The Pigeons of Northfleet & Gravesend

Budgies and canaries, linnets and lovebirds were definitely not for all who lived in working class communities such as Gravesend and Northfleet. In fact it would be true to say that they appealed to women rather than men and the male members of linnet owning households were definitely not as conspicuous in their enthusiasm for them as their wives. Old Nan thought that as far as birds were concerned you couldn’t go past a parrot because they were a different matter, spending as much time out of their cages as within and having the gift of speech. But she thought you had to think carefully before becoming an owner because for one thing the cage itself would set you back a bob or two and in any case you never knew with parrots with them prone to being delicate. You might spend a lot only to have the bugger drop dead on you. However, should you be lucky enough to be blessed with one of a sturdy constitution it might even see you out. Her Edgar’s Uncle Snowball had inherited one before the turn of the century that had already seen its previous owner out and lived on for years after Snowball had succumbed to the perils of navigating that steep flight of stairs outside The Empire Tavern one Friday evening. In general when it came to birds you couldn’t beat a pigeon or two for a man she thought.

Aunt Mag later pointed out to my mother that Snowball had been well and truly in his cups at the time of his demise. My mother said anyhow bugger how long they lived because what was more concerning was the language they could come out with and it wasn’t natural. Because I had yet to make the acquaintance of a parrot I thought she meant that they were multi-lingual which to my mind would be an asset in case you happened to come across someone needing help in the High Street who only spoke French or German. You could then take them home for a quick translation and become known locally as extremely helpful to foreigners. It might even be more convenient for all concerned to take your parrot with you when shopping. None of the adults in our community seemed all that kindly disposed towards foreigners of course, my mother and her sisters in particular.

It was to be some time before I would discover that the language of parrots had little to do with translation and anyway by then I had already turned my attention to pigeons, birds that every child in the area was familiar with because Old Nan was right and if there was a household pet that men were keen on it was definitely the pigeon, both homing and racing not that I understood the difference. Mr Bassant next door had built what he said was a Pigeon Cree at the end of his allotment bordering The Old Rec, alongside Northfleet cemetery and he was always very keen to explain that his birds were Racing Homers and they could cover nearly a thousand miles in one sweep if necessary. The Cree looked very much like a garden shed to me and indeed he had reserved a space inside for his gardening tools and the wheelbarrow that he pushed laboriously up Springhead Hill twice a week full of vegetables. There was a big open window like space along one side and above it was a special platform with little holes where the birds took off and landed again to enter their nesting spaces. All his birds had names and when he spoke them he did so softly and lovingly, caressing the birds like babies. His favourites were Donald and Ridley because they could take off vertically rising from the wooden platform with no hesitation and soaring up to meet the currents and eddies above before twirling atop of the whirlpools of air. Then they looked for all the world like miniature aerial fighters, the Spitfires we all recalled so vividly from a few years before, tipping their wings and twisting triumphantly one to another. His girls, Betsy and Bella, Florence and Freda were more hesitant which he told us was female behaviour and sometimes they needed encouragement to follow their brothers and venture into the wide arc of sky above the marshland of the Estuary. Then he held them one after another close to his face and whispered to each and almost seemed to kiss each beak before the bird though initially unwilling, suddenly fluffed up her breast feathers and decided to fly.

Sometimes after school Molly and I, at times accompanied by Pat Turner who lived in a cottage very close to the Old Rec Allotments, visited Old Mr Bassant, taking with us a replacement lemonade bottle of cold tea and instructions from his wife as to when she expected him home for his liver and bacon. Then he told us about how clever his birds were and how when he sometimes took them all the way to Dover to visit another Pigeon Fancier, and released them there, by the time he got back to Northfleet in the evening all of them would have found their way home. We wanted to know how they knew their address and why they didn’t get muddled up and perhaps end up in Swanscombe or Greenhithe and Mr Bassant said they used the position of the sun to determine the proper direction for flight. But he didn’t know how they fared if it was a rainy day not that it deterred them because they never once went to the wrong allotment and he knew for a fact there were allotments in Swanscombe. On the way home Molly said that to a bird Swanscombe must look much the same as Northfleet from the air and she for one was impressed. She was going to ask Mr Will Clarke about it the next day at school.

Mr Clarke said he was pleased we were taking an interest in pigeons because the Romans had used them to carry messages more than two thousand years before and in fact Julius Caesar had found them invaluable during his conquest of Gaul. Then Billy Elliott who always seemed to know more than anyone else in the class added that The Greeks sometimes used them to carry the names of victors of various Olympic events to other cities. Mr Clarke said that yes, indeed, that was absolutely true and well done Billy. We were all impressed then especially when he added that he might speak to Mr Cook the headmaster about considering the idea of us having some school pigeons. We might find them more interesting than the cage full of mice in the corner of the infants’ room and we could have a roster for their care. In fact it never happened but it was a nice idea.
At the library in London Road the children’s librarian revealed that it might sound unbelievable but these astonishing birds had always been much more reliable than the postal service and carrier pigeons could accomplish in a few hours what freight services took more than a day to do. Some of them flew at more than sixty miles an hour and never, ever lost their way. Having learned all of this for a time Molly and I were full of enthusiasm for joining a Pigeon Fancier’s Club but it turned out that to become members you had to be sixteen years old and so then we began to lose interest especially since my mother said in her opinion they were Dirty Smelly Blighters and she wouldn’t want them in the back bedroom like some she wouldn’t name. She was referring to Aunt Elsie’s George from the Tooley Street sweet shop who had several birds living in their tiny attic room that he called his pigeon loft alongside extra cartons of cigarettes and tall bottles of Sherbet Lemons bought whilst the price was low. He wasn’t as friendly as Old Mr Bassant but he did tell us about a famous bird that saved the lives of dozens of French soldiers during The First World War. It was called Cher Ami which was French for Dear Friend and had carried a message across enemy lines during a battle. The bird was shot in the chest and lost most of the leg to which an important message was attached but it did not stop flying, continuing even through poison gas. Later Cher Ami was awarded a medal for heroism called The Croix de Guerre which was French for The Cross of War. I wondered if the injured leg ever healed but Aunt Elsie’s George didn’t know and in any case he was becoming tired of the conversation and I never found out and was never taken into the loft to view the birds. My grandmother said that was because he thought I might be light fingered as far as the stored sherbet lemons were concerned.

Typically, once he became aware of my now waning interest in pigeons my father came up with a great deal of information and this was one of the reasons that prevented me from asking his opinion on some matters. His explanations were generally of the lengthy and elaborate variety. But on this particular Sunday lunchtime, after carving up a piece of rather fatty lamb which I was eyeing suspiciously, he started to tell me about the Dickin Medal which he said was the equivalent of the Victoria Cross but for animals. I was cautiously more interested and so I listened. Apparently the first such award was given to a carrier pigeon. In February 1942 an RAF bomber was forced to ditch into the North Sea following a mission over Norway. The plane had been hit by enemy fire and now the crew of four had to try to survive in freezing waters. Luckily they had a secret weapon, a hen bird called Winkie and so they set her free hoping she could fly home to Dundee which was a place miles away in Scotland, and alert their colleagues at the base. Well Winkie flew a hundred and twenty miles and was found covered in oil and exhausted by her owner who informed the RAF in Fife which wasn’t Dundee but must have been nearby. The position of the downed plane was then able to be calculated using the time difference between it going down and the arrival of the bird in the place called Fife. A rescue mission was then launched and the four men were found within half an hour. They would certainly have died without the help of the pigeon so she became the toast of the base and a dinner was held in her honour. A few months later she became the first animal to receive the Dickin Medal `For valour under extreme circumstances’.

Not too long after this conversation I read of an American bird called GI Joe who saved more than a thousand lives in a village that was about to be bombed and another called Mary of Exeter who was used time and time again to send top secret messages. I learned that there is an inscription on the medals awarded that says `We Also Serve’ which seemed completely appropriate. And a few years ago whilst visiting Bletchley Park with my daughter I found myself paying particular attention to the displays, exhibits and information concerning the valiant feathered fighters of World War Two whose heroic deeds seem so sadly incongruous when placed alongside the myriad of communication choices we now have. Today as long as we have the right connection we can make mobile phone calls, send and receive text messages, send emails and contact all and sundry via Whatsapp and Facebook at the touch of a button. None of these choice options have quite the romantic appeal of the trusty carrier pigeon, however, fifty thousand of which were drafted into service in the 1940s to carry messages, deliver medicines and bring hope to situations that otherwise might have been hopeless.

A Cage Fit For Eagles

Cage birds were once the pet of choice as far as the working classes of London and the South East were concerned. These days you might even call them Estuary Pets. Easy to keep, unlikely to offend the neighbours and certainly cost effective as far as food was concerned. There were even songs written about them such as the once celebrated Music Hall ditty about the couple doing a moonlight flit – My old man said follow the van and don’t dilly dally on the way. The story-teller is the wife who walked behind the cart with the family pet and the popular melody itself would certainly be familiar with all who now qualify for a government pension.

A hundred years ago statistics estimate that every second household kept a cage bird of some kind and the craze began a long time before that if Pliny the Elder is to be believed. He laid the responsibility at the feet of Marcus Laenius Strabo of the Order of the Knighthood at Brindisi who, he wrote, began the practice of `imprisoning within bars wild creatures that Nature had assigned to the open sky’. He then went a step further and outlined the excesses some of his fellow Romans indulged in, citing an actor called Clodius Aesop who favoured his birds roasted, particularly favouring those that whilst alive had spoken in human voices. Pliny was scandalised, seeming to view this culinary treat as some kind of minor though hard to categorise form of cannibalism. Whether or not the vogue for pet birds started with the Romans is of course debatable but the craze was definitely trending in Europe in the early seventeen hundreds when French Huguenot weavers descended en masse upon London bringing their songbirds with them. And when I was a child the fashion was still alive and well in the streets of working class Gravesend and Northfleet and if my mother was to be believed the feathered friend of choice was then the Linnet. This relative of the Finch family was either routinely trapped in the wild or bred specially for sale in local pet shops and highly prized for its singing ability. It is likely that the male bird was especially sought after because of its colourful plumage although for some inexplicable reason the colours were slow to appear when caged. My mother decided that this peculiarity was almost certainly because once caged they pined for their freedom, dreamed of soaring high into the Kentish sky – in other words it was a definite symptom of avian depression. Well she didn’t quite put it like that but nevertheless she could have been right.
Although I know that we were a linnet owning family when my parents first married and moved into York Road it wouldn’t be true to say that I actually remember Bobby, the bird itself. In fact by the time I was aware enough to take any interest in him he had already been given his freedom. This was in the hope that once restored to the wild he would grow a bright plumage and learn to sing rather than huddle on his perch in a woebegone and guilt-inspiring manner whilst conspicuously moulting. The only tangible evidence of Bobby himself was his empty cage, fashioned from slim lengths of bamboo and undeniably attractive. I wasn’t allowed to play with it in case I did it some damage and it was stored in the cupboard under the stairs on a hook above the coal bunker awaiting his replacement.

Years were to pass before birds of any variety were to once more share the kitchen of number 28 with us. Although my brother was to become a firm ornithology enthusiast, birds either as pets or in the wild was not a subject I gave much thought to. However, I found it vaguely interesting when my favourite teacher Mr Will Clarke revealed that local author of some note, Charles Dickens, was said to have at one stage kept a pet Raven and Winston Churchill was a parrot fancier owning a Macaw called Charlie. My young brother, on the other hand was already wont to comment on the bamboo cage above the coal bunker from time to time, wistfully wondering if it would hold an eagle. Well he was only five years old at the time of that query and the only eagle he had actually seen was that which graced the front page of the recently launched boys’ comic book. Still young enough to be easily confused and mostly bereft of reading skills he actually believed for a time that the popular periodical was some kind of Bird Fanciers’ Weekly and even planned to name any future eagle he might own, Dan Dare in honour of the front page hero. Once he graduated from the first raft of Early Readers provided by St Joseph’s Primary School it was with some embarrassment that he hastily tossed aside this particular notion though not the comic in its entirety. The first issue had been released in April 1950 following a huge publicity campaign and for a number of years it was enormously popular with boys between the ages of seven and sixteen providing a range of popular stories together with news and sports items.

Destined as he was to eventually emerge as a Bird of Prey fancier the green and grey budgerigar would not have been Bernard’s first choice when it came to feathered companions and it is more than likely that a compromise was reached with my mother. She only capitulated regarding becoming a bird owner in the first place because the Bennetts of Buckingham Road had recently become the proud owners of Richie who, if their Joan was to be believed, had already learned to say his name. A week or two later our own bird, purchased from the pet shop in Queen Street, Gravesend, would have also been known as Richie if that popular budgie name had not already been bestowed upon the Bennett’s bird. Instead, a further compromise was reached and ours was henceforth known as Ricky.

Without further ceremony the bamboo cage was retrieved from its place under the stairs, carefully wiped of coal dust and Ricky was installed. When Old Nan dropped in for tea and conversation a day or two later she said that we should have got him from the market because everybody knew that’s where the the best talkers were to be found and it was her belief that there was no real alternative. She would not be persuaded that Gravesend market did not go in for cage birds and said if that was the case it was a poxy excuse for a market if ever there was one. The fact that he had set us back the not inconsiderable sum of fifteen shillings and sixpence was further cause for derision because back in her day `them birds was ten a penny down Club Row’ which was nice and handy to her childhood home in Bethnal Green Road. Well all that information was only if she was to be believed and often it turned out that she was not.

Ricky was not an immediate success at once displaying a hostile attitude towards his surroundings when he set about demolishing the bamboo cage that now hung in a corner of the kitchen above the shelf where the wireless lived. My mother was perplexed and said that Bobby the linnet had been a bird of a far less destructive nature and had always been as good as gold in the very cage that Ricky was fast obliterating. Mrs Bennett advised that budgerigars had different beaks to linnets and should always be kept in wire cages and quite apart from that they liked toys. Our Ricky should be provided with a miniature mirror she advised because their Richie had one and these days you couldn’t stop him talking. He said all manner of things and had them all in stitches.

A wire cage was investigated at Rayners in Northfleet High Street because at the pet shop in Gravesend they turned out to be Very Dear. But the Rayners variety were not exactly cheap either and so while the idea was given more consideration a mirror with a pink plastic trim was acquired and handed over to Ricky with a great deal of ceremony. But he was growing more recalcitrant by the day and showed not the slightest interest. Bernard and I took turns sitting beside his cage enunciating sound bites in the hope that he would emulate them but he seemed to be quite averse to `Ricky’s a pretty boy’ and `What a clever budgie’ no matter how often and how slowly these mini-bites were demonstrated to him. Old Nan said we’d definitely been sold a pup and that our bird was a pig in a poke and thus managed to completely confuse Bernard who was still at an age when he was inclined to take things adults said completely literally.

In a final act of desperation and having very recently added School Dinner Lady to her raft of part time jobs my mother announced that she was now feeling flush enough to lash out and treat Ricky to a brand new Rayners wire cage which came equipped with a bell for him to play with. It had not completely escaped her attention that the Bennett bird was a keen bell ringer though the noise at tea-time was enough to drive you to Colney Hatch. What with the new cage, the bell and the very latest in Best Bird Seed with added oil to encourage the acquisition of speech she felt that our Ricky would very soon be making giant strides in every direction. But he continued to make very slow progress, showed no interest in being allowed out of his cage to occasionally fly around the room, refused to learn his name, found the new bird seed unpalatable and demonstrated complete indifference towards campanology. Overall he was not a total success and my mother was overheard to confide to her sister Mag that if there was one thing that gave her the pip, it was being forced to sit and listen to Grace Bennett listing all the new tricks that their Richie had learnt since she last drank tea with her. She just couldn’t stop blowing his trumpet and when all was said and done he was only a bird.

So when poor Ricky was found deceased at the bottom of his new cage one Sunday morning she clearly found it something of a relief and was not keen on replacing him. Once he had been buried with due ceremony beneath the only flowers in our garden, the stolen primroses from Lord Darnley’s woods the wire cage was cleaned and hung in the cupboard under the stairs without undue comment. After a while Bernard divulged that even though there was to be no successor to the wayward Ricky it was certainly a very good idea to keep the cage. When I asked him why he paused for a few seconds before adding that you never knew when it would come in useful and wanted to know if I thought it would be possible to keep an eagle in it – just a small eagle perhaps, one that was well behaved. I said I didn’t know very much about eagles.

Patches Protected

I’d only attended one previous meeting of the Local History Writers’ Group and to be totally honest I felt at the time that those involved were just a little too earnest, taking their various areas of concern ultra-seriously. However I had to agree with Edina when she regaled us all with how much she loathed and detested the dastardly business of the dissemination of information about what she had so recently written. So I was cheered to see she was present once more and this time handing out name tags. It wasn’t only me who had been in agreement with her either because even before the coffee and biscuits had been distributed someone called Mike re-energised that discussion. He said he would much rather rewrite the whole thing (in his case a treatise on the churches of Romney Marsh) than get involved in publicising it. Now that I realised these emotions are common I felt a lot better about my own reactions – well enough to say how wonderful it would be to find oneself in a more secure financial position – one that would support the hiring of a professional publicist.

At times those who write, I ventured to suggest, seem to be inordinately territorial – often so hugely so it is astonishing to behold. There was a silence so I added that each time I stumble across this attitude I am freshly flabbergasted. After all, it’s not actually a competition is it?

Edina said that a couple of years ago she wrote a book about growing up in a corner of rural Essex. She said she enjoyed writing the book and though she said it herself, thought it read quite well. So when she discovered that very same community from whence she came now boasted a Local History Society, meeting on a monthly basis in the Church Hall – yes indeed, that same ancient Church she described on more than one occasion within her very pages – well, naturally enough she was quite sure they would be interested in her book. Their website seemed to imply that they were keen to hear memories from locals, etc., etc.

But even offers of free copies met with a sullen silence. Thinking they must have gone into winter hibernation perhaps she waited until fresh news of local events appeared on their tantalizing and shiny home page. She emailed again, and this time cunningly ordered a couple of the books she had noted had been recently written by their president.

His books arrived – promptly. Edina read them and was suitably impressed. Surely he would now be interested in including her own book of memories in the list of volumes available to members? After all it was one hundred per cent pertinent to the very existence of the organization he seemed to head.
But again her messages met a brick wall of brooding taciturnity. A hostile and deepening reservoir of reserve.

His lack of interest could not have been made more obvious if he had rung her at dawn and advised her to toddle off into the hinterland of the local marshland being sure to take her book with her. It was both discouraging and disappointing she said when the very people she was certain would be happy to spread the good news of her creative labours pertaining to local history seemed to be the least interested. Someone called Josh was saying that it was probably just that they were `protecting their patch’ and that those instrumental in keeping memories of past times alive could turn out to be the most territorial of all when it came to fellow writers.

For me the discussion topic was depressingly familiar, having had a not dissimilar lack of interest from a not dissimilar group of local historians myself. It also brought sharply into focus an incident from thirty years previously when a writer `friend’ hesitated when I asked her to support my membership application for a newly formed local authors’ group. She said that she thought there might be a waiting list. She grudgingly advised she would find out for me. She never did.

Women Scorned - A Further Examination

Several years ago in discussion with Judith my Northern Irish friend, she regaled me with the frightening details of her brutal reaction to the infidelity of the man she had been married to for thirty years, that ordinary run-of-the-mill husband in his late sixties who did not realise that he all but took his life in his hands when he betrayed her with a twenty two year old. Recently I was sharply reminded of the conversation when watching `Mrs Wilson’ on Sunday evening TV. Primarily this was because I was taken aback to find that the writer Alexander Wilson had several bigamous marriages over the years and at the same time worked for MI5 (or was it MI6?) so how on earth did he find the time? Probably he was simply very good at apportioning his time.

Judith had decided that it was the lying about it all that hurt the most but this was only when the dust had settled on the shattered remains of her union with Bruce. It was all those lies she said, followed closely by the unspeakable insult of him actually introducing the girl (well she actually called her `the hussy’) to various among their friends and family and the fact that they were all too gutless to mention it to her. But then her Bruce had not actually entered into a full blown bigamous marriage of course because people don’t these days do they? And you have to ask yourself how and when it was that bigamy fell from fashion – and how many men might still find it attractive if it had remained up there in the marital fashion stakes. I say men but you have to remember that women sometimes went in for it too though how frequently is hard to say. You can’t learn much about it because for obvious reasons nobody ever discussed it very much.

To be completely fair to Judith she had not launched into the story of the unspeakable treachery of Bruce completely out of the blue. It was me who half brought up the topic by revealing a similar betrayal involving a family member and how his wife had reacted in a manner that could only be described as homicidal and that women scorned should not ever be underestimated; hell hath no fury, etc.

Judith said that at least there was no question of a baby in the case of her own betrayal, even if the Taiwanese girl wanted one because he had been what she termed sterilised years ago. She made him sound a bit like a cat as she spat the words out then muttered that she only wished he’d been fully castrated to completely stop his little games. I was idly wondering if all those years ago the constant tears and recriminations of my poor mother might have been even worse had my philandering father favoured bigamy above simple infidelity. And then, with some horror I paused to consider that he might even have done so during his WW2 sojourns in foreign climes. After all, like Alexander Wilson, he was a devout Catholic and always chose doing Right over doing Wrong if at all possible. But how on earth would we ever know after all these years?

Judith said she was quite certain that her Bruce had never been a man who strayed previously. For one thing there was little opportunity because they were hardly ever parted night or day for years because of working together to make that infernal bloody business the success it turned out to be. But then you had to admit that Alexander Wilson had not been completely idle either – MI5 would have kept him reasonably occupied, not to mention writing the spy novels and keeping in touch with all the children he had spawned. Judith still blamed herself for buying him (her Bruce – not Alexander Wilson) the ticket to Wembley Stadium that cost an arm and a leg. It was the boys’ night out that followed that really did for him she confided. And what’s more she knew that there had been from the very beginning a number of his friends and their wives who knew more than they were later prepared to admit. And that only served to add to her vengeful attitude even though so called well-wishers were telling her to put it all in the past and move on.

It was then that she added rather unexpectedly but in a low voice that she would definitely consider planning a nasty sequel for her ex-hubby if she thought for one moment she could get away with it. After all he’d had heart trouble on and off for years and taking Viagra was not at that healthy especially in the quantities he was consuming it. I made sympathetic noises and I couldn’t help wondering if that well brought Mrs Wilson on the Sunday night TV screen might have felt similarly – I know I would. Few of us would be totally forgiving after all and I had it on good authority that the wife of the aforementioned family member had been almost blatant about her own frame of mind. Who can blame her? But did she ever put those late night Google searches on easily-obtained-poisons to practical use? Did the ensuing rumours really have any validity? Difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff because people are always going to gossip after an unexpected death aren't they? To be blunt, speaking for myself, I have never considered divorce for one iota over the decades but I have on a number of occasions seriously deliberated upon the idea of murder so who can possibly say?

Bernard Hendy .... The Death of My Brother Revisited.

On the morning of 3rd April, 2016 while I was mindlessly traversing the aisles of our nearest supermarket at an ungodly hour on account of an adjustment in the summer-winter clock, my only sibling, my beloved younger brother, died whilst on holiday in Africa. He suddenly dropped dead it seems from a heart attack whilst I hovered over frozen peas and spinach, deliberated on their individual merits and compared prices. In the very last seconds of his earthly life I was very possibly queuing at the check-out counter, impatiently behind the corner-dairy owners who always shop at hours unearthly despite summer-winter time variations. The news that his life had ended came an hour or so later by email from his son and left me in total disbelief. How could it possibly be that someone so charming and charismatic should simply vanish into the ether? We were brought up as Roman Catholics he and I so surely his existence couldn’t end just like that? After all, he was once an altar boy; didn’t that still count for something? We had a relationship that was very much based on love-hate and our feelings towards each other were never irrelevant or inconsequential. We could talk for hours and not tire of the fact that a lot of the time our conversation went round in circles.

Bernard and I were brought up in abject poverty, the kind of miserable and wretched neediness that doesn’t exist anymore except in the underclasses of developing countries. We inhabited a world that makes Coronation Street look decidedly middle class. Our father died when we were four and eleven and subsequently the privation and distress went to an entirely new level as our well meaning but ineffectual mother went on to do the best she could for us which was not a great deal. As we grew older my brother was much more forgiving of her than I was, much more able to see the pressures she had been under. We lived in an area of largely industrialised Thameside where we were surrounded by the Decent Poor. We featured at the very bottom of the social heap because of hints of Diddicai or Pikey family roots and the Decent Poor looked down on us. I can’t say I blame them – when the neighours were beginning to think about installing inside toilets with attached shower facilities, we were still hauling in the zinc bath from its place on the outside wall every Saturday night. Bernard was convinced he was unpopular with other boys’ families because he smelled bad.

With our father gone I became my brother’s bullying older sister who had both loved him dearly and wished him harm from his first intrusion into my life. Left in charge of him whilst our mother worked cleaning other people’s houses, I compelled him to eat slugs, chew marbles, beg in the street for pennies for a non-existent charity, and dress up as a girl called Wendy in a pink crepe paper fairy costume I made specifically for the purpose. At the same time if any other child dared to criticize him I was ferocious in my defense and this merciless aggression on his behalf continued into his early teens when I once famously attacked three of his classmates who had unwisely risked upsetting him, sending the horrified trio bolting for cover. If necessary I would have killed for him. Bernard had a checkered and volatile early life, frequent brushes with The Law and a tendency to stray far from the truth. He was a husband and father by the time he was eighteen and there were definitely times when he could have done much better in both these roles.

He and I shared a compulsion. As we grew older neither of us could accept the reality of our vastly underprivileged start in life and so invented one substitute family after another, each more implausible than the last. But eventually, to some degree due to luck but also to exceptional intelligence, hard work and diligence Bernard made a great deal of money and his long obsession with the Scottish Highlands was realized when he bought a Victorian mansion at Cape Wrath and turned it into a family home complete with enough power-showered bathrooms to utterly astound our former neighbours. Money changed his basic personality very little. It was true he could now buy whatever he wished – and he did so, but essentially he remained the same. Without money he had always been unerringly generous and with money he simply became more so. He was naively gratified when family members, alert and conscious of their own place on the social ladder, those who had previously avoided him, now accepted him. He was delighted to be included in social events and when Those Who Had Done Well wanted to holiday with him in exotic locations.

Essentially Bernard remained the captivating and magnetic individual who could entertain with stories, many of which were quite untrue, for hour upon hour. He never stopped being the man that he always had been, and to me he was the best and the worst of brothers. He definitely knew I loved him but he died without knowing how enormously proud of him I was because I never told him that and I now wish so much that I had done so. Essentially life is short and when Death reaches out the separation and the silence seem all embracing. The truth is we can never make too much of the ties and relationships we have with the living.

Grappling With God

Living with someone who reads a great deal can be a problem at times. Himself needs at least three books on three separate topics near at hand and partially read at any one time in order to feel halfway at ease. The favoured three at the moment are David Copperfield, together with a thriller by Jo Nesbo the title of which I have forgotten and The Qur’an. The irritating thing about his reading choices is that he feels compelled to acquaint me with his progress chapter by chapter together with precise details of what might be happening next. For instance there is absolutely no point in me telling him that I am totally familiar with the general story lines favoured by Charles Dickens (after all wasn’t he practically a neighbour? – born on the doorstep of we Gravesend & Northfleet locals as ‘twere?) - because he will tell me anyway! There is simply no stopping him.

I am sick to the back teeth of Nesbo’s strangely named hero Harry Hole but when I saw Himself clutching The Qur’an as he approached the pay desk at Jason’s Books the other day my heart sank and I feebly waved a Nesbo in his direction. Then more sensibly I asked him if he was absolutely sure and wasn’t he perhaps simply reacting to the Christchurch Mosque atrocities but he blinked at me in some astonishment and snapped that of course he was sure. What was even surer was that he certainly did not need advice from me about what he should be reading. A bit rude I thought but to be brutally honest he is more than inclined to rudeness on such occasions.

The trouble with Himself is that he has a terrible urge to Know everything and then to magnanimously pass his new knowledge on to me, unless he should happen upon a more receptive listener. His children all became very good at ducking for cover and never, ever making the mistake of asking him a question especially about matters of history, ancient or modern. And to make things worse he takes knowledge very seriously. When he discovered that his grandfather on coming to New Zealand all those years ago had not, contrary to rumour, started his spiritual life in the Roman Catholic church but was actually Jewish the accumulation of volumes devoted to Judaism had to be seen to be believed and even Good Friend Georgina (who actually was Really & Truly Jewish to start with) got fed up with passing on recipes for chicken soup and advice about Holy Days. You could simply describe him as enthusiastic if you felt more kindly about all this than I do. Anyhow to get back to his sudden interest in Islam, you can probably understand why I felt myself becoming just the tiniest bit reticent.

He has now been fully engrossed since last Saturday and I have learned a great deal about Muhammad’s first wife (who I am told was an Older Woman) and when I happened to query something about who the following wife might have been I was told a long story about her necklace breaking in the desert and how she was accidentally left behind when her husband’s campaign group moved on. More importantly I was told that there is very little difference between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Battling through rush hour traffic on the morning of his recent CT scan I was informed that it was really quite foolish for any of us to describe Jesus Christ as God no matter what conventions might dictate, because clearly he wasn’t and the whole idea of the Son of God was not very sensible anyway. I nodded because he turned down the car radio to inform me that of course there had to be similarities between Monotheistic faiths. I ventured to point out that maybe it didn’t matter because even though we two both grew up in the Roman Catholic Church (and to be fair as far as his own mother was concerned it had once been the only thing I had in my favour) neither of us was all that reliable at attending Mass these days. I mean, I said – Are we actually Believers? He told me that as a Catholic it was perfectly OK to be Lapsed, almost a rite of passage one might say. Anyhow he for one was quite comfortable being lapsed. And as for other conventions of Catholicism he could well remember the time when women wore veils when attending Mass and he was surprised I didn’t remember also. Recalling the long and tedious Sunday services at Our Lady of the Assumption in Northfleet I said I did remember but in our church there had been more hats than veils. My mind wandered because I did indeed recall little girls in white veils and beautiful confirmation dresses. How I had longed to be in one of those white creations myself, fashioned from parachute silk and lace. One very indulged girl who must surely have been the much envied Kathleen McCarthy also had white shoes which she said were made of something called buckskin. They had little silver buttons and slim ankle straps.

Himself wanted to know if there had been a mosque in Northfleet or Gravesend when I was growing up but I couldn’t remember and said there might have been a Sikh Temple. In fact there was definitely a Sikh Temple of sorts in the 1950s called a Gurdwara. Then I added that from memory the Sikhs also believed there was just one God so just don’t leave them out of the equation – it was a God not just for them but belonging to everyone and featuring differently in differing faiths. But he didn’t hear me because he was cursing the stupidity of bus lanes. So I said a bit louder that as for mosques, there was most definitely one in Gravesend now. It was called Shal Jalal and had been created in a building that had formerly been a pub. Himself said he was quite sure that wouldn’t be true given the way Muslims felt about alcohol. But I was sure it was because a cousin had sent me a photograph of it and a precis of its history.

What he was really getting at, Himself persisted, was how one could liken such practices, veils in church, largely abandoned though they might be, to Islam and the wearing of the Hijab. Didn’t I agree. I agreed and promptly because by then we were turning into our street. No point in arguing.

The future of Swan Lake?

I’ve written previously on this topic but the current climate of very nearly admiration of those who are horrendously overweight urges me to write once more ….. forgive me if I repeat myself. Let me state here and now that I was once what was then generally known as a Fat Lump. At sixteen I was decidedly overweight and on only one occasion made the horrifyingly embarrassing mistake of getting on the `I Speak Your Weight’ machine at Charing Cross Station. The memory makes me shudder. It seemed to me that I was fighting flab for years and I often claimed that I could gain weight on a diet. I’m not sure now how true that latter contention was, but I do remember saying it. Once upon a time it simply was not a good thing to be fat and not so very long ago either. Thankfully I lost the weight dramatically, suddenly (long story not for today) and though I would like to say that from then on I never looked back that would also be untrue. I tend to gain weight very quickly and easily but these days I seem to have less trouble losing it. Nevertheless I always feel fat. When I was still running school holiday courses for children more than ten years ago I can recall being advised by those who knew best to remove an image of an overweight ten year old on our advertising leaflets because it `sent the wrong message’. I took the advice. So it was with some scepticism that I began to take note of the Embrace Fatties trend that is firmly taking hold in this part of the globe – and I am sure elsewhere also. New Zealand is host to large numbers of large people of course and as every local schoolchild is aware, in some Pacific Island communities Big Is Beautiful. The Oldest Son reminded me quite recently that here in God’s Own Country, we long since ceased to argue about that. He said I would get used to the trend then he added that not so very long ago we all had to remember not to use the term Mongol and keep up with how we were now required to refer to African Americans and that People of Colour was OK. He further pointed out that excess weight is a disability like having no legs. Nevertheless the hasty manner in which we are being primed for not just Acceptance of the Obese, but Admiration also is a little too rapid for me. Overweight twelve year old boys waxing lyrical about healthy budget food cartons delivered to the family’s door pop up during commercial breaks on Prime Time TV, followed by travel ads fronted by larger than necessary young women cheerfully displaying their holiday wardrobe of huge and unflattering sundresses and the corpulent middle aged no longer make room for others on buses during rush hour travel. All of this headlong and reckless rush towards approval and approbation has been eclipsed for me recently, however, by an astonishing video clip on social media featuring a most unfortunately obese teenage ballet dancer. Even more bewildering are the comments made by one viewer after another, applauding, boosting and encouraging her. Maybe I’m simply becoming a crabby and cantankerous old crone – after all it would be true to say that I still grapple with same sex marriage (and yes, I know, I should flay myself with wet reeds) .... so it could be that a confidently rotund teen proudly pirouetting will never get my vote. What could her parents (oops - caregivers) be thinking of I have to ask. Or is it just me?