The Depositing of Ashes . . . . .

It had taken more than eighteen months to do something seemly, appropriate even with his human remains.   The pale wooden box containing the ashes, all that was left of him, had stayed on the rarely ever used cane tea trolley from the day they were delivered to me by Davis Funerals.   To be honest I had at first imagined I would find that situation quite macabre but as the months passed it was strangely comforting to have him there.   I could place my hand on the box and talk to him and wonder if he somewhere, somehow heard me.  In fact I developed a regular habit of speaking with him, often as I walked the streets of Parnell compliantly getting the daily exercise that was supposed to be good for my back.  Later I conversed with him in London and then I cried more than I had in Auckland because he should have been there, walking alongside me. 

It would be true to say that I did not deal with his death as well as I might have done and probably that was simply because in a disturbingly infantile manner I refused to believe that it had actually happened.   Somehow or other providence should have intervened like a good fairy at a story book christening ensuring that normal life be restored in all its predictable certainty.   But that wasn’t ever going to happen was it?  The B-cell Lymphoma did not allow for such an outcome and as a doctor’s wife over so many years I should have realised that very well, except that I didn’t.   So I withdrew into a mini-fortress, did not answer the telephone, and threw away the endless flowers that relentlessly and exasperatingly arrived day after day.  The neighbours, witnessing the latter piece of eccentricity gaped and I smiled and might have even wished them Good Morning.      

There was definitely not going to be a funeral.  He and I had at least discussed that and I told him it was never going to happen and disapproving friends and colleagues could think whatever they liked.  Perhaps I imagined that if there was no funeral – (oh the finality of such a thing) – possibly there had been no death.  He elicited a promise that I would at least put a notice in the New Zealand Herald and I agreed that I would.   And then he asked me what I would do with his remains.   Ideally, he said, and with only slight hesitation, and only if I felt able to do so, he wished for his ashes to be scattered in the South Island, in Oamaru, perhaps Dunedin and at Whitechapel by the Arrow River – and if I could face it, some in London because it was a place that held many precious memories.    He told me he realised I might find it very testing to make any promise in this respect and so I didn’t.   He understood me well of course after so many years.

He slipped from life without too much kerfuffle, grateful for the morphine that gave some respite from what he was by that stage calling his Galaxy of Pain.   And I withdrew from life also for the most part, avoiding human contact where possible, crying torrents of tears, throwing flowers away and watching Coronation Street where Leanne’s little boy, Oliver, was struggling with a life-threatening illness, a story line that at the time seemed comforting.     A modicum of solace also came from those who also coped with the death of someone greatly loved but I was astonished to feel fury and resentment at others whose nearest and dearest were still living.  This I concluded was because, as I had long suspected, I was not a very nice person; no surprises there then. 

He had died on a Sunday morning in October 2020, leaving me emotionally stranded, astonished that it had actually happened.   Several people said I would feel a little better in six months but in April 2021 I felt the same, missing him as fiercely as ever, still weeping copious tears on a regular basis, still avoiding social contact as much as possible.   The people I agreed to see and speak with were very few and I used every possible excuse I could dream up not to attend groups I had somehow or other been cajoled into joining - even the Zoom meetings.  I became eternally grateful for Covid lockdowns because month after month I was most at ease when completely alone except for laptop, Ipad and Patrick’s collection of CDs that for a number of years had been left in my care.    The world’s greatest violinists were eternally helpful, the musical genius of Menuhin, Heifetz, Hassid, Huberman, Kreisler and Ricci was infinitely sustaining.   Outside my cocoon of misery normal life continued to jog along of course but after eighteen months for me it was still mostly long dead violinists and the ashes on the cane trolley.  

It was Sinead who urged me to consider some positive action as far as a farewell to her father was concerned.   It was time to do so she thought, and she would come from London and give help and direction.   We would go to the South Island and visit all the places that had been important to him, and then go on to London and do the same.   It might turn out to be difficult but we could be certain he would be proud of us.   And so it was agreed.

In the end three of us set off South early in May 2022.   Patrick joined us and we were in good spirits, keen to rediscover favoured and significant places in Dunedin and Oamaru once more and perhaps with just a little difficulty find the site of Whitechapel on the Arrow River where the previously Jewish Harrises, confusingly each generation possessed of the name Samuel Lewis or Lewis Samuel, ditched their former customs and traditions and became Anglican.   We had been told that this dismissal of heritage was not particularly unusual at that time and we were content to believe what we were told.  

The mission was seamlessly accomplished and by the last week in May we were already deep in plans for a return to London, though sadly without Patrick who was unable to extricate himself from his workload.   Sinead and I would go together and I was to stay for three months and become re-acquainted with all that I had left behind me in my favourite city nearly five decades previously.  

And it wasn’t just going to be a trip down Memory Lane because my daughter was eager to show me her new house, ideally situated in an area of Hackney called De Beauvoir Town in honour of Richard de Beauvoir who in 1640 bought up a large amount of local farmland.  Further down the track in the nineteenth century a keen descendent began to build houses on the land which was fortunate for women like Sinead, intent upon becoming owners of acceptably priced Victorian properties.  We both agreed that her father would have been extraordinarily proud of her and perhaps more than a little bit envious because his own ambition had been to become a London property owner.  The closest he came to fulfilling the dream was the acquisition we made together of a tiny basement flat in Cloudesley Square, Barnesbury and even then financial constraints forced us to sell it within a year.   

Now in mid 2022 it was from the house in De Beauvoir Town that I set out again and again on journeys of re-discovery.    And once more, somewhat predictably, I demonstrated to myself that I was still unable to come to terms with the death of the man I had been married to for forty-eight years.   Again I walked the streets in tears and conversed with him, fervently wishing that the last year of his life could have been lived with less pain.  And on a daily basis I berated the son who had caused us so much misery by ignoring the terminal illness and then the death of the father who had loved him so much -  and I lauded and was thankful for the son and daughter who demonstrated on a daily basis their deep regard, their love and their care and concern.

Over those three months we made pilgrimages to his favourite pubs, in total forty such excursions and from time to time we wondered which had been our own favourites, in finality deciding upon The Old Mitre, The Princess Louise, The Cittie of York, The Black Friar, The Mayflower and The Barley Mow.    And of course we went to the restaurant in Maiden Lane that had meant so much to both of us – Rules.   In fact, ignoring the expense, we went there twice.   

I was in the final weeks of my visit when we at last spoke of the London scattering of ashes.   We walked at dusk to the Holy Trinity Church in Cloudesley Square, comfortably bounded on all sides by Georgian houses where Sinead had made a ritual visit at the time of his death armed with candles and melancholy memories.  And as previously she determinedly provided a link with Patrick in Auckland via her phone and the wonders of modern technology.   This final dissemination felt like completely losing him and it was gruelling though I was comforted by Sinead’s assertion that we had now created a physical place where it was possible to stop by and reminisce about his life and that part of him would always be there.

Gordon James Harris, an ordinary man, came into our lives at a time when he was sorely needed, when I was in dire need of someone to depend upon and Patrick just four years old, longed for a father.  He more than fulfilled all our hopes and expectations.  He was an exemplary husband and father and became dearly loved and greatly respected.   His daughter’s resolve, her relentless organisational skills have allowed us to ensure that his mortal remains have been deposited with certainty in the places he would have most wanted to be.

A week or two ago when I returned to New Zealand I was oddly cheered to see that the pale wooden box that had once contained his ashes was still in place on the rarely used cane tea trolley.  I can still reach out and speak with him at will.

Too Much Time in the Midday Sun ...?

Those of us who take up residence in far flung and sometimes obscure places in what remains of the British Empire and beyond undoubtedly all too often leave our fractured hearts back in Nottingham, Bristol or Brighton or in my case Central London.   We are therefore apt to bore others with endless comments concerning the benefits and virtues of life back in the Old Country under Wilson, Thatcher or Blair and others equally notorious from the past.  And we fail to notice the lack of interest in the eyes of patient and less than patient listeners.  

And analogous with various characters in stories by W Somerset Maugham despite the hankering to return to the places of our birth many ex-citizens of the UK opt somewhat strangely to stay on in the suburbs of foreign countries for far longer than we need to or expected that we would.   This in itself irks those of our acquaintance who so frequently comment one to another that there was nothing to stop us from buggering off back to Birmingham years ago if we really wanted to.    These are comments of which we were invariably blissfully unaware.

   It all adds up to a syndrome that those who lived their lives in India prior to 1947 would immediately recognise.   Essentially we stay put because life in our adopted country is frequently more comfortable than the lives we left behind.   We understand how everything works for example and we really appreciate little things like the Winter Energy Supplement when the Government chips in to help pay our power bills during the coldest months of the year.   We are grateful that we can generally access an appointment with our local doctor, often on the very same day that we apply, often at the time of our choice and we are thankful that half price taxi fares are on offer to those over sixty five who for some reason cannot manage the buses and have long since stopped driving.   So we put the Returning Home decision on the back burner for yet another year or two.

Then there comes a time when we begin to examine those choices more closely, observing that whilst the current residents of London, Leeds and Cardiff are loudly proclaiming that their weekly trip to the supermarket is costing far too much, we feel and have just commented in texts to friends and acquaintances that groceries seem astonishingly cheap compared to the prices we have become accustomed to in our adopted corner of the globe.  On the other hand petrol appears to be jarringly costly and some hardy souls who dare to air their opinions on talk radio allege that it now costs very nearly one hundred pounds to fill the family car.    We decide they must be exaggerating on a grand scale and are thankful for the more moderate fuel prices in Sydney, Auckland or Papua New Guinea.   We note that people discuss the fate of those who fail to pay their television licence fee, are told that occasionally this criminality might involve a prison term – and we make little comment but wonder if that information is totally accurate.

Prison sentences in general seem far more punitive than those we have so effortlessly become accustomed to so it is easy to imagine a monstrous fate awaits the unfortunate pensioner reduced to pilfering at an Ecco shoe sale or using inter-city trains without a ticket on a return journey to the Old Country. Perhaps the streets of London and Liverpool are not paved with gold after all.

 Noel Coward might have inadvertently uncovered the germ of the consequences of staying in foreign climes for decades.   It is never a good idea and undoubtedly clouds the judgement to spend too much time in the Midday Sun.   The Return Home requires more thought than we might have imagined.  

Language Lost ......

When I posted a photo on my Facebook page the other day, posing alongside a Cloudesley Square sign I noted that it was harking back to the past and it evoked precise comment from one reader.  In the mid1970s we lived at No 6B, five of us crammed into a tiny basement flat. At least three of us were under the age of ten and therefore took up little room but the remaining duo were definite space users.    Even I had become accustomed to occupying large areas after several years of New Zealand living of course and the little London apartments that once seemed not only normal but desirable were suddenly cramped and miniscule.  

But it’s not space that’s under discussion at the moment, but language and specifically that language we have lost.   And we discard and eliminate words and phrases effortlessly over time without giving too much thought to the process.   Hark, Harken, Harking peppered the conversation of my mother and aunts, undoubtedly passed down to them by their own mother.   When observing the early speech of my own daughter during those Cloudesley Square days when she was still a one year old infant intent upon understanding the intricacies of confining straps and escaping from her push chair, everything that she disliked she loudly described as being Bum!  My own mother commented somewhat disapprovingly that my own first words in 1941 had been the more genteel Hark Whatz Dat? In response to the approach up the Thames of a terrifying drone of bombers.  She managed to make it sound as if I had cleverly chosen from a random vocabulary I had somehow been born knowing rather than responding to her own World War 2 anxiety. It was a time when the Constants, young and old rarely used the word Listen.

Not only did they Hark and Harken, but they often went Abroad when simply leaving the house, were Afeared, Learned someone something rather than taught them, were up and about Betimes rather than early and frequently gave Short Shrift when they deemed it necessary.  A broken cup might be described as Asunder and stolen goods definitely Fell Off the Back of Trucks.

Old Nan, always reliably profane, described those she judged to be lacking in intelligence as Thick As Pigshit and those with a streak of meanness as reluctant to Give Their Shit to the Crows, and when in a less disrespectful mood relatives and neighbours might be Slippery as Eels, Blind as Bats or Eating like Pigs.

Uncle Edgar was often Sold a Dog, found situations preposterous enough to make Stuffed Birds Laugh, Made Tracks when he was about to Make Himself Scarce and once or twice Smothered a Parrot when rapidly downing a glass of alcohol.   Less colourfully his daughter Daphne as late as 1980 Killed Two Birds With One Stone, Let the Cat out of the Bag and frequently felt Under The Weather.

The lad my cousin Pat married when she was only sixteen because she turned out to be No Better Than She Ought to Have Been, was described as being decidedly Thin On Top by the time he was in his late twenties.   Meanwhile my more sophisticated cousin Margaret who Did Well For Herself and therefore dropped a great deal of the vocabulary she was familiar with in her earliest youth except for describing those who had recently died as Having Passed Away.

Exposure to years of BBC radio and later a great many hours of TV, my own mother slowly began to relinquish the old speech idioms of her North Kent youth and my brother was less likely to be Bootless and I was no longer in danger of Driving Her to Bedlam or Colney Hatch though she always hung onto the fact that both of us were Economical With the Truth which at least was accurate.

Old Nan, however, even in her dotage often was guilty of doing things Thrice because she had become a Blithering Fool and a Laughing Stock and she always preferred the term Eventide to evening.   

A Belief in What is Unbelievable

I don’t know when I stopped wholly believing in Father Christmas but even as a very young child I only half accepted the idea of a benevolent personage dressed in that eye catching ermine trimmed red robe careering through the night sky pulled by a team of reindeer.   Naturally enough I certainly wanted to believe but my faith was only ever half hearted.   These were just thoughts never voiced aloud and openly for fear of upsetting my mother who to all intents and purposes appeared to believe in the myth herself.   I didn’t care as much about my father’s hurt feelings.  Anyway it’s hard to be a true and steadfast believer when you’ve stood in Gravesend market in early December whilst your parents thumbed through second hand Rupert and Toby Twirl Annuals and discussed in whispers whether they would be suitable for you.   It might of course eventuate that they ordered and paid for the Christmas gifts then sent them off to Father Christmas for delivery like some kind of international postal service but it seemed unlikely.  It was Alan Spooner who came up with that idea and it was hard to take seriously much of what he said simply because he had a definite reading problem and lagged well behind the rest of us when we had Reading Out Loud around the class.  In any event it seemed prudent to allow the adults in my life to have their secrets no matter how improbable they might seem to me.  

We didn’t have the Tooth Fairy in our family and that was probably on account of my mother having so many siblings and my father being raised in an orphanage.   It could have been a most expensive exercise for my maternal grandparents and would have surely needed a sponsor if multiple visits to the orphanage in Chatham were to be carried out.   My cousin Pat said only Toffs had the Tooth Fairy anyway but there were a few children in my class at St Botolph’s who I knew to have a firm relationship with her (back then fairies were to me always female).    Maureen Bowler was one of them but Pat maintained she came into the Toff category on account of her father being a primary school teacher.  I could never quite make my mind up about Maureen but it was clear the teachers viewed her differently from the rest of us, speaking to her with a kinder tone and paying more attention when her hand shot up to answer a question which it tended to a great deal of the time.   They treated Helen the vicar’s daughter similarly but I don’t quite recall if I was ever aware of her Tooth Fairy status and I’ve forgotten how frequently her hand went up.   The majority of us who lacked any position at all with that munificent dental sprite unkindly labelled those receiving sixpences for their expelled teeth as Babies.  

By the time we reached the age of eight or nine we were ambivalent when it came to a belief in Witches because they were at a surface level ordinary women, old with stringy grey hair, who were simply likely to own black cats and these days you might even say they were just part of a Special Interest Group.   We knew it wasn’t necessary for them to wear black conical hats all the time and use broomsticks for transport.  And even in the unenlightened days of the late 1940s we were aware that some of the Magic involved might even be for the greater good of the community.  Jennifer Berryman said that her grandmother’s neighbour was definitely a Witch and always used the buses but added a little hastily that she only worked Really Good Magic.   Sometimes Witches were easily recognised by the houses they lived in and Kathleen the red-haired daughter of the couple who kept The Queen’s Head on The Hill once swore me to secrecy before disclosing that the cottage directly opposite the pub definitely housed a Witch and added that she once saw her taking off on her broomstick from the roof.  I found that very difficult to believe but I didn’t say so at the time.   When I asked my older cousin Margaret whether she believed in Witches she said it was an old-fashioned idea and nobody with any sense thought they were real.  

On the other hand where the paranormal was concerned, when it came to Ghosts we all seemed to hold an acceptance and certainty that they existed and even walked among us.   At any age we were likely to catch a glimpse of a family member or neighbour who had departed from earthly life and these sightings, though often unsettling were rarely commented upon negatively.  My mother and aunts regularly told each other stories of communing with the unfortunate siblings recently succumbed to TB who sometimes reappeared and gave advice with regard to the babies they had left behind.  And for years my mother was inclined to talk about that terrible time following the death of her beloved fiancé, Fred, who should by rights have been my father and what a comfort it had been when he came and stood at her bedside at night and told her not to mourn him.  Decades later my younger brother, then almost grown to adulthood claimed to have had a long conversation with our dead father who appeared to him in his army uniform on the night his own son was born.  Because I only half believed anything my brother said I reserved judgement on this incident whilst nervously hoping he would not also choose to make a similar visit to me.   Unlike others in the family I never quite reached a state of nonchalance regarding apparitions.

We showed a definite eagerness when it came to a faith in the predictions of Seers and Soothsayers and at any age were keen to patronise the latest fairground clairvoyant.   All my aunts looked forward to the annual Fair that for a number of years visited the local Northfleet parks before deciding to favour Gravesend because of some kind of Falling Out among the promoters.  Despite the inconvenience of a longer bus ride they queued up outside Madame Desiree’s striped tent with eager regularity, each opting to pay for both hands plus the crystal ball.   I was destined later in my life to be astonished by the accuracy of a range of predictions emanating from one Madame Sandra then working out of a small office in Oxford Street.

During the chunk of the twentieth century during which I grew up it would be fair to say that the working classes were familiar and comfortable with those who predicted the future not simply on a personal level.  Francis Moore, responsible for producing what was known as Old Moore’s Almanack had been himself born into poverty in Bridgenorth in the 1660s.  His Almanack published from 1697 became enormously popular.   Despite his humble beginnings he became a self taught physician and astrologer and eventually served at the court of Charles the second.  His early publications seemed to cautiously revolve around weather forecasts and even my illiterate grandmother claimed that folk swore by them.   Even the rather less familiar Nostradamus was a prophet well known to my mother who was fond of announcing that he had known all about Adolph Hitler and what a pity it was that the World did not heed his warnings.  

 Guardian Angels were definitely a popularly accepted idea among children in the 1940s and 1950s and frequently credited with saving them from danger and injury.   Roger Ribbins’ mother told all and sundry, including the local newspaper that her little Roger was being looked after by his Guardian Angel the day he hurtled from the top of the cliff and into the adjacent chalk pit and yet had astonishingly been able to get to his feet and want to carry on with the boisterous game that had initially put him in that dangerous position.  In these infinitely more forward thinking days of Health & Safety and common concern there might be more questions posed as to who had allowed little Roger and his friends to cavort on the clifftop in the first place and why more safety measures had not been installed to prevent such an alarming experience.  To be fair my mother voiced similarly judgemental comments at the time of the accident, adding rather uncharitably that she thought that any Guardian Angel detailed to keep an eye on the Ribbins children would definitely have his work cut out.  All things considered it would appear that there is rather less need for Guardian Angels in these first decades of the twenty second century.

More of us aligned ourselves with religion in the middle years of the last century even if we did not hold a totally firm conviction that God was real.  My older male cousins, especially Les and Young Harold were apt to ridicule me if I announced a belief in God and say I was Soft in the head to believe such rubbish and Aunt Mag never once reprimanded them which made my mother give them very cold looks.  Whether or not we accepted the existence of the Almighty all of us aligned ourselves firmly with Christian precepts and when asked which religious line of thought we followed unhesitatingly answered Church of England or Catholic or Presbyterian even if we regularly declared that the idea was nonsense.       This flexible attitude allowed us to pay little attention to Church attendance if it proved to be inconvenient  yet at the same time look kindly upon ideas like Re-incarnation and should an elderly relative die at around the time a new family member was born, the new child was often named for and cheerfully spoken of as some kind of second coming of he or she who had passed.

Overall it was a time when as a society we were loath to entirely dismiss matters esoteric, possibly even viewing such ideas as a kind of primitive intellectual glue and aid to understanding difficult concepts.  And perhaps that is why there was a reluctance to upset our parents by passing on negative ideas like a lost faith in Father Christmas.  

As time passed some of us came to the conclusion that there is something about the human condition that makes us as a whole extraordinarily susceptible to the acceptance of incongruous notions, very often belief systems that we know instinctively to be false or, worse still that ordinary common sense dictates are false.   It is no doubt this that allows us to be hijacked from time to time by those who would have us move in a specific direction and take on ideas that we know to be monstrous yet lack the good sense to say so until it is too late.   Once an outrageous idea has its tentacles firmly in the group consciousness and the accompanying dogma is nicely settled in concrete we might begin to whisper one to another that we don’t actually Believe …… but of course by then it is too late.    Hopefully not too much harm is done.  

Changing Fashions In Underclothing .....

 

I wonder what it was that made our mothers, as one, insist that money spent on Decent underclothes was money well spent because of being unexpectedly run over by a bus.   Was it that more women were mown down without warning back in the days of their own youth?  And were buses actually to blame?  And more to the point did hospital staff really and truly gasp with horror when a bus injured patient’s undergarments were revealed and shown to be somewhat past their use by date?   Were they actually heartless enough to point it out to each other whilst drinking tea later in the canteen?   Did you notice the state of her Stays?   I rather doubt this scenario but according to my mother, and maybe yours, this was what I could expect if I ended up in the Accident & Emergency Department wearing anything but a dazzlingly enviable matching set of undies of pastel shade preferably recently purchased from Marks & Spencer’s.

 Although she did specifically nominate M&S when speaking to me,  secretly British Home Stores would have done equally well and this wasn’t entirely because they were a bit cheaper.   It also had to do with the fact that they had at some stage in Gravesend’s commercial past taken over the site previously occupied by Missings.   That particular stalwart of the Edwardian undergarment business in Gravesend was said to have provided everything the Modern Woman could possibly need in the way of Corsetry, with the most up-to-date models to choose from at exceptionally keen prices!   To some extent this must have been true because my Grandmother and various Aunts routinely took the 480 from outside The Jolly Farmers in Crayford to inspect their wares.   These journeys did not simply have undergarments in mind because Missings also ran an enviable line in Drapery and at one time Millinery as well.   My Grandmother was known to say that their window display was a Sight for Sore Eyes. 

Missings was long gone by the time I was old enough to buy my own clothing and already realise that I was destined never to have an entirely happy relationship with undergarments.   As a small child this was largely because during winter months I seemed to have to wear far too much of it - apart from an unbearably itchy vest and rather unnecessary petticoat the hideous Liberty Bodice loomed large to torture me for many years.   I’ve commented on this garment previously I know but anyone who has ever worn one will understand perfectly why it needs a revisit!     

Gentle Google research has revealed an astonishing I Love My Liberty Bodice exhibition that in early 2020 could be visited at Harborough Museum and tells the fascinating story of Leicestershire corsetry manufacturer Symington & Co who developed the new and much reviled garment for the next three generations from the beginning of the 20^th century.  Production only ceased in the mid nineteen sixties!   Apparently a particularly inventive and determined marketing campaign secured its position in the lives of British children although it seems that the idea for the garment originated in America.   Who were the museum-goers flocking to this event I ask myself and I even wonder if it was postponed or possibly even cancelled on account of Covid. 

As time passes it becomes more and more pertinent to critically examine why some garments were ever thought rational and the Liberty Bodice has to be one of them particularly as some clothing historians seem to see it as a precursor and training for the equally dreaded Corset.   I’ve never really understood the difference between Corsets and Stays and my mother, together with her sisters referred to the tightly laced pale pink piece of underclothing as either.   Versions of them seem to have been worn from at least the eighteenth century when visitors to England consistently commented on how even the peasants wore stays.   I wonder how they knew?     In France it appears that in general the lower classes seem to have gone without and even the middle classes might go stay-less for medical reasons.   However, in England they were a literal symbol of a woman’s uprightness and virtue whatever her background.   So tightly were women laced into them that it does seem to have contributed to the irritating habit of the Victorian woman to faint at the drop of a hat. 

My grandmother clearly thought that a loose corset was the sign of a loose woman and always commented in a derogatory manner as to the decency and degree of her acquaintances and neighbours stay-lacing.   That Dolly Flanagan is a trollop if ever I seed one, up at the Co-op and in the queue if you don’t mind bold as brass without her stays laced proper!    Even as she spoke I was on the side of Dolly, having witnessed my own mother’s agony with the tightness of her stays. Though she would have never been likely to venture from the house without them laced in the proper manner.

Old Nan could be quite didactic at times, surprising us with high minded ideas that did not sit easily alongside what we knew of her.   My mother called her Strait-Laced, but never directly to her face of course.    Aunt Maud said she well remembered the time years ago when Old Nan had taken four or five of her girls into Gravesend to Missings to buy a new hat for herself and for each of them a pair of the very latest in Stays though by then they were being described as Corsets.   It had been after a win at the races and she was feeling very flush.   They could choose between pink, peach or even white and afterwards they went for a fish tea in the High Street and had a walk along the prom.   I wondered why the Stays were referred to as a Pair like shoes and nearly asked but they’d started talking about those men who regularly stood outside inspecting the window display as if they were about to buy a piece of intimate apparel for their wives yet never did.   And no matter how many euphemisms they used my cousin Pat and I exchanged glances and rolled our eyes at each other to indicate how very mature and knowing we were.

I don’t recall when my mother gave up her Stays/Corsets and there was certainly no pressure on me to launch into the experience but she did suggest once I started work that I should buy a Proper Girdle as I had put on a few pounds.  Back in the 1950s unless you were being Professionally Fitted for such garments you really had to hazard a guess as to your size and invariably the size finally purchased became something of an issue and never fitted properly.  I didn’t know about Professional Fitting at the time and even if I had been fully informed I cannot imagine I would have engaged in it as I was far too embarrassed about my shape being less than perfect.    Consequently for several decades I was destined to never own comfortable underclothing and quite the worst offenders were Bras.

My first bra had originally been owned by my mother before her marriage.  I’m unsure if she ever felt at ease in it herself but by the time I inherited it at the age of fourteen it proved itself to be anything but comfortable and it was clear my needs were greater than a size 32A.   Nevertheless I was not to own the much coveted 36C for a year and a half which is a long time to cope with the discomfort.   I would have been dissatisfied before too long in any case because the latest In Thing at school were bras like those worn by such icons as Lana Turner and Jayne Mansfield, underwired and conical and variously known as the Bullet Bra.   It had to be worn under a tight sweater and then you could call yourself a Sweater Girl.

It wasn’t long before something called The Wonderbra began to grow to more than the germ of an idea in the mind of its creator.   A whole host of us flocked towards it, discarding those other old-fashioned items – stockings and suspender belts, as we did so.   Pantihose had arrived with a vengeance and although the men in our lives maintained a growing chorus with regard to what they saw as ideal female underclothing, we were in no way eager to pay much attention, especially if we had already burned our bras.   Following in the footsteps of Germaine Greer we had a hankering to become feminists especially once we realised that there was no actual need to be Australian to do so.  You could say that after years of upper body restriction a kind of hysteria was taking over. 

I did not actually go to the extent of bra-burning, preferring simply to hide the most  offensive garments in the very back of the underwear drawer, and my best friend and then flatmate Stella did likewise.   We agreed that had we had the minimalistic bosom area we both admired we may well have made a different choice.  Instead we invested in the very latest Wonderbras because they had a delightful push-up effect exposing the body to its best advantage or so we thought.   We did throw away our Playform Girdles though and frequently advised each other how sensible we were to totally ignore the sexist appeals voiced by toxic males regarding suspender belts.   However, despite our best intentions and although it had little to do with the progress in underwear design, in the final analysis we did not make ideal feminists.

A Most Effective Way to Learn a Language

Way back in 1972 as a very new and cautious New Zealand resident I was expecting my new country to be much the same as the one I had left, not quite as lively as London perhaps but maybe very nearly.   After all they spoke English so it couldn’t be too different could it?  The first thing I was unprepared for was  that the English spoken was quite different from the English I had left.  The second surprise was the dearth of ordinary run-of-the-mill cafes and restaurants together with the preponderance of fish and chips and indifferent Chinese takeaways.  The astonishing competence of the average housewife to turn out gourmet meals for eight to ten at the drop of a hat was intimidating and I was genuinely appalled at the level of alcohol regularly consumed.  Very soon spoken English really didn’t come into the equation.

Quite early on I began to hate the way the men looked because they loved to wear shorts, denim and linen for weekends and horrific garments called Work Shorts for the working week, the latter worn with neckties, long socks and highly polished shoes.   I shriveled with embarrassment for the then Mayor of Auckland, Sir Dove Myer Robinson as he was interviewed by the BBC on some subject of great moment simply because he was wearing the obligatory Work Shorts, blue serge from memory.  Well it was mid-week but my feeling was that he honestly should have known better having originated in the North of England, he was British for God’s sake.  Sheffield would never have tolerated such attire and that’s a fact.   When I tentatively mentioned my discomfiture to a new Good Friend she looked at me with wide eyed bewilderment and said she thought he looked very smart.  

There were things I admired about the country of course like the way children happily went to school shoeless and there were no such things as School Lunches for them to complain about and they routinely played a game called Bullrush that excited, injured and definitely tired them out and was soon to be banned.    I wasn’t nearly as keen on Lolly Scrambles that revolved around adults hurling buckets of toffees and wine gums into the air and all nearby under twelves launching themselves towards them to gather as many as possible.  Such odd activities seemed to go directly against the values that had been so lovingly instilled by the London pre-school my son had attended. Strange new customs, whether I liked them or loathed them proved to have nothing to do with the reassuring English the locals were said to speak and very nearly did.

Once I became a New Zealand mother of locally born pre-school children and had semi-adjusted I ventured towards an organisation called Playcentre where I met a range of new Good Friends, Geraldine in particular who coming from Hungary via Melbourne was definitely not local and with whom therefore I felt quite comfortable.   Unlike London pre-schools where the idea was that mothers deposit their children to play whilst they go off to shop or drink coffee together, Playcentre, founded in 1941 with branches throughout the country was a totally different kettle of fish and definitely much more of a commitment.    It demanded to be taken seriously and if you proved your mettle you might even find yourself being invited onto the Committee. New Zealanders seemed to really love Committees.   To be fair none of this was completely obvious at first but it was rapidly realised that those taking part were under an obligation to grow with their children and perhaps even gain a Certificate in Early Childhood Education as they did so because another thing that loomed large in those days was Certificates.  Well one of the reasons was that mothers did not work outside of the home.

Although much of what New Zealand offered at that stage seemed to have come from an earlier time and was not to every new immigrant’s taste, and there was still no sign of an Indian or Thai restaurant in either Auckland or Wellington, we outsiders were surprisingly in accord when it came to the indigenous culture of the country.   We found it as exotic as the Early Settlers undoubtedly did and in the latter part of the 1970s it was Geraldine who suggested we should make an attempt to learn the Maori language.   The particular Playcentre we were now members of had close connections to the local Marae which had further stimulated our interest of course and we had by this time become totally involved in and absorbed by the philosophy of the Playcentre organisation.   My London cohorts would not have recognised me at this point.

   At that time the first language of the local Maori people seemed to be English though my GP husband claimed to have several elderly patients who only spoke Maori.   However, a certain amount of the language had already been absorbed by osmosis as a large number of words and phrases were already frequently heard within New Zealand English. We embarked upon the venture with great enthusiasm which sadly waned within a month or two as it became clear that a formal approach did not suit our particular learning needs.  Geraldine even said she thought we might be Slow Learners in the old-fashioned sense but whatever the reason we switched our fervour in the direction of a course of lectures called something like The New Zealand Child in Home and Family.

Now, forty years on, with Maori language much more to the forefront it seems pertinent to wonder how much we might have learned had we stuck to the original task rather than gratefully dropping out at the first hurdle.    Or would we in fact have been better supported to be daily exposed  to words, phrases and casual bits and pieces of conversation in all aspects of modern media as we are today whether we like it or not – and some of us certainly do not.   Jessica even says that it’s language learning by stealth and is forced upon us like it or not.   But quite honestly if only French could have been presented similarly back in the Wombwell Hall days when I was really struggling with it my life could have been made much less stressful. 

  Though I defend it I can’t honestly recall when this current partial immersion and envelopment of New Zealand society in the language actually began and it’s very clear that I paid no heed to any of the prior discussion as I would certainly have done all those years ago.   Whenever the significant decision to plunge us all into language learning was made though, it does seem to have happened quite precipitously and coincided neatly and fortuitously with the Covid pandemic which anyone with any sense would have foreseen was going to keep us at home with half an eye on the tv at all times.

  Though that can’t be totally accurate because more than a few years ago I already knew I lived in Aotearoa and my family could be described as my Whanau.  But it wasn’t until the Virus was all around us that I learned my city of residence was Tamaki Makaurau, however, when there was a break-out from a quarantine hotel and the escapees were said to be prowling the streets of that unfamiliar sounding place.   I wondered where on earth it was – and how I could have lived here for 49 years and had never heard of it previously.

I’ve come a long way in the last couple of years and now know that my children were at one time my tamariki and should I ever have a grandchild it will be my mokopuna together with a range of vocabulary I would have been proud of back in 1978 despite the lack of an accompanying certificate.     Like it or not you have to admit this present language learning strategy is definitely working!   

An Odd Aversion to Weekends Especially Sundays

 

I’ve never really liked weekends even as long ago as when I was five or six years old, my father was back from the war and we functioned as a proper family once again.  I had infinitely preferred the lazy hazy days of Doodlebugs and V2s despite the obvious hazards.   In those latter days of the1940s conflict it seemed to me that we had all become accustomed to the idea of instant annihilation and in any case as a pre-schooler I had little appreciation of the permanence of obliteration.   The important thing to me was that I had my mother’s entire attention most of the time and although the adults around me complained about shortages, as far as I was concerned nylon stockings were totally uninteresting and I was never hungry because there always seemed to be delicious things to eat like cheese on toast and jacket potatoes.   My growing dislike of weekends began when we had progressed to the post-war stage and were looking forward to free doctor’s visits and National Health orange juice.  Even more excitingly we were told that soon there would be ice cream to buy and toys in the shops.   I knew little about ice cream but I did know what toys were and like all other children of similar age I definitely looked forward to them. 

Like so many children I found my father’s return to civilian life a trial and although he did his very best to bond with me I was not altogether keen on the idea.   I couldn’t understand why it was necessary for him to plonk himself in the very middle of our lives and take up so much of my mother’s time and focus.  These first days were of course before he embarked on his life as a Philanderer and he and my mother seemed over attentive towards each other, hugging and kissing and laughing at each other’s jokes.   I wasn’t impressed and wanted him to go back to being the photograph on the wall that I blew a kiss to every night on my way to bed.    But no matter how much I wanted to dismiss him he stayed with determination and persistence though at least he was at work a great deal of the time.   Sundays were the days when he was most likely to be at home all day, putting up shelves at my mother’s instruction or planting primroses stolen from Lord Darnley’s woods behind the now obsolete Anderson Shelter.   I certainly did not like Sundays and my earliest experience of what I later knew was called Being Depressed was when I realised one was looming up again.

Meanwhile my mother would be happily engaged in preparing the Roast Dinners I was determined not to become acclimatised to.  It wasn’t that I was completely unfamiliar with these basics of British cooking and needed to become accustomed to them.   Aunt Mag whose Harold had according to my mother cleverly evaded going to war, produced them frequently and at times triumphantly but they had never been a fixture at our house where there had for years been a dearth of male appetites.   I became a picky eater, and yearned for the spam and jacket potatoes of what was fast becoming an idyllic era.    Well I was very young and not terribly well versed in the ways of the world, adjusting only slowly to the fact that The War, always there sitting comfortingly in the background of life, was now firmly a thing of the past.  The idea of The War being Over seemed alarming to me.

Once we were established as a York Road Family I was taken to Mass on Sunday mornings by my father which came as a shock, was boring in the extreme and did little to establish good relationships.    As I’ve described more than once that my mother was eclectic in her attitude to religion and therefore insisted on also sending me to a Chapel organised Sunday School on Sunday afternoons which was less boring but nevertheless left me feeling that I was being regularly ousted from the family group and thrust into one religious experience after another.   It did not make Sundays much more bearable.

Meanwhile my poor father worked hard to make me love him and I would be lying if I said that this never happened because he was, overall, a lovable person and good at making decisions that enhanced my life, like insisting I join the library and writing poetry for me, but there was always to be a vast emotional gap between us.  As time went on and he settled into regular shifts at Bevan’s Cement Works my heart would sink not only on Sundays but on Saturdays also when his roster at times allocated precious time off.   These were the times when we piled onto and into the motorbike and sidecar and set out for Cobham Woods to denude them of primroses and have picnics.   By now my brother was born and I was given less attention than ever, both my parents investing a great deal of hope into him.   Sadly it was to be a long time before he managed to fulfil any of the expectations they might have had of him.  In fact neither of us were to be the kind of children a parent could be proud of and that was nothing to do with Saturdays or Sundays.

I now believe that my antipathy towards weekends began to solidify once my parents’ marriage became more troubled and they spent more of those precious leisure hours quarrelling, my mother crying a great deal.   I was totally mystified as to the reasons for this but enraged by her obvious distress, angry at a situation I clearly had no control over I often cried too and told my long suffering father that  I hated him and wished he would go away.   A sudden solution for this unhappy situation came with his unexpected death a few days before Christmas in 1951, from what I was later to learn was called Acute Hepatitis.   He had been dead for several days and I had suspected as much but for some reason was not told, my mother leaving this unpleasant task for a time when she had the support of her mother and sisters around her, exposing my reaction to all.  There was a feeling of  alarm and distress swiftly followed by one of relief.   She told me on a Sunday.

Years later, living in London with my little boy as what was then termed a One Parent Family, I avoided dissolving into a soggy depressive heap at weekends by ensuring I always planned something that he at least would find exciting.   Often the somethings involved violin concerts which he was mesmerised by or Soho lunches at Italian restaurants providing post-lunch film shows for child diners which were equally attractive.   I was always glad when weekends ended no matter how stimulating they had been.

Married and in New Zealand with three children we frequently drove for miles at weekends to beachside motels.   And if not I planned extensive lunches and dinners and as the children grew older insisted they take part in both the planning, cooking and cleaning up. When I embarked upon home schooling I was to barely notice weekends because every moment of my time was occupied.   But if I did from time to time stop to think about it, I knew for certain that my aversion to weekends had not diminished and always Sundays in particular were most disliked.

When our children finally flew the nest and established their own lives, two of them in far flung parts of the globe and the family home was sold, we found ourselves living in what was called a City Fringe Unit.   Once again the dreaded Weekends threatened to re-assert themselves although admittedly Himself seemed oblivious to the problem and happily planned trips into the city to Jason’s Second Hand Bookshop followed by Mezze for lunch with a glass or two of red wine for him and white for me.   There was a limit to how many books we could accommodate, however and so from time to time various title ranges were sold back.  Not a bad way to spend a lazy Saturday and often on Sundays we might drive out to other down-sized couples with time on their hands without their adult children.    Kevin and Shirley famous for their Sunday lunch parties were a popular destination at that time.  

It was a shock when the blood cancer, quiescent for so long suddenly decided to rear up from its hiding place and demonstrate that all those abnormal tests over the years were indeed an inescapable Truth.   How could that be fair?    He had always been strong, well able to take cartons of rubbish downstairs and deposit them in the bins but all of a sudden he couldn’t and once he started the chemotherapy he was unable to even carry bags of groceries in from the car.   I cursed what I had always believed to be the minor arthritis of the wrists and thumbs that prevented me from easily doing so.  Life suddenly became more complicated.   Patrick would come by after violin classes on Saturday and help with the week’s most troublesome tasks.  Sometimes he brought books with him from Unity Book Shop.  Titles he thought Himself would enjoy – and he did enjoy them.   Sunday now stood forth determined and almost radiant as the most dreaded day of the week.

Then came the time when if I had any sense whatsoever, which I appeared to lack completely, I would have known he was dying.   There was a steady stream of visitors to that depressing room at St Andrew’s.   Golfing friend Jack came most days and sat with him, not saying much but a comforting presence nevertheless.    The Barfoots came and on that last Saturday I asked Chris to say some prayers and he did.    I felt liberated by them and drove home to have a shower and change and then stayed home because the rain was so heavy and I dislike driving in the rain.   That telephone call just after five am on Sunday morning and filled every corner of the house.  I knew what it was about, what the message was going to be so I answered in a strangely unhurried way.     I rang Patrick and together we drove along the waterfront, past Rangitoto, past the suburbs where we had lived during all those growing up years of the children, back to St Andrew’s.    We both felt guilty because he had died completely alone.   And although I have never spoken of it, I knew he would die on a Sunday.  It remains still the day of each week I most dread.