsewhere, but I think at this point it would probably be best all round if we put it out of our minds. Unless it's you... in which case I suppose you found your way here quite easily this time.

Anyway, talking of what you're looking for (I still haven't found it but it sure as hell isn't going to be that song) a lovely, recently-divorced friend of mine has just joined a dating site. I think you know me well enough by now to appreciate that I would be lying if I said I'm not intrigued to know how she gets on and that I'll want as many juicy details as possible. She's had lots of responses already apparently and this weekend she was off to meet a deep sea diver, which sounds terribly exotic. I may have been happily married for the last 103 years but it doesn't stop me feeling sort of vicariously excited at the thought of being in such an unknown and potentially adventurous position. Oh, you know what I mean – the idea of it is just a reminder of being young and 'on the pull' again I suppose, wondering who's out there and what they're like and enjoying the attention. I'm sure the reality of it is a lot less glamorous.  It also made me think about how hard I'd find it to describe myself if I had to set up a dating site profile. I'm terribly fussy, you know, and I'm sure I would need a potential new mate to be all sorts of things that are really quite subtle and couldn't be described in a just a few key words. Like, I'd want someone to understand what it was like to live through punk (or something similar), and to get how it is to feel you're on the outside of the mainstream. They'd need to have a creative talent even if it was untapped or unrecognised, and to be tolerant of my fondness for small, creepy, ugly creatures (whilst that category would not necessarily include them).  There's art as well, of course, and music could definitely be a sticking point. I would need to write in a clause along the lines of, 'If you actively hate Eric Clapton's 'Wonderful Tonight' and you understand perfectly why it is so loathsome - even if you can't put that reason into words - then you're in with a shout.'  God, I hate that song with a passion. I had it going through my head this afternoon for some unfathomable reason; I had to reach out for a piece of chalk and drag it down a blackboard to ease my pain.

In my early teens I did once go out with a boy whom I knew could not possibly be right for me when he laughed at my copy of 'Do Anything You Wanna Do' (however sub-Springsteen it may sound now, it was perfection for me in '77) and said The Commodores were his favourite group. There really was no hope for us. We went to the pictures to see 'Sweeney!', which was fine, but then he took me to Macdonalds which wasn't so fine. And he talked about football. Looking back I have no idea what I saw in him apart, perhaps, from his motorbike, but more to the point I have no idea what he saw in me. Surely not my smelly, cheesy platform boots?

Revelations and renovations

Bloody hell, what a week.  I don't know what was most shocking - seeing a skip fill up with bits of my home (more on that in a mo), or the enjoyment I got from the Chas 'n' Dave documentary, 'Last Orders' on BBC4.  I mean, this weekend we watched two music programmes - the one I've just mentioned and the one on Robert Plant, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the former was far more interesting and entertaining by a mile.  Did you see it?  Did you see the clip from BBC Breakfast Time when Chas 'n' Dave were interviewed by Selina Scott and Nick Ross?  Unbelievable.   "Tell me...why do you wear braces?" was one of the questions from Selina, with no attempt to disguise the snigger in her voice.  "To 'old me trowsiz up" was the simultaneous reply from the interviewees.  The look on their faces as they tried to keep it civil whilst being patronised and treated like some alien species by their smug and incredulous hosts actually brought the Bill Grundy/Pistols incident to my mind.  It really wasn't that far removed, and could just as easily have been John and Steve sitting on the breakfast TV sofa wondering what the fuck they were doing there.  I saw the Rockney duo in a whole new light after that programme.  Just wish I'd had a bit more respect for them when they did an album signing at the record shop I worked in during the early '80s.  I'm afraid I was slightly embarrassed about the whole thing at the time.

So that was one surprising revelation.  Here are some others from the past few days:

We took out a door frame and found the original red brick wall, layers of dark orange paint and some good old '70s (?) brown and white patterned wallpaper beneath it...  I love the way you get a kind of palimpsest (a favourite word, that - any excuse to use it) when you strip back those layers.  A snappy(ish) phrase came to mind, one that you don't want to try without your teeth in: "decades of decaying decor".

If I seem a bit out of sorts at the moment it may be because my kitchen looks like this

...which resembles a sort of warped Mondrian to my tired mind right now.  Whaddya reckon to the light switch hanging from the ceiling, eh? (if you look closely, top centre).  An art installation?

Meanwhile, back in the living room, it's all about plaster... but I'm liking those parallel lines.

And as for the back wall of the 1950s breeze block extension (also part of the kitchen), here's what it looked like earlier today.  When is a door not a door?

I'm shattered.  I can't wait until I no longer taste dust.

Nature vs nurture

I have a friend who grew up in a house without books. I find it hard to imagine – there were lots of books in my childhood home. There was a lot of art too; pottery, sculptures and paintings, and we watched BBC2 and were taken to exhibitions and music events, and my mum used to love holding her cheese-and-wine do's. All very middle class; although my mum's roots weren't, but she had aspirations and she also married someone who was. So really it's no wonder that I like books, art, music, culture. And cheese and wine. I grew up with the stuff.

Back to my friend with no books in the house. His father was an agricultural worker, his mother a housewife, they didn't have much money and, from what I can gather, their lives were pretty much mapped out by the tradition of their gender, class and era. He, however, in spite of struggling academically at school, displayed great interest in art, literature and history. He was never encouraged by his parents, but his creativity and ambitions were deep-founded and weren't going to be suppressed. He even taught himself how to "speak posh".

We've often talked about it... nature versus nurture. Nurture doesn't appear to have existed in his case, so it would seem that nature gave him those gifts, although not directly via his parents. Mr SDS has a similar story; whilst his mum and dad were laughing at On The Buses before going down the pub, he preferred to watch Monty Python whilst smoking a Sobranie Black Russian. His favourite subjects at school were English and Art but nobody else in his family had ever knowingly shown any interest in either and he disappointed his dad by hating football. He was telling me the other day how he'd never had yoghurt as a kid because it was considered too exotic. (I, on the other hand, regularly indulged in a strawberry flavoured Ski but had never sampled the delightful combination of baked beans with chips until I met him...so it works both ways.)

I'm curious to know where it all comes from. Maybe an artistic/literary/academic or whatever gene can skip a generation or two, or three? Maybe ancestors displayed the same tendencies or interests but were never able to indulge them? Only the wealthiest and most privileged could attend cultural events, eat unusual food, get a good education, dabble in the arts.  Maybe some of the farm labourers and serving girls from whom I was descended on my mum's side might have had similar tastes to me, but were never given the opportunity to explore such subjects?  It would have been so hard for them to realise - and probably even harder to admit to against a background of austerity and necessity.

Oh well, I don't know. And as there are no future generations to come from me and Mr SDS, I may as well stop worrying about it; this line of music-loving, book-reading, yoghurt-eating, classless wine-guzzlers ends here.

(With thanks to el hombre invisible whose blog Include Me Out unwittingly inspired!)