Hugh

When Nigel and I were undergraduates, we made friends to last us the rest of our lives.  You know who you are.  Thanks for bearing with us.

One of those was Hugh.   

After university, we saw each other regularly including going to stay on the houseboat he was renovating in Cambridgeshire and where, for a time, the loo lacked not just a door but even a wall.

We got on well with his wife, Morag, and when kids came along, ours were a similar age to theirs.  In particular, Pascoe and Calum enjoyed making things together.  

Hugh’s work took them to Lyons where memorably one of our kids rode a bicycle down their apartment balcony (Why?) and knocked their carefully-aligned satellite dish flying.  How were they going to access BBC news now? 

But later, Hugh moved his family to “Silicon Valley”, California, (hopefully not just to avoid more home-wrecking visits from us, but for his work, designing microchips).  Hugh was no letter-writer and neither were we.

However, I’d thought we might catch up again now that we were becoming empty nesters.  It was on my To Do List.

But the other day, Morag sent us bad news.  Hugh had been overtaken by a fatal heart attack while out with his local hiking group. 

What can I say, except that if there is some dear old friend that you’ve been meaning to get in touch with, do it now.

The Key

Often, the place where your child goes to university is a long way away; in order to deliver them there you will have driven several hundred miles using only your wing mirrors because the car is so full of belongings that the rear-view shows only a teetering heap of books about to fall on your child’s head.

So when you get there, you want to be able to pick up the key, and you want the key to work.

In early January, having driven to Edinburgh we called at the office where Pascoe had arranged to pick up his keys only to discover that it was so soon after Hogmanay that nobody had turned up.  It was raining stair rods as Pascoe ran from office to office. 

Finally he demanded that the accommodation department pay for a B&B for him until the key was supplied.  Magically somebody agreed to break into the office and extract his key.

When we dropped Perran off at Bristol in the heat of July, he picked up the key all right, yet when he tried to open the door, the lock revolved but nothing happened.  The office was now closed.  

Low on options, we stood on the baking doorstep with each family member in turn rotating the key.  Perhaps one of us had magic hands?

Then housemate Juliette arrived.  Would her key do better?  Nope.  Round it went without catching on anything. 

 After a couple of hours of phone calls and championship relay grumbling, we located the landlord and he came along. 

If he had complimented us on our sun tans we would have punched him.

His key didn’t work either, so he broke in.  It was disconcertingly easy.

For a moment, we were glad to be in the house, but the pleasure was fleeting.  It turned out Perran’s room was on the second floor and that was where all his things needed to be.  All his winter clothes are now in there, so let’s hope his key works in September.

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Removals

Today, I just squeezed on to a packed train to London.  I was crushed kneecap to kneecap with a bunch of other people… in the middle of a heatwave.  We eyeballed each other.  Either we could get tense and irritable…

 …or we could chat.

Luckily, three massive suitcases  on the floor created a slight clearing.  It turned out that two of them belonged to a family on their way to Istanbul and fellow passengers suggested they visit the Spice Market, the Blue Mosque.

But that still left one enormous suitcase unaccounted for.  A woman my age had her hand on it.

“Going somewhere nice?”

“Actually, there’s nothing in this suitcase,” she replied, “It’s empty.” 

People were listening now.

“My daughter has split up with her boyfriend.  I’m going to his flat to pick up her stuff.   Then I’m going to bring this case back on the train again, full.”

“In this heat?”

“What a horrible job.”

“Your daughter is lucky to have you.”

“These things happen,” she said.

When her stop came up, we all wished her good luck and watched her small figure trundling her suitcase resolutely up the platform.

I sometimes grumble about driving for two or three hours each way to shift the goods and chattels of one or other child at university.  I’m going to try to grumble less.

Bag of Poo

Not the best photo, but then the butterfly was up a tree.

On Saturday afternoon, some of our friends were at weddings, others sitting in their in their summer gardens. But Nigel, Carenza and I were traipsing round a nearby wood, carrying a bag of poo.  Or rather I was.   Carrying, that is.  And before you ask, it was horse poo. 

We were on a butterfly safari.  Why the poo?  Because, although we appreciate all butterflies, we were after big game – the purple emperor.  And the purple emperor lives in the treetops, only dropping to earth for especially tasty morsels like carrion or poo. 

We walked to a bench in the wood, laid out an enticing sample and waited.  We saw a red admiral, ringlets, meadow browns, hedge browns.  And a man, lurking in the bushes.  

After a while, we strolled on and laid out another poo picnic.  This time, we saw a small tortoiseshell, a green fritillary, two different kinds of skipper and a marbled white.  And that man, lurking in the bushes again.  Like me, he had binoculars round his neck.

“Are you, um, looking for wildlife?”

“Yes.  I’m here for white admirals, but I haven’t seen any yet.”

So there were white admirals about were there?   Not quite as magnificent as the purple emperor, but still a fabulous creature.

After an hour, all the poo was gone.  

In a slightly rubbish way, we decided to give up and go home. 

And there, above our heads, perched halfway up a hornbeam, was a white admiral.  For some time we watched it chasing other butterflies out of its territory, then settling again, on guard.  This spirited, rare butterfly was very nearly what we had come for. 

But more than that.  If I ever get so old that I don’t fancy taking a chance on carrying a steamy bag of poo round a wood on a hot day, the end will be nigh.  It will mean I’ve grown up, and I so don’t want to do that.  

Black and White

“You’d better hang on to some of that old uniform,” I told Carenza.

That was a year ago when she was gleefully bagging up the whole lot ready to pass on to younger inmates, er, pupils.

“White blouse, black skirt – could be useful for jobs like waitressing.”

Or, as it turns out, formal exams and getting “trashed” afterwards.

(Apparently the pointy hats weren’t part of the uniform.)

Beach Barbecue

In St Ives there were a lot of notices about things one shouldn’t do (see earlier post), so I wondered if barbecuing on the beach might be prohibited too.

In the local co-op, I asked the shop assistant,

“Is there any problem with having a barbecue on the beach?”

“Yes,” he replied, “You’ll get sand in everything.”

But a beach barbecue on a warm evening looks magical.  What could be better?   Usually, our family is fairly quiet about it.  It probably looks as if we are enjoying sunset over the waves.  In fact, the shop assistant is right - we are concentrating very hard on not letting our courgette kebab slither off our bendy paper plate and into the sand.

This time, we found some convenient flattish rocks and perched at the sea’s edge.  But we were a tad uncomfortable, aware that for the nearby diners in one of St Ives’ trendy, faux-casual seafood restaurants we were The View. 

And to add to our self-consciousness, we were pretty sure that a family we knew were in there looking out at us.

Bravely, I sliced up a water melon in mid-air.  One false move and it would get covered in grit. 

Perhaps we should have paid up and gone to the trendy restaurant too.

But as I stood up to wash my hands in the sea, I saw we had guests – two curious seals had arrived and were bobbing only a few feet away, regarding us with great liquid eyes. 

However good the ambience in the restaurant, it couldn’t compete with that.

School Trip Flashback

 We just had our family holiday in St Ives.  My schoolfriend Jennie came over to visit and we reminisced.

Our year at school had very few  trips. I like to think that it was because we got ‘lost’ in the process of going comprehensive.  Not at all that we had a reputation for being a bit “lively”. 

However, just as we were about to leave school, it was as if somebody had said,

“Hey – those sixth formers – why are they so pale and pastey looking?”

“It’s because they’ve never been allowed out.”

So at last we had a trip to St Ives.  We could go to the beach or the shops but there was just one thing we must not on any account do.

We must not take a motor boat out into the bay. 

Hadn’t Mrs Stansfield seen any horror movies?  As soon as she had said that, it became…inevitable.

It wasn’t me.  I was with Gill worthily visiting the newly opened Barbara Hepworth studio, where the thing that left the biggest impression on me was an enormous spider with an abdomen like an unripe cherry tomato which lurked in the conservatory. So much for Modernism.

Meanwhile, by the harbour a lifeboatman was donning his sou’wester.  Apparently a couple of schoolgirls had taken a motor boat out into the bay, the engine had cut out and they were in some sort of distress. 

As the lifeboat slid down the slipway, Mrs Stansfield stood by looking thoughtful.

“Has anybody seen Jennie recently?”

In fact, everybody who was watching the drama in the bay could see Jennie and her friend Sheila frantically attempting to restart their engine.

Since then, Jennie’s been on hundreds of school trips, but has never got into quite so much trouble again.  After all, she is the deputy head. 

Beast?

From Google Images: Beast of Bodmin Moor Skit,
or should I say, Kit.
Sadly we didn't get a picture.

Surely the advantage of being on holiday in Cornwall with a husband and son who have biology degrees is that when you spot a British mammal, they will identify it easily.

In fact, we saw and admired a number of seals relaxing in the surf.  “Look,” we cried, “Seals.”

Then,  coming back late at night from the Minack Theatre, we had to slow down to allow a badger to chug across the road (appropriately, just outside the hamlet of Badger’s Cross).  “Look,” we remarked, “A Badger.”

But then on the footpath from St Ives to Zennor, we looked up and saw on a rise above us, about twenty metres away, a black creature.

 “What the hell is that?” we asked one another.

It was feline, but too large to be a domestic cat and had a big head and tufted ears.

Could it be The Beast?

Rumours have abounded for years that following closures of private menageries in the 1970s, some type of black big cat has been roaming wild in Cornwall where the climate is mild and there are stretches of untamed countryside.  Most publicity goes to the Beast of Bodmin Moor but I have also met two people who claim to have seen them near Zennor.

Whether we saw The Beast or not, I now at least have an explanation for why there are so few photos of The Beast – people are so busy trying to work out what it is that they are seeing that by the time the creature takes fright and lopes away, they still haven’t got their camera out.

The "Stupid" Pier

So when you live in a shared student house and hand-written signs start to appear in the kitchen, it's a sure sign that relationships have started to break down.
"Please do not take my food out of the fridge."
"Will whoever borrowed my cherry stoner please return it."
"Please make sure you turn the oven off when you leave the kitchen.  Please."
While on holiday in St Ives, we found another prominent case of relationship breakdown.
The notices on Smeaton's Pier made us ask "Who on earth would do that?"
"Holiday makers - that's who."

Railway

This time last year, I was wondering if that family holiday might be our last.  And it looked as if I had been right.  Due to Pascoe, Perran and Carenza’s  travel plans and summer jobs, we could not holiday together this year.

Not that their plans ever ceased to shift.  In the end, we booked a house for a fortnight in St Ives.  

Artists have chosen to reside in St Ives for the wonderful light created by the special sand.  Holiday makers have come for the beaches, the many galleries, the sub-tropical gardens. 

But we were won over by the fact that it had its own railway station.  As our children’s dates of arrival and departure changed with the ebb and flow of the tide, we remained impassive.  

We would not be driving miles to drop off/pick up.  They could just catch the train. 

In the end, we saw more of our children than I had predicted.  Only Carenza missed out on the first week.  Her absence gave us the welcome opportunity to entertain our friends Nick and Jackie.  And when she arrived, all we had to do was to go and meet the train.

What I learnt

This time last year, I was revising my Latin and reading teetering montains of books in order to be ready for the start of my PGCE course to teach Classics. 

I was apprehensive because I knew the year would test me.

And so it did.

More than once I cried. And I’m not a weepy person. 

However, I had an expectation that if I worked hard, I would succeed. 

Like a sportswoman investing in equipment, I had prepared for the course: in particular, I finally submitted to wearing glasses. (Okay, so not very much like a sportswoman investing in equipment really.)

It wasn’t so much that I had felt my eyesight was poor, it was more that once I had the glasses, I realised how much I had been missing. 

Similarly as I blundered through new challenges, I discovered my thinking had become sharper once more.

I had to be well-organised too – younger colleagues could pull an all-nighter to get an assignment out of the way, but if I did that there was no way I could have dragged myself into the classroom to face my pupils the next day.  So I had to plan ahead to make sure I got to bed in good time with my cup of cocoa.

But mainly what I’ve learnt is that as my children fly the nest my life is taking off in a different direction and I have a whole new era of usefulness ahead of me.

Two Down

Carenza, Lila and Hannah just before their prelim. exams

And finally, tonight, Carenza will be with us and our happiness will be complete.  She has finished her first year exams and has apparently been “trashed” afterwards, a process where black and white formal clothing meet with chocolate sauce and “silly string”.  This will present a laundry challenge that any promoter of washing powder might be glad to meet, but possibly a tough call for me. 

Perran and Pascoe both arrived earlier to attend my graduation, and I was much prouder of them than of the diploma in my hand.  Luckily “trashing” was not part of the scene.  They have been with Nigel and me all this week, and as ever, it’s hard to recall that it’s only a temporary state of affairs. 

Perran will soon be off travelling on a shoestring (as an undergraduate must) whereas Pascoe will return to shoulder the responsibilities of his PhD in Edinburgh. 

Carenza will have just a week with us before the boys leave.  Perhaps the only week of the summer where we’ll be a complete family.

I wonder if Carenza’s “trashing” laundry disaster will be coming with her in a plastic bag.

Even if it is, I forgive her – it will be brilliant to have her home.

Graduation

Finally, I graduated from my PGCE course. 

There was a ceremony held at the Faculty of Education.  The best thing about the day was something that none of us could have arranged no matter how hard we tried – the sun shone on the perfect lawns and cascades of roses.

 Nigel, Pascoe and Perran came along to support me and unwittingly introduced a comedy aspect to the day.  Pascoe and Perran were close in age to the other trainees while I more resembled their parents. 

How many times was it explained that day that I was the graduande, and not Pascoe?

After the speeches, the master of ceremonies asked us to applaud the families who had supported us.  The younger trainees who had perhaps received financial help and who had sometimes popped home to be pampered with proper cooking, clapped enthusiastically.

I joined in with the applause and saw both my sons looking back at me slightly quizzically.  Hadn’t I been the one supporting them in their academic endeavours?

But actually, they deserved my thanks. 

When they have returned home from University, they and their sister have cooked for Nigel and me, done their own washing, mounted war on the impressive spiders who now outnumber us.  And over and over again, they have told me they are proud of me. 

Thanks guys.

Ancient Teenagers

On Friday, the Classics PGCE students were assigned an important mission.

As prospective secondary school teachers, it was important that we understood how to introduce Classical Art to young people.

Our task was to explore the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge, and consider ways of approaching the many replicas of statues there.

We had expected semi-naked gods, goddesses and warriors, but what we actually discovered amazed us.

“The term teenager wasn’t coined until the 1950s was it?”

“I don’t think so.  Why?”

“Over there.  Look!”

“Well I never.”

What we had found was not merely a way for our pupils to relate to ancient marble sculpture – it was tangible proof that teenagers had existed far earlier than was previously thought.  The pictures confirm it:

Young discus-thrower texting

Satyr taking selfie

Back!

“Are yours back from uni yet?” ask my friends.

Some of theirs have been back for weeks.  I feel I have to give complex explanations about why my children are not back.   And actually, it is just a matter of when their exams take place and when term ends, but even so, I feel like a bit of a Nobby-no-mates.

Then suddenly through the door appeared Perran. 

We hadn’t snapchatted for some time, because I had lost interest rather:

From them – glamorous selfies in exciting venues.

From me – worried expression in front of computer.

So when he arrived, I didn’t even recognise him – I thought we were being burgled.

Happy, happy, happy.

The novelty hasn’t worn off yet.  When there’s no hot water left in the shower, I say contentedly,

“Ah – Perran is home.”

I’ve even been road-testing the vegan recipes Elizabeth gave me and the kitchen is currently stacked with cakes that haven’t risen properly and rather cracked, dry quiches – “Look everybody - no eggs.”

For his part, he’s going to have to work hard to stand in for all three of my children - not just himself but also Pascoe (who I won’t see until next week) and Carenza (two weeks). 

I hope he doesn’t get threadbare with all the hugging, like his old teddy.

Placement Over

I try not to be superstitious, but as my PGCE placement drew to a close last week, I became increasingly worried that some disaster might stop me from successful completion.

What if I dropped a heavy bundle of textbooks on my toe and shouted out expletives that would shrivel the ears of my tender charges?

What if I contracted one of those sudden and violent stomach bugs and chundered on a Year Seven, (particularly if it was one of the girls with very long curly hair)?

What if, in trying to Google a picture of the goddess Venus for the interactive whiteboard, I accidentally clicked on an unsuitable image and accidentally taught the class something that was definitely not on the syllabus?

And that re-enactment of Odysseus putting out Cyclops’s eye could have gone horribly wrong too.

But none of this happened. 

The placement is completed.

Now I have only two weeks left in faculty before the end of my course.

But what if I get a violent stomach bug and chunder on a lecturer?  What if I drop a pile of library books on a professor’s toe?  What if I….?

College Life

Since September, I have been undertaking a PGCE in Classics.  It would be an opportunity for a trip down memory lane and a taste of college life again after so many years.

The quiet of the library, the scent of polish in the corridors and a big cooked dinner in hall.

My children are all getting a crack at the hallowed halls of academia - why shouldn't I?

But it hasn't worked out.  The fact that I elected to live at home meant I had a marathon commute, so I didn't want to hang around in Cambridge at the end of lectures. 

And the location of the Education Faculty, a long way from the centre of town, prevented any casual revisiting of old haunts. 

And soon the course will be over. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had placements in wonderful schools, met literally hundreds of new people and learnt more than I knew my brain could hold. 

But perhaps I’ll allow myself to rent a room in college just for a couple of nights before the term is over, and my second chance at college life completely gone.

Frankenstein

On seeing my rave reviews for a student play in Cambridge (see previous blog – Exclusive Club), Carenza told me indignantly that the plays at Oxford were just as good. An appropriate piece was coming up – Bluestockings about the pioneers of women’s education. 

It was half term, so I was able to get to Oxford and I would meet Carenza just after her tutorial when she would naturally be taking a break anyway.   Great timing.

So great that we missed the fact that Bluestockings had actually been in performance the week before and was over.

What would we do now?

A student version of Frankenstein offered, with a devised script. 

“And devised means?”

“Means they made it up.”

The other thing I discovered about devised scripts is that they take quite a long time to perform.

But it was a true student play – they had tried stuff out and much of it had worked. 

Frankenstein meets We Need to Talk about Kevin.

Bravo.

But what I most enjoyed were the passages of high drama.  As the young actors lost themselves in the moment, their lovely posh accents, previously played-down, reasserted themselves.

Frankenstein meets Made in Chelsea.

Hmmmm.

Meet the Great Grandparents

Meet the Great Grandparents

 Pascoe can tell you that the reward for reaching maturity is to be considered trustworthy by members of older generations.  And that the consequence of this new esteem is…horrible jobs.

Recently he has braved poisonous spiders in his Cornish grandparents’ shed, and got up to his armpits in mud to mend his parents’ (our) pond.

The other day he met up with with his father at the home of his Northumberland grandparents.  No horrible jobs were scheduled.

But on spotting Pascoe, his grandfather decided that he needed the loft clearing.  Nigel and Pascoe girded their loins.  At least life-threatening fauna were unlikely to be involved this time.

In trip after trip, they heaved out boxes of junk and treasure, including the tools and chemicals that Granddad used to use for DIY. 

Nearing the end of the task, Pascoe levered out yet another  box of chemicals from behind the water cistern.  By this time, he had passed the point of curiosity, and was about to sling them when Nigel noticed that two large brown plastic canisters had names on the lid.  Familiar names.

“Pascoe, I think this could be….”

It was.

Pascoe was meeting his great grandparents. 
In ash form.

There followed an interval of thoughtful silence und unasked questions.

It was decided that they would be scattered from the local bridge into the Tyne which goes down into the sea, the same sea that carried them from England to their life’s work in Africa, and home again to retirement in Surrey.

One last job to be done for them.

Bank Hol

I used to love days out.  They were my contribution to educating my children.  I would speed-read museum information boards and regurgitate them in a form appropriate to whatever age my children  were at the time. 

If we were out on a country walk, I’d point out the flowers and birds, whether or not anybody was listening.

And we couldn’t afford a café lunch for all five of us, so the prelude to any outing was a sandwich-making epic.  I have broken the world speed record for tuna baps.

Nigel and I have continued to visit museums and galleries and to tramp off on edifying country walks,  Nowadays, we even sit down to lunch in the café, instead of heaving a backpack full of sandwiches for miles. Yet it has been somehow hollow since the children left.

But on today’s trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace, I got out my camera and notebook enthusisatically, and even purchased the children’s version of the guidebook.  As we watched a re-enactment of Celtic fighting, I videoed it on my camera.

“The kids will love this,” I said to myself.

Of course, I didn’t mean our children, I meant the children that I shall be teaching next year.  I looked up to see Nigel grinning to himself. 

“I know,” I agreed.  “I’ve found more children”.

Woman in Parliament

Bored by my inability to get everything in the frame,
a uniformed policeman kindly offered to take our photo.

My children are growing up and their interests are taking a more definite shape.  And so are those of their friends.
Dan, who has appeared regularly in this blog, currently has an internship at Westminster.  Nigel and I were completely chuffed to be taken by him on a tour of the Houses of Parliament.
In the House of Commons, we traced with our fingers the places where the despatch boxes had been rubbed shiny by the elbows of politicians.  In the House of Lords, we put on our sunglasses to view the gilded throne of the monarch, so magnificent it is almost camp.  We touched, with our own hands, the dent where Black Rod has damaged the door to the Commons with his vigorous knocking.

Emily Wilding Davison's broom cupboard.

Best of all was Dan's favourite spot  - the broom cupboard where Emily Wilding Davison concealed herself overnight so that the 1911 Census was forced to record that there was a woman in Parliament.
All around us was Puginesque detail, gilded, painted and carved, but we spent the most time photographing one another in the cleaners' cupboard.
Thanks for a wonderful evening, Dan.

Exclusive Club

Currently, at Oxbridge there is an outcry against men’s private drinking clubs and the way power is brokered there, while women are admitted only as sex objects. 

However, over the last few years, I have been delighted to discover an exclusive club for middle-aged women, where men are not admitted and where woman speaks only to woman.  I was there again at Cambridge University on Saturday night. 

The context was an extraordinary student production  of Euripides’ devastating tragedy, “The Trojan Women”.  All this was at close quarters in the tiny space of Corpus playroom.  Bethany and I happened to notice that Carol Ann Duffy was in the row in front, but in a very British way, we left her unmolested.  However, I should say that I love her poetry so much that it is actually pinned to my kitchen cupboards, so I did kinda yearn to speak to her.

The production was so intense that I wept.  Afterwards, I had to ask young Bethany, “Are you alright?”

She could only nod.

“What you’re feeling right now – that’s catharsis.”

Reeling from catharsis myself, I went to the ladies’ loo.  When I came out of my cubicle, Carol Ann Duffy was there, queueing as a middle-aged woman must.  I had my two minute conversation with her after all.  Her daughter had been one of the actors.

“Amazing production.”

“Yes, wonderful.”

Nor is she the first well-known woman I have met under similar circumstances.  So there you have it. Our exclusive club.   How soon before privileged young males start to complain about being excluded from the women’s  loos where the Wise Women hang out?

Easter tree

At Easter, we always dragged a branch of something or other into the house, decorated it with blown eggs that we’d marbled and fluffy yellow chicks with tiny beady eyes. 

This year, the dragging-the-branch-in bit went well.  During a walk in the woods, we snapped off a substantial hornbeam twig, still in bud and Pascoe carried it home. 

Then it stood in a bucket in a corner of the kitchen with family members saying to me “I expect  you’ll be putting up the Easter tree soon,” and me saying, “Yep, just as soon as I finish this dissertation/filing/lesson preparation.” 

Nothing happened for several days until just before Easter when I got back from my parents and discovered that Nigel and Carenza had sorted it.  Carenza had arranged the eggs, Nigel the chicks.  It looked positively Pascal. 

About a week ago, Nigel started to say, “You’ll be wanting to take that Easter tree down soon.” “Yep, I agreed, just as soon as I get get round to it...”

But this time, it wasn’t really the lesson preparation or the filing that was holding me up: I just didn’t want to get rid of Carenza’s handi-work.

But then the green hornbeam leaves, now fully out, began to wilt.  I packed the eggs into their boxes, watched by indignant chicks, and threw the branch out. 

I guess I’d better stop clinging on to Easter and start looking forward to the summer when my offspring will return.

Home help

When Perran and Carenza were taking their GCSEs, ASs, A2s, I tried to make sure that the food was good and that the house felt comfortable.  After all, for once they weren’t going anywhere.  

At the end of last term, Carenza arrived back when I still had three weeks of my second teaching placement and my dissertation to complete.

True to her upbringing, her first act was to bake a cake and to decorate it with a cheering message.   Accompanied by Nigel, she then went on to hoover and dust the whole place.  When Will came to visit her, he cooked for us too.  It was great to be so taken care of.

Well done, chaps.  Many, many thanks. 

Oh.  I forgot to say – you know I told you I only had one dissertation to do, well I think I might have another one to do over the summer holidays.  Honestly, I do….

Parting Gift

Pascoe was about to leave.  Nigel had already driven off with the twins. 

If you had only two hours before your oldest child disappeared off to a neighbouring country, what how would you choose to spend the time?

Well near us, there’s an old gravel pit, now a picturesque lake, where Pascoe once learned to sail.  He spent many hours in and on the water and I spent many hours by it.  To while away the hours, I used to watch the grebes.

We decided that we just about had time for a walk round the lake.

As so often, we saw the grebes with their sharply drawn plumage.  A pair of them were sitting in the water, bobbing their heads at each other.

“You know, Pascoe, for the last couple of years I’ve had it on my to-do list to see the courtship display of the great crested grebe.”

“For longer than that Mum.”

“It’s meant to be pretty spectacular.”

Disappointingly, the pair stopped head-bobbing and dived beneath the water. 

“No.  I’ve still never seen the whole display.”

“Maybe it’s just after they dive that they do it,” joshed Pascoe.

I laughed, and we walked on.

But something made me look back at the gleaming water.  The grebes had re-emerged.  Heads down, they were speeding towards one another, low in the water.

“Look!”

As we watched, the grebes met each other and somehow stood up in the water.  And finally, the male presented the female with the magical gift of a strand of weed, the clincher, the bit I’d never seen before.

Fabulous.

“That’s it, Mum, you can tick it off your list now.”

Now you see it...

For a couple of weeks, the house was full.  Deep into the morning there were lumpy figures snoring in all the beds.  Friends appeared some evenings and I was cooking each day for somewhere between five and eight people.

We were ourselves again, except better.  I felt like inviting John Boy and all the other Waltons over to show them what a really great family was like, but sadly couldn’t find their phone number.  And the weather.  Even the weather was wonderful –bright and brisk.  We tramped through bluebell woods and climbed grassy hills together with our friends the Thompsons.  We were backlit like the idyll scene in a nineteen-seventies’ film.  Think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

And then, on Bank Holiday Monday, suddenly, it was over.  Still-damp washing was crammed into suitcases.  Parting gifts of home-made wine and jam were wrapped in newspaper for the journey.  There was a lot of head-scratching round our apparently broken bicycle rack.  Finally it was resolved.  Or not.  And then Perran and Carenza scrambled into the car and were gone in a puff of exhaust.

I took Pascoe to the station a couple of hours later.  

So had the past two weeks been just an illusion?

I went back into the house and saw the heap of sheets that needed washing – no illusion at all.

Carnivorous eels?

Dan helps Pascoe and Nigel

Pascoe’s next adventure in helping elderly relations concerned Nigel and I – we needed assistance with our garden pond. 

“Will it involve killer spiders this time?” he asked suspiciously.

“Of course not,” we replied, but we didn’t quite meet his eyes  – who knew what was in there.  One friend whose goldfish were disappearing mysteriously had discovered an angry eel at the bottom of his pond.

The lining had ruptured and floated to the top of our pond.  We now had left only two of the magnificent koi carp we inherited seven years ago, and one of those looked sick.  Maybe this was the time to convert it into the wildlife pond I’d always wanted. 

Dan arrived too and together with Nigel, he and Pascoe moved the carp into a huge paddling pool and drained the pond.

What they found in the gungy bottom of the pond was not, however, a huge carnivorous eel.

“Mum,” called Pascoe, and I came out to the wonderful sight of frogs, tadpoles, dragonfly nymphs, and best of all, newts. 

The pond had already begun to turn itself into a wildlife haven.

Pascoe was my favourite person for a bit until he said,

“I’m putting the newts in this bucket in case you need their eyes for anything, Mum.”

?

Then I got the Macbeth reference – the witches making their spell. 

Thanks Pascoe. 

My new best friend

Now where did I put that poisonous spider?

The Lawn-mower of death

Photo by Pascoe - my hand shaking too much.

Pascoe has been at home with us this Easter, and as a strapping young man with ingenuity and enormous patience, older family members are taking advantage of his presence to get those awkward little jobs done. 

One such task awaited us in Cornwall.  His Granddad needed to replace his large and leaky shed, but there was heaps of stuff in it, including those conundrums – purchasing mistakes.  There were in the shed an unwieldy electric mower, a garden vacuum cleaner and a hedge trimmer which just weren’t useful to my father.   

“It seems a shame to throw them out when they’re in good condition.”

“Don’t worry, Dad, we can take them away with us and eBay or Frecycle them.” (I speak Internet)

After some token protests from my father, Pascoe waded into the depths of the shed after the items.  They were a bit cobwebby so I brushed them down. 

Pascoe got a brush too and turned the lawnmower over to clean it.  I was about to say – “Don’t bother, I’ve already done that,”  when two huge spiders appeared from behind the blades.  They had long black legs and mottled red abdomens.

“False widows!”  I shrieked.

“Oh, they’re no trouble, said my Dad, there are loads of them in the shed.”

Pascoe manfully exterminated the arachnids with fly spray. 

I needed to sit down.  We all went in for a cup of tea.  On our return, Pascoe lifted up the lawnmower to check that the large spiders were dead, but half a dozen more, smaller false widows dropped out of it and started to scuttle off.  There was clearly a nest of poisonous spiders in the workings .  I screamed and ran down the drive.

When I came back, Pascoe was dismantling the lawnmower and spraying fly killer into it.  I began to make “Don’t really want that in the car” noises. 

Dad, however, really didn’t want it cluttering up his shed any more and was reciprocating with “You said you’d get rid of it” noises.

Pascoe was now checking my identification of the spiders using his mobile phone and the web (ha!). 

“Definitely false widows.  But look here – it says their bite has never yet been fatal in the UK, and it’s usually not much worse than a wasp sting.”

“There you go,” said Dad, “You’ll be fine.”

“Dad – it’s a five and a half hour drive home on the motorway.  Have you ever heard of the film Snakes on a Plane?”

Finally I solved the issue by spotting that it was bin day and pushing the lawnmower down the drive to stand next to the bin.  We went out for a walk and when we came back the lawn-mower of death had gone.

“I paid over seventy quid for that,” muttered my father, ruefully.

That was over two days ago and Pascoe is still enjoying creeping up behind me and tickling the back of my neck.   He has learnt a lot of choice new words from me. 

Suddenly Summer

Photo by Hannah Thompson

So we wanted to make sure that we got together as a family over the summer. Over a two-week period of nagging, I extracted term dates from the offspring and we then went ahead and rented a cottage in the UK at a point when we should all have been available.  Then Perran got a Summer job and couldn’t join us.  Then Carenza realised she had exams after what should have been the end of term and would join us later.  Pascoe had succeeded in putting the time aside for us, but even so, when would all five of us be together again?

Seems like the answer is now.  At Easter. 

Offspring have appeared from each corner of the country and taken up residence.  It is as if they had never been away.  I have to keep reminding myself that this is an illusion.  I am no longer here – I am training to teach.  And my children are no longer here – they are studying.  Except that now there is food to be bought, beds to be made up, relatives to be visited.  Just like the old days.

 I look at the weather forecast.  It’s going to be cloudy.  It might rain.  There’s a chill breeze.  But whatever it says, as a family, our summer is now.

No Snow

Snow Days - so good they used to go on all night.

I had a date with snow.  My plan was that some time during the spring term there would be a snow day when it was impossible for me to drive to school and I could get on with my PGCE work.  Oh, and take a magical walk in the local wood. 

It never happened.

Floods meant that on several occasions I had to turn back and take a circuitous route to school but things never got so bad in our area that there was a complete shutdown as there is on a snow day.  And for that I should be grateful.  Grateful also that I never had to set off with a shovel and sleeping bag in my car because snow had been forecast for later.

The hedges are white now, but it is what we call in our family “blackthorn winter” – the sloe bushes put out profuse white blossom early in the year, often on the heels of snow.   So the white in the hedgerows is a herald of spring, not a remnant of winter. 

So it looks as if the risk of snow is over.

And I’m a day behind with my PGCE work.

Daughter Rediscovered

We’re on our way today to retrieve our beloved daughter from her second term at university.  Carenza’s term is much shorter than her brother at Bristol whom I will continue to miss for another three weeks.  As my friend Jenny said of her own daughter, “For all the time they’re away, they might as well be signed up with the Open University as Oxbridge.” 

But it hasn’t felt like a short time.  I have been happy all week knowing we would get Carenza back this weekend.  I have heard it said that when there is a baby in a room all eyes are drawn to its movements like a candle flame, or a fire in the hearth.  I feel the same about my much older children.  Having them back home will re-animate our now-quiet house.

Frankly, I have thought about getting a pet to replace them.  I thought a cat might work, rewarding yet somewhat unreliable and with the potential to be moody.  My offspring, if they are reading this, are expecting me now to say that a cat could never replace them, but actually, the main problem is I’m allergic to cats.

And I’m only teasing.  

How could a cat ever replace them? 

For a start, cats cannot wash up, or wield a hoover….

Shoop Shoop

This is the longest I have ever left it between blogs.

“Oh”, you might say, “I suppose that now the children have left home, you have nothing to write about.”

The truth is, so much has happened that I haven’t had time to shape it into words.

I have visited Perran in Bristol and Pascoe in Edinburgh; attended a couple of job interviews; had a nasty cold; picked up my Classical Greek again; seen a few of the friends I’ve been missing.

And, as a constant bass level of busy-ness, I’ve been preparing and delivering lessons in subjects and with age groups that are new to me. 

Looking back, the maddest thing was teaming up with the four classics teachers in the school where I am on placement to deliver a synchronised dance to the Shoop Shoop Song by Cher to 800 over-excited pupils as part of a charity day.    Coming in the middle of everything else, it barely even made me nervous.

But it has left lasting scars – even finding a space to rehearse was a masterpiece of subterfuge.  Now, whenever I see a “meeting in progress” sign on the outside of a shut office door I will know that inside there is a chorus line of Latin teachers shoop-shooping away.

Surprise

Carenza's birthday at uni.

We’ve been restraining our parental instincts in order to give the twins some space at uni.  On their birthday recently, we didn’t invite them home nor did I arrive on either of their doorsteps with cake and candles. 

But on the Friday evening just after their birthday, Carenza turned up at our house.  She had put a few history books in a bag and caught a train home.

We went for a country walk on Saturday morning and spent the afternoon with our books in front of the fire.  Compared with the pressure cooker of college life, dull domesticity  obviously looked attractive to Carenza, just for a weekend.

However, although Carenza was mostly stretched out dozily on the big red sofa, her social faculty was alert and she always had one eye fixed on her texts, tweets and facebook.  Arguably, her mind was still at college, but she had managed to teleport her body home for free food.   But quite soon, her schoolfriend Cara appeared and out they went together, and our nest was empty once more.  

Carenza went back to uni just after Sunday lunch.  We were really pleased she’d come to see us.  Maybe we didn’t need to have bent over backwards to give her space.  Or maybe she felt able to come home BECAUSE we gave her space.

Commute 2

Roman Surveyor planning my commute
a couple of millennia ago

The dull crump of metal on metal accompanied by the crunching sound of plastic and light bulbs is one I’m aiming to avoid. 

My first PGCE placement took me on a serpentine switchback drive through the wilds of North Hertfordshire, on a route punctuated by skid marks and bunches of flowers.

But my second placement to a school just north of London involves a very different commute.  Appropriately for a classics teacher, my route lies along the Roman road of Watling Street.  The advantage is that it is dead straight; the disadvantage is that I can therefore see just how far ahead of me the traffic jam stretches. 

I am no longer fearful of colliding with a deer, but on the other hand,  I have already aroused a certain amount of low-level grumpiness (beeping, flashing, you know…) by nipping into gaps that I thought were big enough for my car, but apparently nobody else did.

Saw my first crash last week (crump, crunch), but am comforted that what we’re looking at here is mainly slow-motion prangs and undramatic shunts.  I’m hoping I’ll escape this, but at least, if I don’t, it’s unlikely to arise in bunches of flowers marking the spot afterwards.

So what did the Romans do for us…..?

Birthday!

Perran and Carenza’s nineteenth birthday is approaching fast.  Over Christmas, they thought they might hold a big party to which they could invite loads of friends old and new – AT HOME.

“It’ll be great – everybody can stay over.  What do you think, Mum?”

I can’t think of anything nicer than a party with all Perran and Carenza’s friends and a chance to meet the people who they are spending their time with, but I said no.

They looked puzzled – we’ve always been a bit of a party house, and I’ve never said no before.

Fact is, there are two kinds of party – ones that get bigger than they were meant to be and ones that get smaller.  I really dislike the ones that shrink.

Having cleaned the house upstairs and down and stocked up on crisps and pizzas, the last thing I want is not to be taken up on my hospitality.  In fact, I think that FaceBook ought to have a special sound alert for when guests drop out of a party at the last minute.  Probably a sort of “Wah-wah” noise.

I anticipated that what with assignments, sporting fixtures, university social events and the time and money required to travel to our house, the planned party might have roused initial enthusiasm, then dwindled to nothing.

So I said no. 

And I’m sure that when they are celebrating surrounded by friends at uni, the twins will realise it was a good call.

Space

We were near Oxford today, but failed to call in on Carenza. 

Oxford’s not much more than an hour from where we live and we have good friends there so it’s on our “flightpath”. 

When I went to university, aged eighteen, the journey took me seven hours, Nigel , around six.  We were secure in the knowledge that our parents would never turn up unexpectedly, and in my case, never at all.  We might have been colonising the moon for all we saw of our families.

We wallowed in what felt like an outrageous degree of independence and freedom.  I rang home once a week, Nigel once a term.   Since we were the eldest, both sets of parents had our younger siblings still at home to fuss over so there was no guilt.  

With Pascoe, Perran and Carenza, I often feel that I would like to see them, but I also know that what they need is time away from us.

So, as we drove past the end of the road where Carenza lives, we both waved, and shouted “Hello Carenza,” but we thought we’d allow her some space.