A taste for varnished wood. Thoughts of a ‘resting’ one on going back to Mass

Posted on December 19, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

‘I’d like to try Advent and see what it’s like.’

Odd words from a committed agnostic. Even odder when it’s Sunday morning and he’s lying in bed reading the papers. It’s the kind of comment he might come up with after a few glasses of wine on Saturday evening, forgotten overnight. But not on Sunday morning, when it’s actually feasible.

I check my watch. We can make it to Saints Peter and Paul.

Here in Recusant World (Lancashire, as was) we’re spoilt for choice – four Catholic churches within easy walking distance, more if you’re a hearty walker. But Saints P & P has a USP: 11.30 am Mass. A civilised hour, don’t you think?

I’m nearly ready, just applying the lippy.

‘Got any money for the collection?’ he says.

How odd that he thinks of these things. I’m the one who’s the resting Catholic.

‘There are some pound coins in the car,’ I say, feeling mean. We’ll put in a serious sum at Christmas. If we’re still going.

The bell is ringing. Slow. Resonant. Deep.

The church is pleasant, stone-built, just ornate enough. Inside, white decorative work around the altar rises into pale crenellations over inset images of holy scenes.

I’m wearing my new purple hat with a big floppy brim. When I was a child all females had to cover their heads in church. I had a triangle of grey lace, a ‘mantilla’. They were rather popular – less damaging for the hair-dos, I suspect, as well as cheaper than a titfer. But I digress.

The agnostic’s nudging me.

‘There’s one other hat,’ he whispers.

I don’t look round. I know before he tells me that it’s on an old lady and probably furry.

The organ fires up and the choir belts out the first hymn. The place is almost full and there are two priests. Two priests!

I look down at my hand resting on the pew in front of me and, for an instant,  the world around me vanishes.

I’m a child again, struggling to keep still. Enforced silence. Enforced kneeling. Enforced backache. A slap when I get home for fidgeting.

I lean forward on my tired little knees and lock my open mouth on the pew – it’s just the right height for biting. My teeth sink in ever so slightly, there’s a kind of grainy feel to it as it gives way, just a little, beneath my milk teeth. The taste of the varnish is sweet, with a slight tang of pine.

The organ pipes up again. I turn to look at the agnostic.

He’s singing.

The age of miracles is not yet past.

Next time: More advent experiences? Or a very wet Christmas Past concerning a nightmare journey in Africa? Or both? All in good time…

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Doo doo doo doo doodloo doo doo. . . [Thinking, just thinking, in the rain…]

Posted on December 6, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

It’s a dramatic change, day for night. It happens so slowly, but somehow you always miss that critical point where light becomes dark. One minute the sun’s merely coy, hiding behind the dove grey clouds, the next minute – pfffft – it’s gone.

I’m sitting in my car in a supermarket car park. It’s a fairly small supermarket, a pretty small town and it’s late afternoon. I’m watching the world, insofar as I can see it.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas – golden orbs of light illuminating the dark new world like fairy lights for giants. But the festive glow’s distorted by a silent, steady fall of rain. Mist starts creeping up the windscreen. I switch on the radio but don’t want people talking and push button 3.

Then I start to look, really look at the rain. I realise I’ve made assumptions about raindrops. They land, then roll down the window, don’t they?

That one didn’t.

I start to follow individuals and wonder if they’re like snowflakes, each unique. I shuffle down in my seat. It’s getting colder. And they’re just raindrops. I fix my stare on one fat drop that’s clinging to the glass. A small curvaceous blob – not round – it’s not going anywhere. A streak of water zips by. How come Baby Blob just sits there, smug and immobile, while Speedy Gonzales speeds away to nothing?

I concentrate on an empty patch and wait. Like looking for shooting stars.

Thluck.

A drop lands, sidles off sideways, hesitates, darts back the other way. It skirts a couple of other drops and then – just stops.

Now a cannonball’s on the loose. There’s a collision, an amalgamation. Dropzilla. Why isn’t it moving?

I tear myself away and look beyond the glass, out into car-park world. The radio presenter speaks. Each piece in this programme was selected because it was reviled when it was first performed. Ah.

I re-focus on the droplets. Loners doing nothing, going nowhere. Drifters, passing by. Streakers plummeting headlong, gone before they reach the bottom. If I sat here much longer I’d be giving them names.

I’ve been worrying, lately, about how intelligent and sensitive animals are, about whether I ought to stop eating them again (we gave up meat for eight years, spurred on by poverty not principle).

If raindrops have souls am I going to have to stop drinking water?

It’s a thought.

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A nice cup of tea and a bunker

Posted on November 7, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

Oh God. Kelly’s heading my way with that moronic morning smile on her face.

“Ready for our cup of tea are we, Edith?”

We? We? Ye gods! Is she fetching two straws with it?

What I’d give for a gin and tonic. Or a cigarette.

That girl – what does she see when she looks at me? A fat old lump of useless flesh, destined for the crematorium?

I’ve tried to tell her about my life, but she switches off and chews like a grazing cow, stares blankly while I maunder on, distorting everything through her prism of boredom. She doesn’t expect ‘old ladies’ to think.

To be fair, it must be hard for her to understand – she’s not even twenty and I’ll be ninety five next birthday, if I’m spared. But you see, the war – the Second World War – it was the best time of my life.

‘Oh yes, the Nazis and all that,’ says Kelly. ‘I did a project on the Holocaust.’

The Holocaust. You hear that word so much it numbs you. Gas ovens and Hitler, Dresden and Coventry. Six easy-to-watch instalments.

Six years of my life.

Oh, Kelly, what do you know? How can you know? In just a few brief months that war changed me forever. Under those streets where you drink your pastel-coloured drinks on Saturday night I fought for victory with all my might.

The Battle of the Atlantic they called it.

Day after dark day I stood in the twilight of the dim electric lights, pushing wooden boats around a great big map till my back ached. Each one of them was a symbol of triumph – or of tragedy. I wore my fingers to the bone typing messages in code. Every now and then I’d steal an hour or two for sleep, curled on a tiny bunk bed in a room heavy with fear and cigarette smoke.

I witnessed cruel death and cheered vibrant victory. I saw virtue punished and treachery rewarded. And when I emerged into the light of day, like some mutant mole given the dubious gift of eyesight, it was to find friends grey with anxiety, buildings crushed to gravel by the hammer of war, women huddled on street corners staring at the ruins of their lives.

Yes, Kelly dear, you may have travelled the world, but I have been to places you can never go.

I’ve been in the hearts of scared young lads, whipped by bitter Atlantic winds. I’ve swum in the last, desperate thoughts of men going down with their shattered ships, holed by spectral u-boats. I’ve shared the elation of the pilots as they sank the enemy – and Saved Our Souls. Can you imagine that? Can you?

But now my arms won’t make a cup of tea, so I need you, Kelly, you and your clichés and your careless caring. But you don’t need to pity me. After all, I’ve given you so much more than you can ever give me.

[This piece was inspired by a visit to one of Liverpool’s genuinely ‘hidden’ gems, The Battle of the Atlantic Western Approaches HQ, http://www.liverpoolwarmuseum.co.uk/history/ an underground bunker that still looks eerily as if the people running it had left just hours ago. If you’ve never been it’s truly moving (well I think so)]

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The price of fame: a cigar for Jimmy Savile

Posted on October 27, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

I’m standing in the back of a British Telecom van, hanging onto a shelf. There are no windows. Jimmy Savile wants to arrive unseen in Leicester Square – he’ll be mobbed, he says, if we go in a car with windows.

I’ve just picked Jimmy up from his Regent’s Park flat.

It’s a far from routine day for me – I work for a ‘business communications’ consultancy (the kind of place where you argue whether it’s communication or communications) and we don’t do celebrity launches. Today, though, that’s exactly what I’m doing.  I’m helping my client out of a hole. A new, controversial design of phone booth’s being unveiled in Leicester Square (yes, this is a while ago) and he needs a ‘celeb’ at short notice.

It’s interesting, organising it. Betty, friend and former colleague, gives me Jimmy’s phone number after clearing it with him. I ring and reach an answering machine: ‘you fool, you’re speaking to an empty room!’ says a Goon-like voice. Maybe it is a Goon* – after all, Jimmy’s famous.

He rings me back at my serious, business-like – and let’s be honest – rather snooty workplace. Our receptionist puts through the call. Next minute she’s there, listening, like everyone else in my open plan office, expressions ranging from sneer to surprise, plus a dash of curiosity.

It’s just one of the things that fame does. It makes everyone pay attention, take notice, be impressed despite themselves.

So anyway, I’m travelling, in a confined space, with fame. His eyes are definitely appraising me – but at the ripe old age of 28 I’m big enough to look after myself, I’m not worried.

Ha!

Turns out he’s appraising not me but my business potential. I get a call later – he’d be happy to meet the BT people, he’d be ‘available’ to do a campaign for them, like the ‘clunk-click’ one he did for seatbelts or the ‘age of the train’ for British Rail. He gives me a lecture about well-worn wheelchairs and train door dimensions,  just to prove how serious he can be.

In fact, Jimmy teaches me quite a few useful things. You can’t hire a celebrity for a couple of hours’ work, for example. No matter how long an event’s scheduled to take a real pro knows it will take longer. The briefing, the travel, the false starts, the mobbing fans (it happens) – and so on.

As we stand by the van, waiting for the cameras, he looks up.

‘See that plane flying over,’ he says, ‘a jet engine could fall off and drop on us at any moment – you just never know.’ Thanks for that, Jimmy.

It’s a sad little episode in the end. The press turns up, photos are taken, interviews given, but few of the media cover the story. Jimmy phones me from his flat that afternoon. He’s heard it on the radio –  a London station, not even the BBC. His star is in the descendant.

But that was then.

Jimmy Savile lived to shine another day – with the BBC.

I ask myself, why? Why did he become such a star? Why did he become such an untouchable?

Was he anyone’s pin-up? Those kids on Jim’ll Fix It – did they idolise him before they went on the programme and had their wishes – oh dear – granted?

It wasn’t as if he was lovable, cuddly – or even just plain silly – like other DJs of his era.

Did his enigmatic life style make people believe he was special?

Was he special?

Did the public care about Jimmy Savile? Did the Tarzan-wailing, cigar-smoking, bleached blonde misfit bamboozle the powers-that-be into believing the public cared? Did the BBC convince itself that people cared? Was it all a house of cards?

Ah yes, I nearly forgot. The cigar.

We bought one for him from Dunhills at his request. Part payment. Have you any idea how expensive a big cigar can be?

Blimey.  Bonfire of the insanities.

So, to finish, I have to say, never assume. If in doubt, ask the question you think it’s too stupid to ask. Someone might just be waiting to tell you the answer.

 

*popular humorous show on the radio, Prince Charles reportedly one of its many fans

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Douche bags, a Bluebell Girl & Tex hits the ground in London Town

Posted on October 17, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

Are you shocked? Are you British? Are you American? All these things I wonder as I type the term ‘douche bag’.

It’s not a term I like. I’ve never used it. But Facebook keeps offering me a shopping bag boasting ‘Douche’ in big loud letters. So cute (ironic face). And it reminded me …

It’s London. I’m sharing a flat in Battersea with a curvy, chirpy blonde and her slinky feline friend.

Prince of Wales Mansions. How glamorous it sounds! An imposing block, opposite the park, a hop skip and jump from Old Father Thames. A double bedroom each, a kitchen to share, a dining table squeezed into what once was a hallway and – of course – a bathroom.

It’s what you might call ‘compact’. And it backs onto a car park. Correction, my room backs onto a car park. And the cat goes in and out through my window. And she eats grass.

Have you ever stood on cat sick in your bare feet in the middle of the night? She finds the exact spot en route from bedroom to bathroom where I’m most likely to step on it.

But back to the douche bag.

It hangs above the bath. I sit there one day, steaming away, wondering, ‘why does that hot water bottle have that long thing sticking out of it?’

It’s a sickly, flesh-like shade, pallid as pink custard that’s been left too long and going off. (Never had pink custard at school? Think yourself lucky).

I begin to work it out, but can’t quite believe it. So I ask Nicola. She thinks I’m a fragile, hot-house blossom of a girl. (If you’ve read my blogs you’ll realise this is not entirely true – a bit, but not very.)

Nicola has a rather lovely face, the poise of a dancer and the hair of a showgirl. My goodness, it turns out that’s exactly what she is! A Bluebell Girl! My flatmate struts her stuff on stages all over the world. I’m utterly flabbergasted. And rather impressed.

Her boyfriend’s a short-haired, sensible-looking policeman, as unlike Nicola as you could be. I don’t ask too much – he doesn’t tell too much. They’re kind to me when I’m unhappy, let me join them on Nicola’s bed to watch Nicola’s TV. Nice of them, but I don’t like to stay long.

And I don’t stay long in the flat. It’s a good address, but an inconvenient commute to my work in The Strand.

I move to – tah-dah – World’s End. So enjoy telling people that’s where I live.

Tex is in London too, his birthday in the offing. I organise a party at a place called Crazy Larry’s on the King’s Road.

Nicola arrives. Nicola arrives because I invited her. No sensible policeman with her. Hmmm.

Can she dance? Oh yes, she can-can (sorry).

Sexily swaying Nicola and her long, luscious legs. Dances. With Tex.

The green-eyed god rubs his hands in glee. I can’t help myself (and to be fair to me, those letters from London did come from a female and HE’S STILL SEEING HER).

So, Tex is sitting at a table on a kind of raised platform, having a joke with (aaargh) Nicola. I’m ignoring him with every fibre of my being. His chair tips back and he falls off. I look the other way.

He’s broken his finger.

I continue to ignore him.

I know. Ignoble. But we live to kiss another day.

I haven’t seen Nicola since. I hope the ice skates (size 6 and a half) fit her. I left them hanging on my door. I’m sure she’s as good a skater as she is a dancer – and they’re very nice white boots. Maybe sensible policeman’s a closet skater too. But he’s probably too busy, undercover in the vice squad. I think I prefer that version.

What’s that? Douche bag? Oh dear, look it up if you still don’t know.

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A bakery’s not just for Christmas

Posted on October 12, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

Our local bakery, closing 13 October 2012, a sad day for Great Crosby.

There’s a hush fallen over the world. Snow lies deep on the ground and barely a  car creeps by. The sky’s an odd shade of grey and the clouds hang low in the sky. It’s as if a great duvet’s been flung over Crosby, plumped up with snow, not feathers.

Outside Marshalls, blinds already raised for the day and fruit stacked waiting, Anthony shovels the path clear and Karen from Smithies walks her dog Jack – both in warm coats. Behind the seasonal sparkle in Alexandras’ window Pat’s arranging flowers.

A glow the colour of golden syrup greets the street like a welcoming beacon across the road. Christmas trimmings edge the window. A pile of white delivery trays, already emptied of weekly treats and daily staples, stands waiting for the dark red van. Soon it will drive round the corner, past more flowers at Florettes, past the Post Office with its cards offering piano lessons and cars for sale, to take the trays away.

‘Celebrating 100 years’, it’s Satterthwaites. Sara’s in her uniform, the apron, the hat that changes everyone’s appearance so you barely recognise them in the street, yes, she’s quietly in charge.

Less than half a mile away the bakery’s been busy through the early hours, alchemists at work transforming flours and sugars, creams and oils, meats, fruits and vegetables into breads, cakes and biscuits, sausage rolls and pies.

By lunchtime the queue will be out the door. People with eager eyes scan the shelves of bread, glance at the mince pies, linger on the cream cakes and fancies. ‘Fancies’ – what a lovely term. A bakery has a language all its own: barms and tins, Japs and Bavarians, Florentines and Russian slices, multigrain and sunflower rye, sliced or unsliced.

A ring of potato cakes for me, please.

Workmen leave with bags of hot pies, mums with carriers bulging with bread, children with currant-eyed gingerbread men, elderly men with white cardboard boxes tied with blue ribbon.

Busy, yes, but the staff still have time to take that extra bit of care with those who need it, popping out to the street to discuss a special cake with someone who can’t make it into the shop, chatting between times with the woman with the long grey hair who perches inside the window – part of her daily routine, gets her out the house. That’s what makes local, independent shops so different. It’s an extension of your home, in an odd sort of way. People you recognise and get to know by name, people who remember what you like to buy, who pass the time of day. Your shops.

By mid-afternoon more or less all the bread has gone, a few cakes and biscuits remain for the late shoppers, maybe a lucky passer by will snap up a lone pork pie that hasn’t found a home – though it won’t be a warm one (the pie, that is).

As darkness creeps over College Road the snow is back, dancing down in the cheerful light gleaming from shop windows. The Christmas trees over the Bug look perfect with their dusting of white, Gillions is doing a brisk trade in sausages, traffic is taking it slowly and the pavements are full of cautious pedestrians.

Satterthwaites is the first to shut up shop, but we know it will be back again, Monday.

Except now it won’t.

So, Satterthwaites, we have to say goodbye.

It’s not till you start to list the things you’ll miss that you realise it’s not just the cakes, the bread, the pies, the friendly faces. It’s more than that. And we can hardly complain, can we, those of us who love the idea, but shop with our cars at the supermarkets and convenience stores. Come the snow and your car won’t start or the road is blocked you make your way on foot to the all-weather dependable local shops. And then you realise.

What happened to Satterthwaites?

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Oh, sweet-heart! (and why you don’t need a cake tin to make a sponge cake)

Posted on October 6, 2012 by memoirsofahusk

I’ve thought a lot about the warthogs and I’ve reached a conclusion. They’re not going to stop me.

I need out. I need to shop – no, don’t be sexist, not that kind of shopping, food shopping. I’m cooking for Tex tonight and baked beans are not on the menu.

I grab a bag and check my supply of borrowed cash. Needs must when you’re banished with only a maxed-out credit card to your name.

I stride to the gate, daring the warthogs to gore me, and breeze down the dusty hill.

The walk’s an exercise in anxiety management. As I approach the thatched huts of the village a fudge-coloured dog with a backward-curling tail follows me, barking. I speed up, keeping my eyes on the path ahead, ignoring fudgy dog and concentrating on the chickens dashing headlong in front of me. Daft things.

I cross the great iron bridge and finally reach the main road that runs through the Heavenly Valley. Across it lies my destination – the petrol station where we sometimes stop to buy grenadilla ice lollies, refreshing confections shaped like knobbly hand grenades.

I take a deep breath, smile as if I’m confident and enter the little shop. It’s surprisingly well stocked. No fresh dairy produce but a tin of Nestles cream and a block of margarine. Rice, dried onions, salt, pepper. Eggs, sugar, flour, jam.

And . . . vanilla ice cream.

Yes! I can do it!

Just one thing missing – well, apart from real onions and nutmeg: beef.

Courage screwed up, I approach the other roadside retailer.

Men are lounging on the step beneath the open door. It’s dark inside. I can see the carcases hanging from the ceiling – and I can hear the flies buzzing. But there’s no alternative.

‘Good morning, what kind of meat do you have, please?’

‘Meat.’

Right. Meat it is, then.

Back at the shop I buy a newspaper to wrap my meat and ice cream – the day’s warming up – and trudge back over the bridge, up the hill, through the gate and, with an epic degree of relief, open the door to my cabin.

I stow the ice cream in the ice box of the fridge and send out ‘thank you’ vibes to my old domestic science teacher – I can make a sponge cake just like that (clicks fingers) without so much as a recipe. Or in this case, cake tin. (A Pyrex dish, since you ask.)

Once that’s in the oven I do the best I can to make the meat, tinned cream and dried onions into a passable stroganoff. I’m really quite proud of the result. The meat’s a bit tough – but then, who knows what it is? Or was.

He’s not exactly effusive about the main course – and now I’m nervous. Maybe the pudding’s a bit too ambitious.

A smell of heat rises from the oven. By the time I add the sugar my wrist hurts from beating the egg whites. I spread jam lavishly on the cake.

Tex is puzzled. Good, good, that’s the plan.

I take the ice cream from the fridge and arrange it over the jam.

‘Is that an ice cream cake?’

I smile what I hope is an enigmatic smile and not a drunken leer (Tex brought wine), slather the egg white over the ice cream and bung the whole lot in the oven.

Minutes later a triumph of a Baked Alaska has changed my life forever.

That may be a slight exaggeration. But only slight.

He liked it. Very much.

So, is the way to a man’s heart through his stomach? What do you think?

Next time: not sure, maybe a fast forward in the time capsule to Mr Custard and the charcoal (since we’re on a food them) – but we’ll see

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