Unplanned Garden

We moved to this house a year ago, and the back garden was a recently-turfed green rectangle.  It was without features.

We really needed to plan carefully what we did with it, not just rush in with a shovel.

As a result, we have done nothing.

We attempted to watch the Chelsea Flower Show footage for inspiration, but were overwhelmed with shame and guilt when we saw the achievements of others.

On our patio is a crowd of around 30 plants in pots, cuttings brought from our last garden . 

One by one they are beginning to fall be the wayside – too wet or too dry or too sluggy.

And it matters because so many of our plants are gifts from friends and relations, so our garden will grow layers not just of colour, but also of meaning.

But Nigel has saved the day by rushing in with a shovel.  He has established a holiday camp in a sunny corner of the garden. 

Here our plants will be able to spread their roots and thrive, before we divide them up and move them on once again to new carefully-planned positions.

One day, the technology will be developed that will detect the noises plants make.  And when that happens, it will be able to prove that our now happy flowers are purring.

Worried

Our family usually says a little prayer before meals.

On Sunday Nigel and I are thanking God for our soup and go on to ask a blessing on Carenza taking her finals and Perran his end-of-year exams.

We have just looked up and raised our spoons when Nigel’s mobile gives the bright sound of a text arriving.

It says, “Avalanche has blocked path.  Having to go around the long way.”

Our eyes meet.

Amid the exam stress we have forgotten that Pascoe and Matt are climbing the UK’s second highest mountain, Ben Macdui.

Now we recall only too clearly the twenty mile walk to the foot of the mountain, the camping over night, the snowbound ascent and descent, the ten mile walk back to public transport.

We put down our soup spoons and add another prayer.

Sunday night we are relieved to receive a photo of Pascoe still with the full complement of limbs and without frostbite.

Guess we can go back to worrying about exams now.

Family Motto

Hannah once said, “The Harveys always go too far.”

Probably it was after one of our joint family outings where somebody (usually David) got water thrown over them.  Or maybe Nigel or I had made a joke about s_x.  Maybe one of us had done a little dance in a public place.  Possibly all of the above.

Pascoe, Perran and Carenza felt that it would make an appropriate family motto.

It remained only for me to translate it into Latin.

“semper longius”

semper means always.  But longius can mean either further or too far.

So a stranger will believe we have a wholesome aspirational family motto, “always further”

Only those who are acquainted with us will know the true meaning: “always too far.”

But then, they could probably have guessed that anyway.

Foraging

Nigel and I started foraging as newly weds on the slopes of Penshaw Hill above the River Wear. We had very little money and the wild blackberries and crabapples were frankly welcome.

And a forager can always tell who their friends are.

Autumns past, we have fried up a bunch of knobbly, unfamiliar toad stools and served them up on toast to a group of… “But wait – where did everybody go?  They were here a minute ago.”

At least Spring foraging is less controversial.

Recently, I’ve made a load of wild garlic pesto (not to be eaten the night before a big meeting).

And pictured is my variation on saag aloo, made with three cornered leek.

So thirty years after we began, foraging has become fashionable. 

Now, in one fell swoop, we can boost not only our diet, but also our smug middle class credentials.

Fair Weather Friends

Last weekend I had composed a careful To-Do List of work tasks and household chores.  But, as ever, the sight of a long list of jobs did not make me wish to gird my loins (whatever that means). In fact, the opposite.  (Is it possible, or even decent, to UNgird one’s loins?)

And then the weather was gorgeous.  All blue and green and Mayey.  And there was every possibility that this actually was the only British Summer that we would get. 

Tossing the To-Do List over my shoulder, I got out the OS map.

I rang friends.

I had a great walk with Rosie and she gave me a tutorial which would be valuable in taking my Selfie Project forward.

And on Sunday, Nigel and I joined Jenny and Terry (with spaniels, Hamish and Boris) at Wendover Woods.  Jenny  proved that even though the car park was jam packed, we only had to walk for ten minutes to completely evade the milling Spring crowds.

This weekend, sure enough, temperatures had dropped by nearly 10 degrees and I began to snivel with an unseasonal cold. 

But by next weekend I aim to be well again.

So that I can tidy up my To-Do list?

Nope, so that if the sun shines again, we can get out in the countryside for another walk with our friends.

Projects

My great worry is that my children do not have enough to do.  After all, revising for degree exams can’t be that hard.

And FaceBook’s gone awful quiet so they really can’t be doing that much.

What they need is wholesome projects.

In order to give them a worthwhile occupation and fill all that spare time, I have posted them crystal trees, cress farms, a cress hedgehog and a magic bean.

All they have to do is add water.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the washing up awaits me.

All I have to do is just add water, but suddenly I am far too busy too.

A Room of One’s Own

The people who owned our house before us had annexed a room from the back of the garage.  The result is that the only type of car which would now fit in the front of the garage is a Smart Car. A Smart Car on a diet. 

However, Nigel has packed all his Man Things into the remaining garage and although its capacity is compromised, its masculinity is not.  If you need an adjustable spanner or a torque wrench, that is where you will find it.

But, having created the new room at the back of the garage our predecessors seemed unsure of what to do with it.  When we were prospective buyers, they didn’t really want to show it to us. 

They hedged. 

We insisted. 

The wooden door creaked open.  There was nothing except, against the opposite wall, an antique piano, and in the middle of the floor, a heap of straw and a live chicken.

Ourselves, we have no need of a Chicken-and-Piano Room, but we have not been short of ideas. 

Nigel dreamt of a still-room for his wine-making.  I yearned for a workshop for my enamelling.  Eventually I won on the grounds that his hobby can be pursued in the kitchen while each of my pots of enamel powder sports its own little skull and cross-bones label.

Magnanimously, Nigel built shelves and installed a beautiful workbench for me.

As Virginia Woolf once advocated, I now have a room of my own.

Crafty

For odd periods of my life, I have been too busy to pick up a paintbrush or wield a needle.

With my new responsibilities as a teacher, now is one of them.

But whenever Carolyn and I have met up over the years, we have taught each other crafts. 

We were meeting up at Bank Holiday and I was not going to be defeated.

I would bring the gear to do microwave silk painting (don’t ask).

Carolyn would supply the kit to crochet an owl.

Crochet an owl.

“You do crochet, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.  Of COURSE I crochet.”

Carolyn has always been (as TS Eliot once said of Ezra Pound) il miglior fabbro.

Her silk scarf turned out vivid and dashing.

However, when I attempted the owl, I kept accidentally adding in more stitches.  Soon my crochet could no longer be viewed even as an obese owl.  It had taken on the characteristics of a fruit bowl.

Looking at me almost cross-eyed with concentration, Carolyn leant over and said gently,

“Why don’t you stop now?  You can have my owl.”

Thank you, Carolyn.

Without kids

When we first had our children we were living in the North East.  Carolyn and David lived close by and they are Pascoe’s godparents.  We have now lived in the South East for nearly eighteen years but have kept alive the friendship between our two families.

Sometimes we meet up for a long weekend in Derbyshire, the midpoint. 

Nigel and David haul gallons of real ales, sacks of gastro-crisps.

Carolyn and I bring a craft to teach one another.

This Bank Holiday would be the first time without any of our kids.  Would it be okay?

We had plenty of time to chat and plenty to chat about.  The kids probably picture us discussing them and their plans, and we’ll let them think that.  In fact most of the conversation was actually about us, our jobs, our hobbies, our churches and communities.

With four of us rather than nine, we could easily opt to eat out.  Gone were the days of Carolyn and I stood grimly side by side at the kitchen bench, me slapping margarine on dozens of rounds of bread, her dolloping the tuna mayo.

We had modest lie-ins – not the doze marathons of teen-age children.  We walked modest walks, then chatted over salad lunches.

Did we think of the kids at all?  I would love to say “Did we, Hell?” but in fact they each have in their inbox texts showing lambs and bluebells. 

So we do miss them – but even so, life goes on.

Bluebells

When I scroll through my photos, there is a visual key to the turning of the year.  My pictures turn from the flamboyant golds of Summer hedgerows, through the copper of Autumn woods to the iron of Winter fields.  These are the walks I have taken with my friends and families.  And in Spring, the colour has always changed to a purply blue.

But this year, I set out with my girlfriends and we were surprised to see thronging the woodland floor, a host not of thousands of bluebells but of hundreds of sightseers.  There were so many that they were trampling the flowers!  The narrow paths had spread to become great muddy runways.  The pools of bluebells were clogged with idiots taking selfies.

It seems the National Trust has been advertising bluebells and people have listened.

I’m torn: is it good that more people are getting out in the countryside, or bad that they are wrecking it?

The next week we walked to a lesser-known wood far from a car park. 

The undisturbed bluebells lapped up to the edge of the path and the air above was freckled with bright green hornbeam leaves.  We sighed happily and took our annual photos, none of them selfies. 

And above our heads appeared the first swallow.

Badge of Honour

Clearing out a drawer, I finally found it.

I’ve been looking for it for years and there it was, in my hand. At last.

I’d heard it could be worth a fortune.  Attractions offer free entry to somebody with A BLUE PETER BADGE.

I checked out the website. 

Yep, serious scrolling was required to view ALL of the attractions involved.

“You are gold, my little badge.”

There was a slight catch – badgeholders were only admitted free “when accompanied by a full-paying adult.

That would be okay.  Nigel just about qualifies as an adult.

But what was this?  “Badgeholders must also present a valid pass.”

That would be fine too.  In the envelope, I still had a copy of my letter signed by Peter Purviss, John Noakes and Valerie Singleton.  That must be the “pass”, mustn’t it?

I checked with a colleague who had younger children.

According to Georgina, ankle-biters may now simply write to Blue Peter and they will get a badge.

WHAT!?! 

I had spent days painting an intricately detailed imaginative recreation of a yeti in order to be a runner up in one of the Blue Peter art competitons.  Mine was a Badge of Honour.

Discovering that all you had to do now was write was nearly as bad as, back in the day, seeing Valerie hold up the winning picture and realising that the kid had copied an illustration out of The Phantom Tollbooth.  Come to think of it, that was probably the moment when a tiny seed of cynicism was planted deep within my young soul.

But there was another problem.  Georgina told me that to get a valid pass, I had to be under sixteen.

The world has changed since my heady Blue Peter days: it has become a cold and cruel place.

Revision

The offspring are safely back at University and I am back at school.  As I prepare my Year 11s and Year 13s for their exams, I think about my own children cramming.

During exam periods  I used to try to provide some small treat for our children to look forward to – chocolate biscuits when they got in.  Watching telly in front of the fire at the end of the evening. 

But now, long distance,  I can’t create a sanctuary any more. 

Even if I posted chocolate biscuits, and even if they survived the journey, the welcome would be a tad tepid. 

“Don’t you know they’re bad for you, Mum?”

At least we can use texts and WhatsApp to jolly one another along.  True, it is banter rather than a deep sharing of empathy.  But at least it’s communication.

Although, it can go wrong. 

Last night, Perran and I had each been out with friends for a curry and, I suspect, a drink, and we were comparing notes by text.  I asked him how his thali had been.

“What on earth do you mean, Mum?”

 I checked my text.  Autocorrect had changed it to “thalidomide”.  

Come to think of it, Autocorrect is clearly ignorant of curries, as over Easter I accidentally asked Nigel to order an “organ josh” for me. 

“I thought you were vegetarian, Clare!”

Even in spite of the biscuit deficiency, I hope their Mum’s silly mistakes keep the kids grinning through their revision.

Foundlings

All the children made it home for Easter. 

Exams are afoot, especially finals for Carenza, so we had a quiet time. 

Except for Saturday when we visited London.

First, Nigel, Pascoe, Perran and I visited the Foundling Museum.  Carenza would join us in the afternoon, having done some work.

At the Foundling Hospital, it was heart-breaking to see the tokens which desperate mothers had left with the illegitimate babies whom they had no means to raise – a scrap of embroidered ribbon, a tiny ring.  They hoped that their child would survive and seek them out again one day.

Handel had been a great patron of the Hospital and on the top floor were some leather arm chairs which played his music through speakers  at ear-height.

That was when I realised how much the previous term had tired me and how much I needed a rest.

I found it easy to sit down, hard to get up. I listened to the music and thought about the little foundlings.

After the sadness of the Foundling Museum, we were to meet up with Carenza  for the zingy Botticelli exhibition at the bustling V&A.

Even after only a few hours of separation, my heart gave a little jump when I saw her face through the crowd.  All five of us entered the exhibition chatting together. 

Time to count my blessings.

Sensible

I guess I kind of assumed there’d be a natural point in my life where Sensible would kick in.  Perhaps my thirtieth birthday.

My thirtieth birthday is now as far behind me as the imaginary line which Carenza sometimes tells me I’ve crossed.  And Sensible is still not fully in charge.

Last weekend, we took the family to Paris.   On Friday night we were returning from a bar.  The street was littered with rubbish and I spotted a green cardboard arrow, with something about “lampes” written on it.

Could it be?

From the debris, I pulled the perfect ironic gift for a man who recycles lightbulbs for a living.

I handed Nigel a sign entreating “Recycler ses lampes”

He was thrilled.

 “Ah,” said Pascoe, “The perfect student night out – having  a drink and returning home with a bit of street signage.  Only thing missing is a traffic cone.”

Next day, Pascoe and I got told off in the Louvre.  We had spotted a niche from which the statue had been removed.  Pascoe got into it and I photographed him, complete with label.  The custodian scolded us then turned around only to witness the large Japanese party who had been watching us scrambling into the same niche for selfies one by one.

However, last night, back in my motherland, I finally found Sensible when I was the designated driver for Perran and my old friend Jennie on a trip to the pub in Perranporth.  At the end of the evening, we had just returned to the car when they spotted a nice pint glass left on the wall.  Jennie felt Perran should have it for his student flat.

“It’s fair game if it’s not in the pub.”

As Jennie started to leap from the car, you can tell that I was under the control of Sensible, because I said,

“Be careful not to bang the car door against the wall.”

And I’m afraid that’s about as sensible as I got.  The glass went home to Bristol today.

The Selfie Project Continues

Recent attempts at self improvement have led to me attempting to master the selfie.2012 - my very first selfie.  Frankly blurred.

2012 - my second selfie - poorly lit.

2016 - at last, somebody worth taking a selfie with - the goddess Athena.

But actually, that was only a practice for the main event - another selfie with Carenza.

Ski Adventure

Never learned to ski and am now too scaredy.

Nigel, however did learn to ski, although he hasn’t had the opportunity for 30 years.

Pascoe didn’t learn to ski – his school’s ski trip was to the USA and was too expensive. (Clearly the only reason they didn’t book Mars or Venus is because there’s no snow.)

But then Pascoe moved to Edinburgh.

When there’s snow in the Cairngorms (and it’s not too fierce), intrepid skiers leap into a car and head for Glenshee.

When we visited Pascoe he was itching to go back there.  

It wasn't something we'd planned on, but when would Nigel and Pascoe ever get another chance to ski together?

Nigel hired a car.  Pascoe divided up his outdoor clothes between the two of them.  I bought them some thick gloves. 

I thought wistfully of staying in Edinburgh and going shopping, but if there were any injuries, I would be needed to drive back.

Never mind, I would take my book of Greek myths and sit sipping a hot chocolate  in the elegant ski café watching the scene.  It would be glamorous.

However, when we arrived the café was a complete zoo.  It was a brilliant mass of tired kids and patient Mums, all jostling on the hard benches while snow melted all over the floor.  People were chatty.  But the queue for tea was out the door and looping back through the blizzard. I didn’t manage much reading and even less hot chocolate.

The boys had a great day.  Nigel had easily recalled his technique.  Despite a fall or two, nobody got hurt.

And my reward? 

Up there in the Cairngorms I saw a pair of golden eagles and a small flock of snow buntings a good outcome for a bird lover.

Easter Mystery

Now that my children are 21, 21 and 24 I thought the time for Easter egg hunts had perhaps passed. 

When I picked Carenza up from Uni, she said

“I told my friends about our annual Easter egg hunt and they thought it was sweet.”

Later that afternoon, I bought around two dozen little fair-trade Easter eggs, each wrapped in gold foil.

On Easter morning I hid them round the garden.  There were so many that I ran out of hiding places.

However, due to the clocks going back, it was a scramble to get out to church, so there was no time to hunt the eggs.

Never mind, they were safely wrapped in gold foil.

They would wait.

After church, some friends came back with us for lunch. 

The egg hunt was postponed again.

Finally, about five hours after I had hidden them, Pascoe, Perran and Carenza went out to look for the eggs. 

They found only seven.

We have two theories:  one is that the vicar who lives next door vaulted the fence and stole our chocolate.  If this proves to be true, we shall certainly be converting to Methodism.

The alternative is that the magpie, lured by the winking gold foil, has taken the eggs and that somewhere they are glimmering inside its nest.

Later, we spotted a magpie seeming to have trouble taking off and flying heavily across the field. 

Looks like the vicar’s in the clear.

Impatience

To accompany the recent bleak weather, I have had a long period of head cold and at work, assessment. Thursday was to be my first day off for some time. 

The forecast was for soft sunshine.

I had arranged to get my hair cut at last, to have coffee with Graham, a walk with Rosie.

But at 7.30am, before I had even achieved my planned lie-in, the doorbell awakened me from sleep.

A paramedic had brought Nigel home after a cycling accident on his way to work.

He had banged his head and cut his face, and suffered some concussion but, thanks to the helmet, was otherwise unharmed.

I cancelled my hair appointment and coffee with Graham and spent the morning in A & E.  At least I caught up on some marking.

The doctor was reassuring, but I should keep an eye on Nigel for twenty-four hours following a head injury.

I cancelled the walk with Rosie.

Nigel wanted taking into town in order to replace his broken glasses. 

But the “quick trip to get a quote for the insurance” turned into an hour and a quarter of buying new glasses. 

I hadn’t brought my marking with me this time.

I became grumpy.

Later, when it was time for Pilates, I went anyway.

I whinged to the others about my disappointing day. 

“Oh,” said James, “Lots of people seem to have been having bike accidents recently – one of my friends smashed his pelvis.  Another shattered his knee.”

And that was when I realised it was time to make the gear-shift from “resentful” to “grateful that God was watching over us.”

Bike Helmet

Nigel and I have always been sticklers for bike helmets. 

Because how could we insist that our children wear them if we didn’t ourselves.

Sometimes, my helmet has been joggling around on the top of my up-do, but I still wore it so I could be self-righteous with the offspring.

On Thursday, when a nice paramedic delivered Nigel home, we were very glad he had been wearing one.

He has a memory blank for the actual incident, but his last recollection is of a car trying to overtake him on a mini-roundabout.

He came to with a circle of faces above him.  Always a sign that something has gone badly wrong for you.

From the bits of him that hurt, we think he skidded on the corner and hit his head on the curb.

If he hadn’t been wearing the helmet….

So, in this blog, no jokes or special thoughts.  Just one message – wear the helmet.

Guiilotined

Over the last two weeks, through coincidence, I have been formally assessed twice at work.  The first time it was myself personally, the second, as a member of my department.

The garnish on the whole nut roast (to subtly alter the icing/cake metaphor) is that over the whole two weeks I have been suffering from a nasty head cold.

Probably brought on by the stress of assessment.

It is not just our department which is being assessed and the indications are plain in the staff room.

One sign of a very new teacher is that they spend a disproportionate amount of time around the school guillotine.

For that is where one makes exciting resources –little puzzles and top trumps cards.

Now in my third year of teaching, my relationship with the cutting machine has rather cooled.

But this week it is the old lags who are clustered round the guillotine once more in some sort of nostalgie de coup, preparing fascinating lessons for the assessment.

At this point, it becomes noticeable that while we have three large hi-tech photocopiers, we have only one guillotine.

What with the stress and the jostling, it is only a matter of time before somebody loses all the fingertips on their left hand.  I bet they didn’t put that in the health and safety assessment for all these inspections.

And on the lesson assessment form, there will probably be a criticism for getting blood all over the children’s work sheets. Ho hum.

Mother’s Day with added bacteria

I thought Pascoe had forgotten Mother's Day, but it seems not.  These arrived via WhatsApp.

"I've made you a hand made card out of genetically modified bacteria but unfortunately it's illegal to send it in the post, so I thought I'd send you the pictures instead."

Left - "Happy Mother's Day" in Latin (apparently)
Right - our family

A sea anemone smiling - long story, but highly significant to me.

Star

Last year Perran was thrilled to be selected as a dancer in Bristol’s FUZE show – catwalk fashion, dance numbers and songs by local musicians, with profits to charity.  This year he was back as a dance director. 

Nigel, Carenza, Perran’s great friend Amy and I all converged on the show.   As an older person, I still get a frisson when attending anything trendy enough to warrant a wristband.  Will I be forced to cut it off when I go to school on Monday?

I was also wearing a new top to look cool - a velvet tunic with an ethnic pattern.  So far, so good.  But it also had a deep, looped fringe.  Which caught on: Ercol chairs at home, the gear stick in the car, my own coat buttons, the handle in the ladies’ toilet. 

I t seems being cool is quite hard work.  

And I needn’t have bothered. Nobody was looking at me – the models were exquisite, the dance numbers, whether sassy or moody, were ambitious and consummately performed.

I cannot say how impressed I was at Perran’s choreography and performance.  And those of his friends.

I was even more impressed that he found time before his Saturday performance to have brunch with us and follow a trail around historic Bristol.

He’s clearly got it all under control.

Floored

Our previous wooden floor -visible again as we packed up
to move house last year.

Perran - happy with carpet in his new bedroom.

It was exciting doing up our first flat thirty years ago, the very tight budget made it a real challenge. 

However, now on our sixth house, the thrill has palled. 

From the moment we bought this house, we knew we didn’t like the floor – a worn laminate with a loud pattern mimicking badly distressed wood.  It badly distressed us.

Yet I was prepared to put up with it rather than suffer more upheaval.  But it wasn’t to be.  The floor was standing in the way of progress.

“We could build in a coats cupboard under the stairs.”

“Although we’ll have to do the floor first.”

“We need to build in some shelves in the sitting room.”

“Can’t do that until we’ve done the floor.”

So  it looks like now we’re doing the floor.  

Once, we would have asked detailed questions and examined each quote minutely.  Now, as soon as we get what seems like a fair price from somebody with an honest face, we give the go-ahead. 

All the fight has gone out of us.

So we have driven out for the day, leaving  Brakow and Alexandrov laying the floor.

“Should we have specified thicker planks?”

“Not sure.  Should we have asked them what they’ll do around the fireplace?”

We have “Bought floor in haste”.

We are now “repenting at leisure.”

However, it’ll all come out in the wash.  When we moved into our last house, we were the first of our friends to put in a wooden floor.  We went to great trouble and expense and installed beautiful, high-spec solid oak boards. 

When our friends came round, one of them tutted and said, “Still bare boards?  I’d have thought you’d have got your carpets down by now.”

Too old for selfies?

First attempt, with Fiona - not good.

It is important to learn new skills,

Apparently, it keeps the brain active and slows the onset of dementia.

So I am learning to take selfies. 

My grumpy friends say that people who take selfies look ridiculous.

But I think they look jolly.

“Look at me – I’m in front of one of the seven wonders of the world, but all that really matters is getting me and my mate in the frame.  Smiiiile!”

So far, I have taken two selfies with old friends of mine and one with Perran.  I enjoyed best the ones with people my age as we none of us know how to position ourselves for the camera and a lot of cuddling up and uneasy shifting about is involved.  Then we have to remember not to peer worriedly into the lens.  “Cheese.”

Second attempt, with Jen - getting better

Whereas youngsters are merely embarrassed at my parental incompetence.

With Perran - nearly got it -nope - finger over the lens

The only limitation I can see on my valuable new skill is that I shall never be very good at it.

I have short arms and a large face.

My selfies are doomed.

Perhaps forthcoming generations will evolve with longer arms.  And at the end of those long arms they can keep their ultra-mobile thumbs whose dexterity has developed from texting.

Ash Wednesday

The bit of dirt on my forehead is the ashen cross -
hope it doesn't give me excema like it did Alice last year.

Went to the Ash Wednesday service last night.

One of my favourite services of the year.  The other is Good Friday.

Possibly I’m better at doing the gloomy contemplative bits of my faith than the jolly rejoicing.

Lent is a time when I, along with so many others, focus on my spiritual life.  The turn of the seasons reflects my spiritual progression.  We start Lent when the branches are still bare, when fresh produce is not yet being harvested in Northern Europe and the pickles and salted meat of the Autumn before are running low. 

As the early spring swells into being, spiritual strength glows like a bank of crocuses then  gets flattened by a gail of doubt.

Like a well-plotted novel, we move inexorably toward the greatest crisis – the death of the Saviour.  Also like a great novel, there is a twist – on Palm Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph – the children in church lay down palm leaves in the aisle and one of their number, with the obligatory tea towel on his/her head,  processes over them on a toy donkey.  We all cheer. Surely it’s all going to be alright after all.

But by Good Friday, we know it isn’t – the worst has happened. 

Then Easter Sunday and, if we are lucky, blue skies and blossom.  Only with the possibility of the worst  can the best happen.  The Resurrection and the promise of a life to come, to hold onto through the trials of this world.

More than any straightforward religious text, TS Elliot’s Ash Wednesday speaks to me

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.

This is an extract.  For the full poem Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

Grown-ups

Just got back from the twins’ 21^st. 

The party was last night and today we had lunch with them and a bunch of their dear old friends at the Jericho Cafe.

People mourn as their offspring cease to be children. 

But I feel that I now have two more grown-up friends.

Except that they are younger and trendier than my other grown-up friends.

Except of course Pascoe, who is also young and trendy.

Twenty-First

The day my younger children turned eighteen was a major milestone.

For me.

For many years, I had identified myself primarily as a mother.  Everything else I did (whether paid, voluntary, or just for the hell of it) had to “fit round”.

But when they hit eighteen, I found my wings again, took off, gained a PGCE in Classics at Cambridge and got a job in a great school teaching Latin and Classical Civilisation to amazing pupils.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Except today they are turning twenty-one.  Another major milestone.

Who knows what will happen next.

Coat Hangers

 

If there is one thing that will always remind me of my children’s student years, it is coathangers.  When we delivered Carenza to her student room recently, the first thing out of the box was a Gordian knot of cheap plastic coathangers.

For without coathangers there is muddle.

Of course, if one espouses the floordrobe method , there is no need for them.  And indeed, I cannot see any disadvantage in having the floor continually strewn with layers of partially worn clothing, now irredeemably crumpled.  It probably helps to attract friends and partners too. And is also a good place to store snack crumbs.

However, for us less enlightened beings who persist in using coathangers, we experience a tidal flow situation.  When the children return to university, suddenly there are hordes of hangers, clinging to the knobs of chests of drawers, scaling the front of wardrobes. 

The first time this happened, Nigel scooped up a bundle and delivered them to Oxfam.  But when the children returned there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  With the coathangers gone, they would HAVE to leave their clothes in an enormous jumble on the floor.  Something they would never normally do. (!)

Now I have commandeered the Black Sock Hamper (a different story – later) and we fill it with the surplus hangers.  Over the months of term time the hangers must pine for their former owners, as they emerge looking thin and wiry, but they are soon taken away and employed. 

When the coathanger drought arrives and the hamper is empty, we will know that at last our children are home for the holidays.

Frock

You shouldn’t go shopping for a particular occasion. Unless you are, say, the bride.

New is not necessarily better.  

But an occasion is coming up. A certain pair of people are turning 21 and we shall celebrate.

For me, the same simple black velvet dress has done duty for about fifteen years. But it is sleeveless and I suspect  that is no longer a good look for me.

So I scrambled the Ford Fiesta and set off to raid the end of the sale at Monsoon. Everything I tried on looked frumpy. The designer seemed to think that if you wanted sleeves you must also wish to hide your cleavage. And probably your legs too. Bah!

There were however hods of one promising sequinned number in just my size. In the changing room I saved it until last. Then I discovered the reason so many were left. They were smaller than their declared size.  Stuck with my arms over my head I called to the assistant to cut me out. But it was the sale. There was no assistant. 

So I spent some time writhing free. Like an anaconda shedding its skin. To add insult to injury, the nylon lining had electrified my hair and it was standing  on end (see pic).

I gave up. It would have to be the old dress and a shrug.  Yummy.

Then on Saturday I was on my lunch break, nipped into M&S, and spotted  the “will anybody please take this off our hands” rail.  Gleaming at me was a black dress with a bronze sheen. It had sleeves AND a deep neckline.   It cost less than £20, but it makes me feel like a princess (albeit an elderly one, like maybe Princess Ann).

Perhaps that is why people go shopping for new outfits.  

Transport

Today the last child is being delivered back to university.

Come to that, she is the ONLY child that we actually deliver.  Carenza has more luggage than the boys as she has to clear out her belongings each holiday so that her college room can be let for conferences.

But it’s not easy for the boys either – by the time Perran got home for Christmas, the wheels had come off his enormous holdall and because his phone was broken, he couldn’t ring us from the station.  What a drag!

Plus, Perran always seems to have less stuff with him when he arrives home than he does when he leaves. The “stuff” must be accumulating in Bristol.  I haven’t yet seen Perran’s accommodation this year.  However, I have a mental picture of it as a huge repository of interesting curios – the kind of place Harry Potter might go to pick up a second-hand wand.

The kind of place which we shall have to clear out over the summer when he moves.

Poor Pascoe returned to Edinburgh a week ago at the end of a family visit to the Northumberland grandparents.  He left after the rest of us which meant he had to carry with him a very bulky sleeping bag that we had accidentally failed to shove in the car. Given how much stuff he was already carrying,  I have no idea how he managed it.

And I kind of wish he hadn’t.  

Because Nigel and I will be visiting him in February and will have to bring it back on the train.

Where is my goat?

Rather than bemoaning Christmas as a commercial feeding frenzy with a heartless vacuum at its core, many of my friends see it as an opportunity to support the organisations they care about and express their values.

As ever some of the best Christmas gifts this year came via Oxfam.  Pascoe bought me a training package for a teacher in the developing world, and John, a friend whom I help get to church, got me a goat.

Usually I would be happy to think of people in some developing country with great big smiles on their faces, lives transformed by the gift of a goat or teaching resources.

But just this year, I feel slightly peeved not to have access to the goat.  The weather has been so warm that our grass has kept on growing.  I could really do with that goat to mow the lawn.