Blowing in to an old new world

Posted on December 30, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

A Strauss waltz dances from the breakfast radio. Outside, the headless firs wave their arms like frenzied violinists in some arboreal orchestra. The tall birches, double basses of the tree world, waver and shiver, constrained by their stature – and protected by the violins.

Seagulls by the dozen have soared in from the stormy sea, riding the wind in time with the waltz, more like skaters then dancers, wings outstretched like balancing arms, swishing around the celestial ice rink.

Our topsy-turvy house is chaos indoors, while outside nature screens an ever-changing picture show.

We’re breakfasting upstairs, in the dining room of our 1970s ‘tree house’, built of bricks, not branches. It’s not really a tree house, its feet are planted firmly in the ground, but it feels like it today as the wooded edges of the golf course dance around us in the gale.

No golfers have yet braved the 13th or 14th green, but then it’s Monday and the wind’s becoming higher by the quarter hour. Perhaps, for once, they’ve been blown off course.

windy harbour 036The teapot’s almost empty, three cups, each, already drunk. The milk, a pint bottle, delivered to the door, has a red label boasting its Lancastrian origins and the independent dairy’s 70-plus year pedigree.

Crumbs linger from a piece of toast and damson jam, good bread from the family baker a mile and a half down the road. They’ll have been open since seven after baking through the early hours.

It’s been a pleasantly late and lazy morning for me so far – but once the hands of my new watch (a birthday treat) tell me it’s gone nine, I’ll call the local carpet man.

The carpet man.

He’s kind of flat faced, the carpet man, expressionless, but stoic underneath, as if he’s had bad news but knows he must carry on.

And then he talks about making carpets.

It’s as if he has been possessed by a happy spirit. His eyes widen, his mouth twitches into a smile, his hand puckers up as he picks an imaginary tuft to show a one-time customer.

Yes, seven years ago he was making carpets. Not in some vast factory that’s since succumbed to the  brutal trading of commercial affections, but a small workshop behind a shop, just a couple of miles down the road in the other direction from the bakery.

‘I liked to see their faces,’ he says, ‘when I asked them when they wanted their carpet. They’d say when can you do it and I’d say, how will tomorrow morning do you?’

A normal shop at the front, behind was a workshop where they made carpet to order. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? And only seven years ago.

‘And then the yarn prices went up.’

The spirit leaves him and he’s a deflated individual, just selling again.

He gives us a good price and it’s made in Rochdale, not too far away, still Lancashire. Mostly wool. So there are some mills still left in this deep rooted, ancient county, even if their chimneys no longer belch out the foul smoke that made the red brick black in the bad old days.

And for those of you who’ve been asking after the religious for a year experiment… well, we’ve been to our new local Church three times in eight days – the last Sunday of Advent, Christmas day and last Sunday, the feast of the Holy Family. It was a worry, how would it compare with the splendours of Saints Peter & Paul, the choir, the beautiful surroundings. Well, more of Our Lady of Lourdes  – and Father Atli – and the twelve altar servers – anon.

It’s time to face the day. To unpack more boxes, measure for blinds and curtains, order a cooker to replace the one whose dial has no figures and whose 14 years have worn it out. Cooking with an oven thermometer has been interesting but not wholly successful over Christmas.

Yes, one more Christmas, one more birthday under my expanding waistband, one new Year on its way. And we, snug in our new house, have, since the moment the last removal man left – with a great big hug – a lovely, warm, comforting, new home.

And from here may I wish you all a peaceful and joyous Christmas (it doesn’t end till 6 January you know) and a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Posted in Lancashire & the golf coast, Religious for a year: Atheist-man's experiment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Standing by a Steinway on a Tuesday afternoon

Posted on December 11, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

Bear with me.

This might start off sounding unutterably Hampstead – and if you’re not English, I’m talking about a smart, wealthy part of London where luvvies and literati hang out. The wealthy ones, the ones who’ve made it, or have hand-me-down money.

I’m not a part of that set, as you’ll know by now if you’ve read much of this blog. So, as I say . . . bear with me.

It’s gone two thirty in the afternoon. I stroll up the road to a neighbour’s house, in need of a nice cup of tea and a little sit down.

Do you like Redbush [rooibos], he asks? Oh yes, I do.

He boils water, makes a brew laced with orange, in a teapot made of glass. A liquid the colour of medium-dry sherry – but glowing a little more amber.

I sip at a taste that begs for mince pies – or for Christmas cake – and carols.

We chat about making pastry, about suet and home-made mincemeat. About drains and wrong connections.

We talk about northern accents – such as mine. View curtains that are torn, but too expensive to replace in this tall-ceilinged house. Discuss a record, recently arrived. A recording made in Moscow, in the ’60s, with an exuberant, exotic-patterned sleeve.

And then he says, do you like Schubert?

Ummm – well, some, well, The Trout, I stutter.

I’m never sure, is the more honest answer.

The Trout’s good listening on a cheerful Sunday morning, I don’t say.

I feel like a Philistine just thinking it.

Do you know the Schubert impromptus? He persists.

Now, we’ve just given this young man and his wife a coffee table – we won’t need it in our soon-to-be new home.

But I don’t foresee what’s coming, which makes it all the more touching.

Would you like to hear one? He says.

(Did I say my neighbour’s a concert pianist?)

He offers a chair, but I stand and lean against the door jamb. I can’t see his hands – if Anthro-man were here he would want to watch those hands, but I don’t even think about it. I want to close my eyes. To wander where the music takes me.

The sound is sublime. The notes make the air vibrate – like a massage for the senses.

For a few soothing minutes I’m an audience of one, to an artist. Privileged as a King or a Cardinal, an Emperor or a Sultan.

As the resonance dies away I realise how utterly beautiful such a gift is. It can’t be touched, it can’t be seen, and once it’s over it can’t be heard. But it lives as long as I have memory to keep it.

Posted in Art, jaunts & going out | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

A bicycle, a gate and a lawnmower. Scratching beneath the surface of suburbia

Posted on November 28, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

I’m out on my bike. A gorgeous day – cold and crisp as a shiny new apple, fresh from the fridge. Wearing my helmet, of course, so can’t exactly feel the wind in my hair, but never mind.

‘Urrreugh.’

I can’t write it. You’ll have to imagine it. A sound like a gruff voice howling from a cave.

I look around – we’re in big-house-and-garden-world here – and through a set of iron gates see what looks like a bear climbing out of a drain. OK, so bears aren’t this colour – sort of greyish – but it’s what my mind says.

That’s minds for you. Here I am in leafy suburbia – quite near Liverpool, actually – and mine says, ‘bear’.

Anyway, I’m about to cycle on, thinking it’s a workman calling his mate, when I realise it’s an elderly man, lying on the ground, yelling, ‘Help me!’.

I swing round and pedal across the empty road.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask. Then, rather feebly, realising he’s not, I yell through the gate,  ‘Help, is there anyone there?’

I pull out my mobile. ‘I’ll phone for—’

‘No!’ It’s a sharp cry.

The man’s lying on his side, one leg under his ride-on lawnmower, its trailer spewing autumn leaves across the neat driveway. The steep grassy bank he was navigating rises above him.

A woman runs across the garden. I’m about to leave – he plainly doesn’t want me there – but she can’t manage alone and opens the gate to let me in.

I prop my plum-coloured, pride-and-joy-bike against the wall and it falls over. That’ll be her first scratch, I think.

Ah well.

We attempt to haul the mower upright – and fail. So we regroup, I try to drag him out while she lifts the machine a smidge, enough for me to get his trapped foot out.

She – the gardener – runs off to fetch a neighbour.

Elderly man, breathing hard, is still on his side and though it’s no longer trapped, his leg’s lying under the big machine.

Which is leaking fuel.

So, why don’t I call 999?

Well, because the man becomes really quite agitated at the suggestion.

But I’m worried by that fuel approaching his leg. I want to move it. But should I?

I try to remember what Anthro-man (a first aider) does.

Is he hurting, I ask. Can he move?

I risk it – pull his leg out.

A few seconds later he crawls up onto all fours, like a bear – well, a bear on its knees.

Does a bear have knees?

Whatever – it wasn’t such a silly image, after all.

He’s breathing in gasps. I ask, again, if he’s OK.

Sounding grumpy now, he mutters that he just needs oxygen and nods when I ask if it’s in the house.

The neighbour arrives. A calm man, he offers reassurance – and tea, which elderly man refuses. He’s all right, fine, doesn’t need tea. I’d love a cup, but my presence seems to upset the lawn-mower roller-over. So off I cycle, faster than usual, adrenaline-powered, to the sea.

The waves are tipped with a thin foam of pale steely grey, glittering in the sun, like an elderly head with a tightly curled perm. I don’t stay long, I’m too buzzed with the experience.

Cycling home I notice the houses more than usual.

The homes of longstanding residents mostly have wrought iron gates, small brick walls and shoulder-height hedges. Boundaries, yes, but not total exclusion. Or seclusion.

The newer owners – property tycoons, footballers, gangsters or who-knows-what – have high, brutal fences, electronic gates and video entry systems.

Money, seeking privacy.

It’s an odd thing, privacy. A friend tells me he worries about me baring my soul online. I suppose I have been a bit open lately. But, you know, it’s been like breaking a log-jam.

All my life I’ve been attempting to be perfect – I know, it’s impossible, but it’s the legacy of my upbringing. My father was terribly shy and desperate to maintain his privacy. Our house was never welcoming to friends and we had hardly any relatives.

And I realise now what a tension it creates, that desire to keep everything hidden, to present a perfect face to the world. To refuse help.

‘No, I’m fine thank you. Don’t worry about me.’

So British.

When I published a book I had to screw up my courage. I posted a biography online and – horror of horrors – a picture. And you know what? It was a relief.

Which makes me wonder about privacy on a bigger scale. The fuss about the NSA’s surveillance of the world and all that’s in it.

Do we need privacy? What do we need it for? Is it only criminals who need to keep things secret? Or people with odd predilections who don’t want their loved ones to know? Or Trolls exploiting anonymity to be nasty?

Celebrities, poor things, crave privacy. Fame has set them atop a cruel, fickle, revolving pedestal – too fat, too thin, genius, stupid, druggy, wife beater. Spin, spin, spin. Nothing too private for the prurient.

So I can understand their fences and their electronic gates.

But where would the man on the lawnmower have been if it wasn’t the day for his gardener to call, or if his gates had been like his next door neighbours’ – high, solid wood and electronically controlled? What if an escaped bear had found its way into his garden? Sorry, silly thing to say, it was just that image of a bear on its knees.

My plum-coloured bike, by the way, isn’t scratched, but the basket’s a bit out of shape. It’s no longer perfect – and it’s a bit of a relief.

Coming soon (but not necessarily next): more about privacy, the future and the Facebook generation

Posted in Liverpool, Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Five have fun in Africa. A lost work by Enid Blyton?

Posted on November 21, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

‘Africa 2013. Countdown to the Rains.’

‘Africa’?

Just, ‘Africa’?

OK, so it’s a common form of shorthand. But not one you find in Europe. I mean, imagine it, ‘Europe 2013: snow’s on its way. Join us as the ski season gears up in Austria.’

Nah.

Still, I’m looking forward to seeing the series.

Which is about the rains, in Africa.

Not in the Sahara. Nor the Kalahari. Nor the Cape Coast.

No, we’re in Zambia, a place the size of France and Spain combined. It deserves a better billing than just, ‘Africa’, don’t you think?

In fact, to drill down (sorry) further we’re actually in South Luangwa National Park. An unfenced animal playground over 9000 square kilometres in extent and usually approached through Mfuwe, Eastern Province, Zambia, Africa, the World, the Galaxy, the Universe . . .

I’ve spent a lot of time in this park over the last 13 years. It’s a fabulous place.

Here are some of the people who’ve opened up its mysteries to me.

Clement scouting from a vantage point in a tree

Clement scouting from a vantage point in a tree

Clement on the left without his habitual reflective shades, Sly with his famous grin

Clement on the left without his habitual reflective shades, Sly with his famous grin

Clement, a wildlife scout, seen here up a tree and also with ace guide Sylvester (who likes to be called Sly), shared some great recipes with me.

Sierra Exif JPEG

Lazarus posing by the expedition vehicle in South Luangwa National Park

Lazarus stayed up all night protecting us when we were given permission to camp way out in the Park for a few nights’ research. His wife Jane does the best roasted groundnuts.

Lazarus guarding us while we were camped at a place we nicknamed Itchy Scratchy (guess why) near this dried up river bed

Lazarus guarding us while we were camped at a place we nicknamed Itchy Scratchy (guess why) near this dried up river bed

BJ partying - well, singing!

BJ partying – well, singing!

Better known as ‘BJ’ around Wildlife Camp, Joe worked his way up from barman to guide – an arduous process. He sings like an angel.

And here – in a picture taken before the advent of cheap digital photography – is awesome guide and local notable, Patson, holding a very large fish.  The skull was going to make a sound box for his music system.patson

 

 

 

I don’t have a picture of Billy, who obtained funding from Japan to set up an internet ‘cafe’ in Mfuwe (the original one’s in this row of shops – it’s moved since).Sierra Exif JPEG

Billy can talk the hind legs off a Crawshay’s zebra.

And I don’t have an image for Philemon, who’s been crusading on the slogan ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ – trying to stop rubbish ruining the local environment.

It’s because I know these articulate, intelligent, amazingly knowledgeable people that I watch ‘Africa 2013’ with increasing dismay.

A black woman features, briefly, in episode one. Student of a white, male researcher, she’s been sticking pictures of animals in a scrapbook as part of her studies.

I think I spy, in the background, a Wildlife Authority scout, with his gun.

And when the rains arrive the drainage ditches are dug by black men. A few of them are even seen peering at the screens over white folks’ shoulders.

The ‘experts’ on this BBC extravaganza include  . . .

A white guy, Rob Clifford, who’s lived in The Valley for ten years. He works for one of the elite tour companies, run by one of The Valley’s old families, that’s hosting the BBC.

Simon King OBE. Award-winning (white) cameraman/presenter. Google tells me he’s hosted a black-tie dinner in the Masai Mara – and is available for after dinner speaking.

The impressive Rachel McRobb, (white) locally based vet, does amazing work for wildlife conservation in the Valley (I’ve met her a couple of times, admire what she does).

Then there’s (white) presenter Kate Humble. It’s a bit of a step change from lambing, but she does her best, obviously impressed with the wildlife. And she seems to get on well with the (white) woman who knows about crocs.

Thornicroft's giraffe, unique to the Luangwa Valley

Thornicroft’s giraffe, unique to the Luangwa Valley

Now, as far as I’m aware, none of these (white) folk tells us about Thornicroft’s, the unique species of giraffe found in the valley.

A variety of zebra found only in a few places such as the Luangwa Valley of Zambia and Malawi

A variety of zebra found only in a few places such as the Luangwa Valley of Zambia and Malawi

Or Cookson’s Wildebeest. Or Crawshay’s zebra with its narrow stripes – but hey – they’re long programmes, maybe I blink and miss the serious stuff.

Because we’re just waiting for them to kill each other, or die of hunger, or get stuck in what little mud there is left, aren’t we? The animals I mean, not the white folks.

I wrote about South Luangwa in ‘A Wake of Vultures’.  One of my characters, roguish vet Jake, (plainly not modelled on real vet, Rachel), is not a native of The Valley. Not one of the old crowd that wields the power. Here he is, in his cups:

God, this place sucks. The Valley. How bloody colonial. Sounds like something out of the 1940s, doesn’t it? Full of  f…ing charlatans and w–kers.

The ‘…’ bits are in full in the book. It’s fiction, Jake speaking, not me. And he obviously thinks the days of White Mischief-style ‘Africa’ are far from over.

But Zambia’s not Kenya – and the old elite families don’t own the land. So it is different. Sort of.

And without the big old families The Valley would probably not be the amazing reservoir of wildlife that it is – and Zambia would not have the distinction of being the home of the walking safari.

But here’s what’s really bugging me.

Until the twentieth century people lived alongside the wildlife. The tribes of  Kunda, Bisa and Ambo, for example. Then, in the 1930s, the game reserve was set up and in 1972 the National Park was created. The people were evicted from the place where their ancestors had lived for over a million years (which we know thanks to Anthro-man’s work).

These people didn’t vanish into thin air. Some of their descendants live nearby. Some are even – shock horror – educated. And bright. No, honestly, I swear it, not a word of a lie. Bright enough, even, to pass the guiding exams the white folks set up. To know Latin names and everything. Guide tourists around, all on their own, without white chaperones. Yes – golly-gosh – imagine that.

And not a one of them in this programme.

Shame on you, BBC.

Baboon, just watchin' the river flow

Baboon, just watchin’ the river flow

Posted in Thinking, or ranting, or both, Zambia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Above us, only sky?

Posted on November 13, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

I’m sitting at my desk. Tears are close to the surface.

I’m having trouble identifying keys that aren’t in the direct glow of the screen. I keep pressing ‘insert’ instead of ‘delete’ and my words start vanishing as I type, as if eaten by a hungry lexicon.

It’s growing dark outside, but I’m not yet ready to close the curtains on the world – or on the sky.

The moon, recently only a fingernail clipping, is beginning to look as if she might become a sphere again. For now, though, she’s a chubby part-sphere, like a rugby ball, or American football, dispensing silvery light upon the imminent night. Like my flat screen on my black keyboard. But with beauty.

Clouds move serenely – but not slowly – across her face. It’s that beautiful time of twilight when they are still just visible beneath a sky that – for a few minutes longer – is just the steely side of blue. A mackerel sky, but only where the moon illuminates the vapours sailing in from the freshening sea. Otherwise, they disappear in the darkness of the deepening blue.

The tears are not for me.

I’m sitting here, feeling that moon, seeing that sky, knowing that out there, around the other side of our own full, chubby globe, are people desperate for food. People dying, people suffering. Cold, desperate, sick, hungry people who once had a home and now have nothing. Nothing except what other people can do for them – charity.

People doing things for people, just because.

Today someone in the Philippines took the trouble to reply to an email I had sent. I was worried about her in the aftermath of the terrible typhoon.

She also took the time to read and comment on my post about the death of a friend – so many years ago – and to sympathise.

That’s what brings tears to my eyes, as I look on this pale, bright moon.

You see, when Anthro-man’s away in far-flung places – as he sometimes is, without me – for weeks or months at a time, it’s usually the season when the moon is coy about her presence. When she’s fragile against the light sky of a long day, or lingering on in the early morning blue. But when I look up at her, or her friends, the stars, I know that she can transport my thoughts across the hemispheres. Across the time zones, across the world. Because Anthro-man can see her too. Our eyes have swept her surface in anxiety, in happiness, in anticipation, sadness, longing. And she has seen us both as she persists in her calm illumination of our nights and of our minds.

So, tonight,  I think of San, in the Philippines.

She, too, can look upon the moon.

 

San’s blog

http://35andupcynicismonhold.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/foraging-in-the-wreckage/

Donations

There are many charities working to mitigate this disaster, in the UK follow this link, http://www.dec.org.uk

or donate via the charity of your choice such as the Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children or Cafod.

Posted in Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

In paradisum

Posted on November 6, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

It’s the long hot summer of 1976. June. Finals are over, at last.

I wave a temporary farewell to my friend Ros. She’s looking forward to the autumn, a postgraduate course in Cambridge. To holidaying in France with her brother. And to her 21st birthday party.

We swap a couple of things before she goes. I hand over my posters of the châteaux of the Loire, she lends me a pattern for a long cotton skirt, just right for this weather.

As Ros heads for home, I start learning to type, a condition of the job I’ve landed (despite the rubbish degree that’s my imminent destiny) in an Oxford college library.

For three weeks I spend each weekday morning pounding the keys and hitting the carriage return, every afternoon splashing in the open air pool. By the time the party comes around I’m tanned, fit and – clad in a home-made cotton skirt – trek north to join a gaggle of friends descending on Preston.

Ros and I have lots in common. We were born in the same nursing home (in Preston). We both arrived at uni with long party skirts we’d made from the same tartan fabric.

And we’re both Catholics.

We’ve shared the angst of wondering if we should become nuns.

She’s given me cheering little gifts as I agonise over the conscience choices that come with freedom – and men.

I’m with one of them at her party. But I dance with Ros’s cousin, who takes a fancy to me, and flirt shamelessly.

Ros and I share a room that night. She has the airbed on the floor, I her bed. She wears pale pink bedsocks. Has cold feet. I never knew that.

Her home is large, the garden beautiful. There’s a rosemary walk and a tennis court, but I’m not at all envious because, well – she’s a true friend. She deserves the best.

A few days pass.

I’m sitting in my boyfriend’s parents’ garden, in another northern town. A tiny square of grass. A small pond full of large Koi carp.

I’m saying how lovely I think Ros is, how I wrote to her and told her so, how I hope she gets my letter before she goes away. Boyfriend’s not really interested. I gather together my things and catch the train home to my parents’ little cottage.

I won’t remember the journey.

My mother and my father are there to meet me.

Odd.

My father doesn’t drive. My mother would usually be alone.

‘Rachel’s mother phoned,’ says my father. ‘Ros has had an accident.’

He doesn’t know the details. But it’s not good.

I sit in the back, praying. Dear God, please don’t let her be blinded.

Why blinded?  I don’t know.

The cottage is cool inside.

Rachel’s mother says there was an accident, on the M6 motorway. On their way to France. Their car hit a lorry on the hard shoulder. Her brother died instantly, Ros died later, in hospital.

My parents treat me like I might cry at any moment.

I spend my days lying in the sun. Rarely speaking, except to contact other friends and let them know about the funeral. So many of them are away.

I’m abstracted for days.

I don’t cry.

The sun still beats upon the parched English countryside as I drive – up the motorway – to that lovely house, that rosemary path. To the church. And the cemetery.

The open grave is a shock. A box with her in it, down there, in the earth.

Throwing a handful of soil onto the coffin’s a shock. I’ve never done that before.

We waft around afterwards, in the full gorgeousness of the day, as if at a garden party.  How will her parents, her two remaining brothers, be able to live with that rosemary walk, I wonder, now their Rosemary is gone?

Two friends come back with me, ask if I mind if they sit in the back. We’re all scared.

We’re nearing our motorway exit when a car behind me flashes his lights. I drive onto the hard shoulder, sweating through my Laura Ashley frock. Brown, sprigged with white. Not black.

The man pulls off, too. A sack is snagged on the exhaust pipe, he worried it might catch fire. The kind man crawls under the car and pulls it off.

In my numbed state I probably don’t tell him how grateful we are.

Back in Oxford flu sets in. I have hallucinations. I finally grieve. In the thrall of delirium I write to my friend’s younger brother.

My housemates call the doctor. Kind and attentive, there’s one thing I wish they hadn’t done – posted the letter. My outpouring of grief, at last, but at what cost?

And so, life has changed forever.

The future’s no longer the path before us, it’s a will-o-the-wisp – there one minute, gone the next.

Rachel called her first daughter Rosemary. And I’m sure there’s not a week goes by when one or other of us, the old girls, does not think of Ros.

For me, music brings her back.

Cat Stevens, whose Lisa joined us sadly for our late-night, hot blackcurrant drinks. Carol King who assured us we’re as beautiful as we feel.

And the wedding music.

Fauré’s Requiem.

Ros said she wanted it played at her wedding.

I’m no longer able to listen to the whole Mass. Although it conjures up my joy in her life it also revives my sorrow at her passing.

But today, in order to write this post, I listened to ‘In Paradisum’.

Organ notes like the beating of a substantive angel’s wings as it hovers between earth and heaven. Ethereal but firm – how can that be?

I cannot think of a piece of music that summons up more spiritually our beloved, long-gone, never forgotten friend.

‘May the angels lead you into paradise…’

Rosemary.

Requiescat in pace.

 

[Written in response to the Weekly Writing Challenge which inspired me, at long last, to air all this, for which, thank you]

Posted in Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 32 Comments

When I grow up

Posted on October 30, 2013 by memoirsofahusk

‘Fashion designers have those,’ says the little girl, looking up at me as I tromp down the stairs. She’s standing beside the mannequin I bought in a local dress shop’s closing-down sale.

‘I’d like to be a fashion designer when I grow up,’ I say, then wish I hadn’t as she looks at me with gimlet eyes. Nice eyes, but gimlets. What unintentionally morale-destroying thing is she going to say, I wonder?

‘But you are grown up.’

I heave  a sigh of relief.

‘Well – I’m not going to be a fashion designer, then, am I?’

We’ve been showing potential buyers round our house, again. The two playwrights who strung us along for four months pulled out last week. But I’ll put that to one side, for now, it gives me indigestion to think about it and dinner’s nearly ready.

One of the things I’ve managed to avoid this autumn – what with chasing up estate agents, builders, lawyers, removal companies and so on – is the vile, bilious, orange run-up to Halloween.

I hate it.

Nasty, cheap costumes, tangled on the corner of the supermarket aisle, at maximum-exposure-to-little-person-pester height.

Foil-covered chocolates masquerading as eyeballs. Plastic bats and spider’s webs and great piles of pumpkins. Don’t misunderstand me, I love pumpkins. I’d gladly cook them on a regular basis for as long as they’re fit to eat – but the instant All Saints’ Day arrives, they’ll be banished.

My childhood Halloweens were simple affairs. Making a witch’s hat from black sugar paper. Rummaging through dressing-up clothes for the cloak my sister wore to be Boadicea. Turning a stick from the garden into a magic wand – abracadabra – all it took was a tin-foil star.

If someone extravagant had a party we’d do bobbing for apples and ‘stick your finger in the dead man’s eye’ (jelly) – but mostly we’d just make hats and talk about witches.

Which (couldn’t resist that, sorry) takes me back to ‘when I grow up’.

I was born in the English county of Lancashire, my home till I was seven. Now, while everyone’s probably heard of the witches of Salem, fewer have probably heard of the Lancashire witches. Possibly because the book that made them well-known (The Lancashire Witches, by Harrison Ainsworth, 1848), is really quite hard to read.

It’s a story based on the infamous trial of witches in Lancashire in 1612 – and it didn’t, as you might imagine, end well.

Sierra Exif JPEGThe witches came from the ‘Forest’ of Bowland, not a forest as we know it but an area of magnificent hills, moors and chattering streams. Pendle Hill dominates the story and the landscape, its dramatic, brooding profile instantly recognisable to those who know this corner of England. I spent many a happy afternoon in its shadow, picking whinberries as the summer waned.

So I grew up, you might say, with witches.

Now, for a child, witching is mostly about wearing tall black hats, riding on broomsticks and casting spells. But it’s also about women who are frightening – and often the epitome of ugliness, warts and all.

So why, when people asked me the question that plagues a child’s life, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ did I always answer, ‘A witch’?

I don’t know.

The ability to fly? The power? The hat?

It wasn’t the cat, I was scratched early in life and never forgave the entire cat genus.

Was it, perhaps, the association with Bonfire Night? Halloween is just days before we, ‘Remember remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot.’

Collecting wood, seeing the bonfire grow. Buying fireworks, one or two at a time, with my pocket-money, keeping them safe in a biscuit tin. Chrysanthemum Fountains and Snow Showers, Bengal Lights and Catherine Wheels. Pretty ones that didn’t go bang.

Snug in my duffle coat, mittens and scarf, spelling my name with sparklers in the cold night air. Holding half a hot potato, gooey with butter and tongue tingling salt in its silver foil skin, baked in the base of the spitting bonfire.

Teeth clamped together by treacle toffee, shards of luscious blackness in a white paper bag, sticking together in clumps as it’s passed around hot little hands.

And the morning after, smoke hanging in the air on a gunpowder-whiffing residue, mysterious and silent after the noisy night before.

Maybe that’s it. The darkness of night and the dancing flames. Magical lights and eerie mists.

I’ve always loved this time of year.

Yes, it could have been the magic of the dark nights that fired my witchly desires.

That and the ability to fly.

And cast spells.

In fact . . .

If I could cast spells, there’d be a couple of playwrights waiting for a decision about their latest plays, being told the contracts are on the way, but never quite signing on the dotted line. ‘We’ll stage it in two weeks’ they’d hear. And every time two weeks was up, they’d be postponed.

But I know I’d give in. Remove the spell. Grudging, but soft, that’s me.

Perhaps that’s why I never became a witch.

That and the warts.

And the cat.

Or the being burnt to death. Yes, maybe that was it, after all.

Posted in Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments