The sea - in fact, the ocean, is La Mar... she couldn't possibly be El Mar....................
23.2.10
19.11.09
24.9.09
Hot pants on high (or A bit more of Wee Me)
Buying our outfits for our first plane journey was a major event. These were the days of Vietnam, and the heady, hippy hangover after the Swinging Sixties (I was certainly into swings in the Sixties. And climbing frames and shutes aka slides. Roundabouts made me dizzy and there was always a risk of getting spun off and skinning your knees). The Beatles had not long gone their separate, long and winding ways, and Engerland swung like a pendulum do. Or did...Apparently.
My mother had decided that the situation called for The In Thing. Mini skirts were passé by now, and anyway, as we were growing girls on a budget, mini skirts were both a question of thrift and inevitability anyway. Besides, by this time, The In Thing was hot pants. Which should probably be hotpants, not hot pants, as the latter would suggest that a spell sitting on a sun-warmed pavement would have done the trick. And I guess The In Thing was actually hotpants or kaftans, but my beautiful, fashion-loving Mummy was adventurous where clothes were concerned, and besides, she didn't have to make the outfits this time, so hotpants it was.
In case you missed out on that particular stage in sartorial history, hotpants were shorts, or perhaps they dreamt of being shorts when they grew up, as they were very, oh but very very short. Glorified knickers, in fact. Not for the saggy-bottomed, that's for sure. And my mother was adamant (and not at all saggy-bottomed): we were going to England, world capital of hip gear and trendiness, encased in The In Thing.
The shop was more psychodelic than a yellow submarine or even a velvet underground, with half-dressed girls trying on fabric wisps and fringes which they pulled from shiny, white-and-gold boxes lined with coloured tissue paper. We had never in our short lives seen anything like it, and my sister and I hid behind a changing-room curtain, mortified with embarrassment and transfixed with fascination at the same time. I wanted a box. My two-year-old sister was happy to blow on the tissue paper and turn it into home-made confetti.
A lady not dissimilar to a triumphant opera-singer deposited a tower of shiny, white-and-gold, multi-coloured tissue-paper-lined boxes on a counter in front of our mother. She swooned. No, she didn't; I made that bit up. We raised the lids and the layers of floaty paper one by one as if a cloud of fairies might escape from within, and peeked inside, somehow terrified. Our mirror-plated hiding place in the changing-room was suddenly filled with glowing chrysanthemums, sugar-bright butterflies, vertiginous spirals, swirling paisleys, and exotic feathers. The fashion show began....
The great day finally came. Mummy had gone south some ten days earlier, to make sure that everything was ready for us in our new home in that scary place with the even scarier, English-foreign name of Maidenhead - good grief, what a name! - and we had been staying at her parents' home. My Magic-Puddings Granny had decked us out following her daughter's instructions to the letter: my sister wore a white, broderie anglaise blouse with short, puffed sleeves, and purple, paisley-patterned hotpants of the type with matching braces that crossed over in the middle of her back. Lederhosen without the front panel -and without the Leder, thankfully. I was truly ahead of my time, kitted out like a premature ABBA girl (the iconic Swedish group would leap sequin-clad onto the scene perhaps two years later), in blue, purple and white hotpants with a peacock-feather print. Over said pants, I wore a matching long dress with hundreds of tiny, fabric-covered buttons reaching halfway down the front, then open, rather like a coat, so that the hotpants were on display underneath. Totally vanguard, darling, totally 'in'. The It Sisters were ready to roll!
Daddy, modestly dressed in suit, tie and raincoat, came to fetch us in a taxi. "A taxi! Wow! Can I sit the wrong way round?" "Me, me!" - my sister was still a woman of few words at this point. Our grandparents, brave and proud, waving us off. "You both look very nice, dears. You will write to us, won't you?" Of course I would! There were still a few things I could do that my oh-so-cute sister couldn't; HA! But I was scared. This was it.
We slid past houses, gardens, shops, with their sad stonework and sadder, faded, grey window displays, a landscape of aging shooting stars whizzing past my nose pressed up against the window of the taxi, ghostly visions distorted by - by what? rain? tears?
Bye bye city, bye bye people, bye bye family, bye bye country. I'm going where the people talk funny. I'm going where nobody knows me.
This had been my world for eight years. A world of snowmen, lochs and Hallowe'en, smir and Santa, mashed neeps and Sunday School, rhododendrons and botanic gardens, great-aunts and fish on Fridays. My school, where we had built an Apollo moonshot from Ski yoghurt pots in July 1969; the dance academy where I had surpassed myself as an unconditionally inept tapdancer; the churches we had gone to to listen to my Reverend Grandpas; my cousins' house with the garden where the Easter Bunny lived; the West Kilbride sweet shop with its two counters, one normal height, one kiddy height for those of us with ha'pennies clutched in our fists and eyes only for chocolate spanners and spongy yellow and pink prawns, sherbet flying saucers and red licorice bootlaces; the Italian ice cream shops which were an integral part of Glasgow life. All this and a myriad of whirling, perfumed, stained-glass memories and emotions prior to that fateful day in the summer of '72, when they dressed me up as a gogo dancer and took me to live in England.
My mother had decided that the situation called for The In Thing. Mini skirts were passé by now, and anyway, as we were growing girls on a budget, mini skirts were both a question of thrift and inevitability anyway. Besides, by this time, The In Thing was hot pants. Which should probably be hotpants, not hot pants, as the latter would suggest that a spell sitting on a sun-warmed pavement would have done the trick. And I guess The In Thing was actually hotpants or kaftans, but my beautiful, fashion-loving Mummy was adventurous where clothes were concerned, and besides, she didn't have to make the outfits this time, so hotpants it was.
In case you missed out on that particular stage in sartorial history, hotpants were shorts, or perhaps they dreamt of being shorts when they grew up, as they were very, oh but very very short. Glorified knickers, in fact. Not for the saggy-bottomed, that's for sure. And my mother was adamant (and not at all saggy-bottomed): we were going to England, world capital of hip gear and trendiness, encased in The In Thing.
The shop was more psychodelic than a yellow submarine or even a velvet underground, with half-dressed girls trying on fabric wisps and fringes which they pulled from shiny, white-and-gold boxes lined with coloured tissue paper. We had never in our short lives seen anything like it, and my sister and I hid behind a changing-room curtain, mortified with embarrassment and transfixed with fascination at the same time. I wanted a box. My two-year-old sister was happy to blow on the tissue paper and turn it into home-made confetti.
A lady not dissimilar to a triumphant opera-singer deposited a tower of shiny, white-and-gold, multi-coloured tissue-paper-lined boxes on a counter in front of our mother. She swooned. No, she didn't; I made that bit up. We raised the lids and the layers of floaty paper one by one as if a cloud of fairies might escape from within, and peeked inside, somehow terrified. Our mirror-plated hiding place in the changing-room was suddenly filled with glowing chrysanthemums, sugar-bright butterflies, vertiginous spirals, swirling paisleys, and exotic feathers. The fashion show began....
The great day finally came. Mummy had gone south some ten days earlier, to make sure that everything was ready for us in our new home in that scary place with the even scarier, English-foreign name of Maidenhead - good grief, what a name! - and we had been staying at her parents' home. My Magic-Puddings Granny had decked us out following her daughter's instructions to the letter: my sister wore a white, broderie anglaise blouse with short, puffed sleeves, and purple, paisley-patterned hotpants of the type with matching braces that crossed over in the middle of her back. Lederhosen without the front panel -and without the Leder, thankfully. I was truly ahead of my time, kitted out like a premature ABBA girl (the iconic Swedish group would leap sequin-clad onto the scene perhaps two years later), in blue, purple and white hotpants with a peacock-feather print. Over said pants, I wore a matching long dress with hundreds of tiny, fabric-covered buttons reaching halfway down the front, then open, rather like a coat, so that the hotpants were on display underneath. Totally vanguard, darling, totally 'in'. The It Sisters were ready to roll!
Daddy, modestly dressed in suit, tie and raincoat, came to fetch us in a taxi. "A taxi! Wow! Can I sit the wrong way round?" "Me, me!" - my sister was still a woman of few words at this point. Our grandparents, brave and proud, waving us off. "You both look very nice, dears. You will write to us, won't you?" Of course I would! There were still a few things I could do that my oh-so-cute sister couldn't; HA! But I was scared. This was it.
We slid past houses, gardens, shops, with their sad stonework and sadder, faded, grey window displays, a landscape of aging shooting stars whizzing past my nose pressed up against the window of the taxi, ghostly visions distorted by - by what? rain? tears?
Bye bye city, bye bye people, bye bye family, bye bye country. I'm going where the people talk funny. I'm going where nobody knows me.
This had been my world for eight years. A world of snowmen, lochs and Hallowe'en, smir and Santa, mashed neeps and Sunday School, rhododendrons and botanic gardens, great-aunts and fish on Fridays. My school, where we had built an Apollo moonshot from Ski yoghurt pots in July 1969; the dance academy where I had surpassed myself as an unconditionally inept tapdancer; the churches we had gone to to listen to my Reverend Grandpas; my cousins' house with the garden where the Easter Bunny lived; the West Kilbride sweet shop with its two counters, one normal height, one kiddy height for those of us with ha'pennies clutched in our fists and eyes only for chocolate spanners and spongy yellow and pink prawns, sherbet flying saucers and red licorice bootlaces; the Italian ice cream shops which were an integral part of Glasgow life. All this and a myriad of whirling, perfumed, stained-glass memories and emotions prior to that fateful day in the summer of '72, when they dressed me up as a gogo dancer and took me to live in England.
23.9.09
Letter to Mum
The other day I found this letter, which I wrote to my mother in June 2005 after she had suffered a stroke that caused her memory to dissolve. Mum died in hospital of a so-called super-bug of the type that has numbers for a name, on 20th June 2005. I never finished the letter.
Tomorrow, 24th September 2009, is Mum's 77th birthday, so this is for her. Happy Birthday, Mom.
Isn't memory a curious asset? We have it from birth, but the early part, the part when we're still displaying L-plates, all but disappears under the weight of subsequent memories. Perhaps it's because, as a baby, we can't really make sense of stuff - of weather-vanes and zebra crossings, hairnets and nests of tables, mangles and window-sills, souvenirs from Sant Pol de Mar and slide-viewers. It's only later that we can sort and code and label. And, of course, that automatically means we muddle our memories, as we superimpose later images onto baby stills so we can actually claim to own them.
For example, I'm almost sure I remember Papa Lawson as being the man who lived in the flat opposite ours. I remember his presence in my earliest days, but apart from a vague recollection of sitting on his knee in a 'parlour'-type room with dark, perhaps green, curtains, the strongest memory I have of him is knowing who he was and of loving him to bits. I think he had a son, an adult son, and either Papa or both he and his son worked in a shirt shop down the hill and round the corner. There is a vague suggestion of a chocolate Santa Claus, or a chocolate Easter egg, a gift from Papa, apart from the book of poems.
I can sit here in the dead of night, with a dog making its presence felt a few houses away, and let one memory take me to another, backwards, forwards, who knows which. It's fun. It's as rich as an intricate, peacock-threaded embroidery, unpredictable. It's like eating dark chocolate and floating away. Stories, clouds of pictures, faces, colours, smells, voices, all bursting to ping out into the open.
That's what memory is. And it just takes a quick short-circuit, a neurological firecracker, to wipe it all or suspend it out of reach. I can shuffle or tint my stories as I fancy, so they look better on the paper, turn my life into a glorious Technicolor saga of yellow curtains and wooden clothes-horses sharing the buttercup morning sunlight with a spinach-green carpet, of shelling fresh peas while sitting on a small lawn, surrounded by blue-purple grape hyacinths, hollyhocks and lupins, lobelia and alyssum.
Another curious thing is Glasgow itself. Rundown, boarded-up, extravagant, decadent, industrial. Staunchly Presbyterian, radically Catholic, wildly Buddhist, Calvinist and Bohemian, haggis and tofu. Famous for shipbuilding, Orange marches, Ian Brady, St Mungo, Taggart, Sauchiehall Street, Kelvin Hall, the Barrowlands, hard humour, head-bashing, alcoholics, the University, Charles Rennie MacKintosh, toughness, tenement buildings, Celtic and Rangers, solid, serious, significant architecture, rainmates, and Glaswegians. Genghis McCann and ice cream. I nearly forgot the ice cream and the fact that a Glaswegian is just as likely to be called Angelo as Alistair. Until relatively recently, "I'm from Glasgow" was a fairly threatening claim which might include the tag "so watch yersel'". On a curriculum vitae, it was almost a liability. No. Strike the 'almost'.
Even the Glasgow names tell a story; they seem to be in harmony with the Glaswegian accents, which range from guttural, rasping thug to gently abrasive, crystal streamwater. Cowcaddens, the Gorbals, Kirkintilloch, Pollockshields all share city boundaries with districts that could easily have been christened by Stevenson or Scott: Drumchapel, Kelvinside, Broomhill, Anniesland, Rutherglen.
Like you, Mum, I find expressing some memories difficult; the words are not always there, nor the mental glass-eye to make sense of the images. Glasgow. Glasgow is a feeling. It is colours, moments of light and darkness, the sounds of Beetle windscreen wipers and cars in the rain, the taste of coal-fires in the mouth, the smells of adhesive fabric eye-patches and leaded petrol on puddles. The yellow of daffodils and the sullen black of the leafless, naked, winter trees near the university.
It is the height and protection of tall, dirty buildings carved from Industrial Revolution rock. It is the stark, terrifying concrete slabs built in curves that make up the mad, urban motorway system that took us to visit Granny and Grandpa Munn on alternate Sundays. It is lemon chiffon pudding eaten in a treasure-trove house by a depot of rotting green and sunflower bus carcasses. It is the lion, the cage, the lion, the cage, now put the lion into the cage. It is the New Seekers and Ken Dodd without the Diddymen. Sleeping Beauty at the ballet and dominoes with Aunt Madge in her image-perfect flat of a thousand textures. It is Papa Lawson.
Tomorrow, 24th September 2009, is Mum's 77th birthday, so this is for her. Happy Birthday, Mom.
Isn't memory a curious asset? We have it from birth, but the early part, the part when we're still displaying L-plates, all but disappears under the weight of subsequent memories. Perhaps it's because, as a baby, we can't really make sense of stuff - of weather-vanes and zebra crossings, hairnets and nests of tables, mangles and window-sills, souvenirs from Sant Pol de Mar and slide-viewers. It's only later that we can sort and code and label. And, of course, that automatically means we muddle our memories, as we superimpose later images onto baby stills so we can actually claim to own them.
For example, I'm almost sure I remember Papa Lawson as being the man who lived in the flat opposite ours. I remember his presence in my earliest days, but apart from a vague recollection of sitting on his knee in a 'parlour'-type room with dark, perhaps green, curtains, the strongest memory I have of him is knowing who he was and of loving him to bits. I think he had a son, an adult son, and either Papa or both he and his son worked in a shirt shop down the hill and round the corner. There is a vague suggestion of a chocolate Santa Claus, or a chocolate Easter egg, a gift from Papa, apart from the book of poems.
I can sit here in the dead of night, with a dog making its presence felt a few houses away, and let one memory take me to another, backwards, forwards, who knows which. It's fun. It's as rich as an intricate, peacock-threaded embroidery, unpredictable. It's like eating dark chocolate and floating away. Stories, clouds of pictures, faces, colours, smells, voices, all bursting to ping out into the open.
That's what memory is. And it just takes a quick short-circuit, a neurological firecracker, to wipe it all or suspend it out of reach. I can shuffle or tint my stories as I fancy, so they look better on the paper, turn my life into a glorious Technicolor saga of yellow curtains and wooden clothes-horses sharing the buttercup morning sunlight with a spinach-green carpet, of shelling fresh peas while sitting on a small lawn, surrounded by blue-purple grape hyacinths, hollyhocks and lupins, lobelia and alyssum.
Another curious thing is Glasgow itself. Rundown, boarded-up, extravagant, decadent, industrial. Staunchly Presbyterian, radically Catholic, wildly Buddhist, Calvinist and Bohemian, haggis and tofu. Famous for shipbuilding, Orange marches, Ian Brady, St Mungo, Taggart, Sauchiehall Street, Kelvin Hall, the Barrowlands, hard humour, head-bashing, alcoholics, the University, Charles Rennie MacKintosh, toughness, tenement buildings, Celtic and Rangers, solid, serious, significant architecture, rainmates, and Glaswegians. Genghis McCann and ice cream. I nearly forgot the ice cream and the fact that a Glaswegian is just as likely to be called Angelo as Alistair. Until relatively recently, "I'm from Glasgow" was a fairly threatening claim which might include the tag "so watch yersel'". On a curriculum vitae, it was almost a liability. No. Strike the 'almost'.
Even the Glasgow names tell a story; they seem to be in harmony with the Glaswegian accents, which range from guttural, rasping thug to gently abrasive, crystal streamwater. Cowcaddens, the Gorbals, Kirkintilloch, Pollockshields all share city boundaries with districts that could easily have been christened by Stevenson or Scott: Drumchapel, Kelvinside, Broomhill, Anniesland, Rutherglen.
Like you, Mum, I find expressing some memories difficult; the words are not always there, nor the mental glass-eye to make sense of the images. Glasgow. Glasgow is a feeling. It is colours, moments of light and darkness, the sounds of Beetle windscreen wipers and cars in the rain, the taste of coal-fires in the mouth, the smells of adhesive fabric eye-patches and leaded petrol on puddles. The yellow of daffodils and the sullen black of the leafless, naked, winter trees near the university.
It is the height and protection of tall, dirty buildings carved from Industrial Revolution rock. It is the stark, terrifying concrete slabs built in curves that make up the mad, urban motorway system that took us to visit Granny and Grandpa Munn on alternate Sundays. It is lemon chiffon pudding eaten in a treasure-trove house by a depot of rotting green and sunflower bus carcasses. It is the lion, the cage, the lion, the cage, now put the lion into the cage. It is the New Seekers and Ken Dodd without the Diddymen. Sleeping Beauty at the ballet and dominoes with Aunt Madge in her image-perfect flat of a thousand textures. It is Papa Lawson.
26.2.09
The Ends of Two
Two very very short tales....
With my eyes tightly closed With my eyes tightly closed, I can feel the irregular bumping of the wooden wheels of the cart on the cobbled streets. I have not left the confines of my cell since I entered it two and a half months ago, but I died months before. With my husband dead, my son taken, my best friend Princesse Lamballe vilely murdered, I no longer live. I have not exercised and barely eaten since Louis went to the guillotine in January. The pain in my heart is too great, too cold, too intense to want to remain on this earth gone mad. My only wish is that my daughter, Marie-Therese, will not be harmed, although tearing a child from her mother or a mother from her child is more harm than a soul should bear. But now I have been tried and found guilty. Guilty of crimes I could not even have imagined, yet they say I committed. It is all over now; it is a moment of peace, as I sit here, in this cart with my hair cut short, my hands tied behind my back, my dress the simple white peasant dress I dreamt of wearing but not of the circumstances.
With my eyes tightly closed, I can smell the crowds. Paris. Great perfumed city where all those who could afford perfume have been murdered or have fled to England or Austria. My Austria, home of my adored brother, home that I will never see again as France has elected to kill me. France with its smells of death, bloodshed, hunger, bad bread, onions, of a desperation to see my head fall. The smells of confusion yet hope, children born into a new regime. I can smell sweat, leather, wool, autumn, the river rising. The last smells my nose will read. I love them all. They are the smells of a city and a country that will live.
With my eyes tightly closed, I can hear the cheering, the insults, the spitting, the cries for mercy from the same women who wanted my blood just four years ago. I can hear it all. I can hear them as they throw rotten vegetables, and lift their children high to see the Widow Capet’s last ride through Paris, in a cart rather than a carriage. I can hear the fear mixed with the celebration. The fear that times will change like the wind and they will ride in this same cart, that others will come, take revenge, rescue my son from his cell and proclaim him king.
With my eyes tightly closed, I can hear beyond the crowd and my executioner placing the basket against the guillotine. I can hear beyond this square to the sky with its birds playing, diving, singing, oblivious to my life and my death, the same birds that will still be playing, diving and singing tomorrow when I am just a memory. I can hear the wind, the fields and flowers outside Paris, the pages of books savoured, the rustle of silk dresses past, the last sounds I will hear.
With my eyes wide open, I climb the stairs with dignity, at peace, as I have died to meet those I love, I have died to join my husband the king.
Adieu.
Henry Blythe's last laugh
Henry Blythe looked at the screen with its luminous yellow line like a mountain landscape as it monitored his heartbeat, and watched the flashing green light that told the world he was still alive. He contemplated the photograph sitting on his bedside table. Lorna had left twelve years ago now; she had ‘gone to a better place’, according to the vicar, but it occurred to Henry now that that might not be strictly true. She might, in fact, be somewhere quite similar. Lorna’s life had been comfortable in their home in the country, a large converted farm that Henry himself had designed and then had built by his team. There were some advantages to being an architect of international renown. But Lorna had been bored with her comfortable, safe life. They had travelled widely, met princes and presidents, yet had hardly spoken to each other for the last twenty-five years of their marriage, as they felt they had run out of words. Curiously, though, he missed her now and would have given anything to feel her head on his shoulder as they chatted late into the night. And he told her the news. Perhaps soon.
He could feel the slight discomfort of the plastic tube in his nose, unfamiliar pyjamas and the room temperature, set one or two degrees colder than he would have liked. He wanted to go home. His 98th birthday had been the day before and had provided his family with an excuse to fill his room with flowers that the nurses had then taken away ‘in case the pollen affected his breathing’ – at 98, did he really care about pollen and breathing? – and to eat cake he couldn’t share. They had brought him presents he couldn’t open and didn’t need anyway, they had lit candles he couldn’t blow out. Fortunately, they had limited themselves to a bright red 9 and a bright red 8; to attempt to put ninety-eight candles on the cake would have constituted a fire risk. Yes, all in all, he had had a good day yesterday, even if it had had its absurd moments.
And this morning, this feeling of contentment had increased. Henry had been buying a weekly lottery ticket for as long as he could remember. Even now in hospital, he had been almost religious in his weekly purchase, sending his 85 year-old hospital neighbour, one of the few who could not only walk but was allowed to, to pick up his ticket. And at 98 years and 1 day, he had won. He had had everything he could ever need in life, houses, cars, paintings, his own beach; he had been everywhere from Iceland to Tasmania; his bridges and airports were familiar on five continents. He had donated to charities and museums, adopted whole villages in Guatemala, and provided the government with enough tax to build several schools. He had spent it all.
And now he had won the lottery! A young journalist had come to see him this morning and had asked him ‘How are you going to spend the millions?’ and the question had seemed surreal in its innocence. ‘Who are you going to leave it to?’ was the question on many people’s lips: the nurses and carers were treating him like a cute newborn baby, the hospital priest had been to visit, and the relatives were already stuffed into their cars and on their way ‘to celebrate’.
Henry reached out to the bedside table with his shaking hand and picked up the lighter his son-in-law had left there. He smiled and flicked the flame into action. His smile grew into a grin as the flame touched the ticket and ate it greedily. Henry didn’t see the flame go out. He had gone.
With my eyes tightly closed With my eyes tightly closed, I can feel the irregular bumping of the wooden wheels of the cart on the cobbled streets. I have not left the confines of my cell since I entered it two and a half months ago, but I died months before. With my husband dead, my son taken, my best friend Princesse Lamballe vilely murdered, I no longer live. I have not exercised and barely eaten since Louis went to the guillotine in January. The pain in my heart is too great, too cold, too intense to want to remain on this earth gone mad. My only wish is that my daughter, Marie-Therese, will not be harmed, although tearing a child from her mother or a mother from her child is more harm than a soul should bear. But now I have been tried and found guilty. Guilty of crimes I could not even have imagined, yet they say I committed. It is all over now; it is a moment of peace, as I sit here, in this cart with my hair cut short, my hands tied behind my back, my dress the simple white peasant dress I dreamt of wearing but not of the circumstances.
With my eyes tightly closed, I can smell the crowds. Paris. Great perfumed city where all those who could afford perfume have been murdered or have fled to England or Austria. My Austria, home of my adored brother, home that I will never see again as France has elected to kill me. France with its smells of death, bloodshed, hunger, bad bread, onions, of a desperation to see my head fall. The smells of confusion yet hope, children born into a new regime. I can smell sweat, leather, wool, autumn, the river rising. The last smells my nose will read. I love them all. They are the smells of a city and a country that will live.
With my eyes tightly closed, I can hear the cheering, the insults, the spitting, the cries for mercy from the same women who wanted my blood just four years ago. I can hear it all. I can hear them as they throw rotten vegetables, and lift their children high to see the Widow Capet’s last ride through Paris, in a cart rather than a carriage. I can hear the fear mixed with the celebration. The fear that times will change like the wind and they will ride in this same cart, that others will come, take revenge, rescue my son from his cell and proclaim him king.
With my eyes tightly closed, I can hear beyond the crowd and my executioner placing the basket against the guillotine. I can hear beyond this square to the sky with its birds playing, diving, singing, oblivious to my life and my death, the same birds that will still be playing, diving and singing tomorrow when I am just a memory. I can hear the wind, the fields and flowers outside Paris, the pages of books savoured, the rustle of silk dresses past, the last sounds I will hear.
With my eyes wide open, I climb the stairs with dignity, at peace, as I have died to meet those I love, I have died to join my husband the king.
Adieu.
Henry Blythe's last laugh
Henry Blythe looked at the screen with its luminous yellow line like a mountain landscape as it monitored his heartbeat, and watched the flashing green light that told the world he was still alive. He contemplated the photograph sitting on his bedside table. Lorna had left twelve years ago now; she had ‘gone to a better place’, according to the vicar, but it occurred to Henry now that that might not be strictly true. She might, in fact, be somewhere quite similar. Lorna’s life had been comfortable in their home in the country, a large converted farm that Henry himself had designed and then had built by his team. There were some advantages to being an architect of international renown. But Lorna had been bored with her comfortable, safe life. They had travelled widely, met princes and presidents, yet had hardly spoken to each other for the last twenty-five years of their marriage, as they felt they had run out of words. Curiously, though, he missed her now and would have given anything to feel her head on his shoulder as they chatted late into the night. And he told her the news. Perhaps soon.
He could feel the slight discomfort of the plastic tube in his nose, unfamiliar pyjamas and the room temperature, set one or two degrees colder than he would have liked. He wanted to go home. His 98th birthday had been the day before and had provided his family with an excuse to fill his room with flowers that the nurses had then taken away ‘in case the pollen affected his breathing’ – at 98, did he really care about pollen and breathing? – and to eat cake he couldn’t share. They had brought him presents he couldn’t open and didn’t need anyway, they had lit candles he couldn’t blow out. Fortunately, they had limited themselves to a bright red 9 and a bright red 8; to attempt to put ninety-eight candles on the cake would have constituted a fire risk. Yes, all in all, he had had a good day yesterday, even if it had had its absurd moments.
And this morning, this feeling of contentment had increased. Henry had been buying a weekly lottery ticket for as long as he could remember. Even now in hospital, he had been almost religious in his weekly purchase, sending his 85 year-old hospital neighbour, one of the few who could not only walk but was allowed to, to pick up his ticket. And at 98 years and 1 day, he had won. He had had everything he could ever need in life, houses, cars, paintings, his own beach; he had been everywhere from Iceland to Tasmania; his bridges and airports were familiar on five continents. He had donated to charities and museums, adopted whole villages in Guatemala, and provided the government with enough tax to build several schools. He had spent it all.
And now he had won the lottery! A young journalist had come to see him this morning and had asked him ‘How are you going to spend the millions?’ and the question had seemed surreal in its innocence. ‘Who are you going to leave it to?’ was the question on many people’s lips: the nurses and carers were treating him like a cute newborn baby, the hospital priest had been to visit, and the relatives were already stuffed into their cars and on their way ‘to celebrate’.
Henry reached out to the bedside table with his shaking hand and picked up the lighter his son-in-law had left there. He smiled and flicked the flame into action. His smile grew into a grin as the flame touched the ticket and ate it greedily. Henry didn’t see the flame go out. He had gone.
3.12.08
A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight
Colder days in Seville are settling down inside the flaky walls of our house. Banisters are clammy to the touch in the middle of the night (I go walking in my sleep...oh, that song!). The windows that never quite fit their aluminium frames are forbidding places to sit near, unless armed and legged with chunky blankets bought from large multinational Scandinavian furniture companies, where the cold is part of the natural order of things. The occasional drizzle is welcome, here, as it seems to release a touch of warmth, and loitering on the street is marginally more attractive than huddling by whirring electric radiators in the confines of our white tiled home. The Big Chill.
Actually, it’s not big at all, and who am I to whinge, coming from that great lump of sleety granite, Glasgow. Childhood memories of snowmen and jingle bells are more than a touch disneyfied if compared with the reality of having to slide about in the ruts left by the traffic, ruts tinted a dark, evil shade of lead grey by the dirt and grime. To hear sleighbells in the sleet was a line we never sang but was part of reality, and Jack Frost was the chap - probably English, the cad - who breathed icy doilies on our uninsulated windows, double glazing being a thing of the future. Heavy, lined velvet curtains kept the four-month long night out. Or was it five months?
So. Seville. The halls here are truly decked with oranges, it not being just a romantic rumour, and holly being a myth lurking in them thar hills. The chill can be partially dispelled by some of the roast chestnuts on sale in the streets, with the remaining vestiges banished by a glass of sweet, syrupy wine from a barrel with La Gitana smiling on the front. In a bar, of course; we don't do barrels in the house. Shops trawl for Christmas custom here, just as they do in Britain, but somehow the hysteria in the shopping centre is slightly more bearable without frozen toes and frost bitten fingers thrust into soggy mittens. I haven’t had to scrape frost off my windscreen since I left Catalunya.
My blog has been abandoned since, oh, July perhaps? Life sped up and is still gallivanting at a wild pace. Work, for the most part. A large amount of work, which I thoroughly enjoy, although it takes far too much time away from my children and from my life-in-general. This week, I intend to sweep the computer aside with a heave and a huff, and take the boys into the centre to see 'Rodin in the street'. 'En la calle', that is. The Thinker is currently contemplating the over-filigreed work on the Town Hall in Plaza Nueva. “Bugger me backwards; they obviously started to run out of puff – look at them windows!” he probably muses. Windows which got gradually more austere as they went along. Or perhaps they got gradually more ornate? Boredom set in, as 18th century masons’ labourers dangled on the façade, and, with a flourish of whatever instrument masons’ labourers use, they added ‘one of them, three of they, half a dozen thingummies and a great big wotsit. How does that look? Oops. Never mind, no-one'll notice this side of the next millennium'. So we’re going to go and see the Thinker thinking, though I’m not sure one can actually see thinking. You can hear it when people talk to themselves, but sculptures rarely talk.
Mm. Seville in winter. My neighbourhood with its ladies on greased zimmers speeding to get home to the warmth of the coals under the table. The greengrocers calling out the joys of mandarins and grapes, chestnuts and mushrooms; the warmth of the crowded bakery as people shove into the queue to move away from the open shop-front. The festive lights, as yet unlit, suspended over the main avenue like old diamond necklaces in need of a polish. The toyshop and the delicatessen tarted up like panto dames. The stallholders deeply embedded in their sheepskin jackets, like exotic Del Boys, while their corresponding Rodneys unload plants, football shirts, pomegranates and belts from the backs of double-parked vans. Business as usual here in the barrio. Oh yes. Who needs sleet?
Actually, it’s not big at all, and who am I to whinge, coming from that great lump of sleety granite, Glasgow. Childhood memories of snowmen and jingle bells are more than a touch disneyfied if compared with the reality of having to slide about in the ruts left by the traffic, ruts tinted a dark, evil shade of lead grey by the dirt and grime. To hear sleighbells in the sleet was a line we never sang but was part of reality, and Jack Frost was the chap - probably English, the cad - who breathed icy doilies on our uninsulated windows, double glazing being a thing of the future. Heavy, lined velvet curtains kept the four-month long night out. Or was it five months?
So. Seville. The halls here are truly decked with oranges, it not being just a romantic rumour, and holly being a myth lurking in them thar hills. The chill can be partially dispelled by some of the roast chestnuts on sale in the streets, with the remaining vestiges banished by a glass of sweet, syrupy wine from a barrel with La Gitana smiling on the front. In a bar, of course; we don't do barrels in the house. Shops trawl for Christmas custom here, just as they do in Britain, but somehow the hysteria in the shopping centre is slightly more bearable without frozen toes and frost bitten fingers thrust into soggy mittens. I haven’t had to scrape frost off my windscreen since I left Catalunya.
My blog has been abandoned since, oh, July perhaps? Life sped up and is still gallivanting at a wild pace. Work, for the most part. A large amount of work, which I thoroughly enjoy, although it takes far too much time away from my children and from my life-in-general. This week, I intend to sweep the computer aside with a heave and a huff, and take the boys into the centre to see 'Rodin in the street'. 'En la calle', that is. The Thinker is currently contemplating the over-filigreed work on the Town Hall in Plaza Nueva. “Bugger me backwards; they obviously started to run out of puff – look at them windows!” he probably muses. Windows which got gradually more austere as they went along. Or perhaps they got gradually more ornate? Boredom set in, as 18th century masons’ labourers dangled on the façade, and, with a flourish of whatever instrument masons’ labourers use, they added ‘one of them, three of they, half a dozen thingummies and a great big wotsit. How does that look? Oops. Never mind, no-one'll notice this side of the next millennium'. So we’re going to go and see the Thinker thinking, though I’m not sure one can actually see thinking. You can hear it when people talk to themselves, but sculptures rarely talk.
Mm. Seville in winter. My neighbourhood with its ladies on greased zimmers speeding to get home to the warmth of the coals under the table. The greengrocers calling out the joys of mandarins and grapes, chestnuts and mushrooms; the warmth of the crowded bakery as people shove into the queue to move away from the open shop-front. The festive lights, as yet unlit, suspended over the main avenue like old diamond necklaces in need of a polish. The toyshop and the delicatessen tarted up like panto dames. The stallholders deeply embedded in their sheepskin jackets, like exotic Del Boys, while their corresponding Rodneys unload plants, football shirts, pomegranates and belts from the backs of double-parked vans. Business as usual here in the barrio. Oh yes. Who needs sleet?
25.7.08
Praise the dawning
“Come on! Quickly! Hurry up! Your coat or your cape?” Decisions. If I wore my cape, I could pretend I was a superhero, but the cape had a stupid cap to match; the coat was pink, a colour both loathsome and loathed, but it had big buttons that I could do up myself, and the hat was a fuzzy white beret with two pompoms. “Coat.” “Right. Pop it on then. Daddy’s getting the car out. Gloves? Pop your penny inside your glove so you don’t lose it. Ready? Oops. Lipstick. Don’t tell your grandmother.”
Sunday. Phew. There were so many Sundays in life! “Quick. Hop in. Mind the gear stick. Sitting down? Right. We're off then.” The Beetle juddered and jiggled to life instantly. What was it Woody Allen said in Sleeper? Wow, they really built those things. And with my father at the wheel, a perfect driving combination I deeply resented on Sunday mornings. “I’m cooooold!” “Have you not got your buttons done up? Don’t suck your fingers, now, you’ll ruin your glove…” The Sunday odyssey. The other church was nearer, but my mother’s parents-in-law would be there, my grandfather taking the service with his quasi-apocalyptic sermons, all fire and thunder, his voice expanding to fill the cavernous nave and rattling the bells before dropping to a mere coaxing, beady-eyed whisper. He thorough enjoyed making people squirm, watching them start to feel uncomfortable in their skin, particularly my mother. And my grandmother was….my grandmother. Turban, brooch, black Sunday coat. My mother and my grandmother together, “Hello, good morning, good morning my dear, it’s terribly cold, isn’t it, yes, yes, but of course it is February, yes, yes, goodness look at all the fallen leaves, you would think someone would…yes yes you would wouldn’t you terrible isn’t it…” Thin smiles on the lips only, words muttered as quickly as possible then look away, dig for something in handbags, spot a neighbour.
So we went to the other church, the one across the road from the Big School. A strange thing happened at that church, though, every Sunday: as soon as you set foot through the door, families, the veritable pillar of the community, were separated. Children this way, gentlemen to the left, ladies to the right. For me, trustingly herded off with the children, the greatest excitement of the morning was seeing who was leading Sunday School that day.
“Good morr ning, chill dren” the short hiatus of well-spoken Glasgow. “GOOD MORRRNING” “Have you all left your coats on the coat pegs?” “YES, MISS CAMPBELL”. The slowly drawn out chorus of twenty or thirty freshly washed, shiny scrubbed faces and necks, and comb-slicked heads. “Lettuce spray.” A unison soprano mumble, slow, monotonous “Forgive us our debts and we’ll forgive our daughters” “Well done, children. Sit down please.” Thwump. Splatch. Twenty or thirty Sunday-clothed bottoms hit the floor, twenty or thirty moon-pale faces look expectantly at Scotland’s answer to a young bespectacled Nana Mouskouri in a short tartan skirt and white leatherette knee boots with zips up the side.
It was the job of this school boys’ dream to share with us stories of the tribes of Israel, loaves of bread and fishes (and a Mummy fishy too), lame men who picked up their beds and walked, tombs with huge stones that could move by themselves, and affable young men with multicoloured coats. “..and his brothers were really very jealous of him – do you know what jealous means Kenneth?” “Aye, Muss Cambull” “…and so they stole his….” I wonder what we’re having for lunch today. I wonder if they’ll make me go with Grandpa to pick up Aunt Mabel. “…. And does anyone remember what his Daddy was called?” “Jacob! It wuz Jacob!” “Aye, it was, dear, well done…”. Aunt Mabel is scary, she’s older than the Bible and the multicoloured coat and Jacob all put together. Even older than Miss Campbell. Her voice is made of greaseproof paper and she shakes and her cup rattles and her cutlery clatters and her soup goes ssssssslpsssst as she extracts it from the spoon and she holds her bowl the wrong way round so it tilts away from her and if she ever falls over she'll snap. Oh I hope we’re not going to get Aunt Mabel today. “Halleluyah. Amen!” AMEN. LET’S COLOUR!
It was also Miss Campbell’s job to take us single file – in a crocodile, as we called it – into the church, where we occupied the front pews, dangling feet swinging wildly, and answered a question or two cast our way from the pulpit during the “family” service. Then a hymn or two, and home, after the weekly up-date on the life of the parish and its nephews, outside on the crunchy church driveway. To keep myself awake during the sermon and, later, to stop myself from dozing off while vertical as I stood behind my parents’ legs during the ‘after-chat’, I resorted to my white hat. The one that meant the wearing of the pink coat. This hat, essentially a beret, had two small holes in the centre of the crown, and a white cord had been thoughtfully threaded through these holes before having a fluffy white pompom-ball attached to each end. If I pulled on one ball slowly, it slid downwards causing the other pompom to glide upwards. And if I did it fast enough, I could disconcert the minister. “ ..AND JUST THEN….mmm…I think I just saw…no…umm….so…what?... as I was saying… AND AN ANGEL…”. Once outside, while my parents discussed the progress of the pregnancy, a recipe heard on the Jimmy Young show, or the bleak outlook for the Scottish shipyards dependant on US investment given the precarious situation in Vietnam, I played at helicopters, moving my head in ever faster circles so that my pompoms whizzed around and around with glee, completely oblivious to my sister’s pending arrival, Charlotte pudding or mass unemployment and My Lai.
CUT. Next scene.
Sunday. Phew. There were so many Sundays in life! “Quick. Hop in. Mind the gear stick. Sitting down? Right. We're off then.” The Beetle juddered and jiggled to life instantly. What was it Woody Allen said in Sleeper? Wow, they really built those things. And with my father at the wheel, a perfect driving combination I deeply resented on Sunday mornings. “I’m cooooold!” “Have you not got your buttons done up? Don’t suck your fingers, now, you’ll ruin your glove…” The Sunday odyssey. The other church was nearer, but my mother’s parents-in-law would be there, my grandfather taking the service with his quasi-apocalyptic sermons, all fire and thunder, his voice expanding to fill the cavernous nave and rattling the bells before dropping to a mere coaxing, beady-eyed whisper. He thorough enjoyed making people squirm, watching them start to feel uncomfortable in their skin, particularly my mother. And my grandmother was….my grandmother. Turban, brooch, black Sunday coat. My mother and my grandmother together, “Hello, good morning, good morning my dear, it’s terribly cold, isn’t it, yes, yes, but of course it is February, yes, yes, goodness look at all the fallen leaves, you would think someone would…yes yes you would wouldn’t you terrible isn’t it…” Thin smiles on the lips only, words muttered as quickly as possible then look away, dig for something in handbags, spot a neighbour.
So we went to the other church, the one across the road from the Big School. A strange thing happened at that church, though, every Sunday: as soon as you set foot through the door, families, the veritable pillar of the community, were separated. Children this way, gentlemen to the left, ladies to the right. For me, trustingly herded off with the children, the greatest excitement of the morning was seeing who was leading Sunday School that day.
“Good morr ning, chill dren” the short hiatus of well-spoken Glasgow. “GOOD MORRRNING” “Have you all left your coats on the coat pegs?” “YES, MISS CAMPBELL”. The slowly drawn out chorus of twenty or thirty freshly washed, shiny scrubbed faces and necks, and comb-slicked heads. “Lettuce spray.” A unison soprano mumble, slow, monotonous “Forgive us our debts and we’ll forgive our daughters” “Well done, children. Sit down please.” Thwump. Splatch. Twenty or thirty Sunday-clothed bottoms hit the floor, twenty or thirty moon-pale faces look expectantly at Scotland’s answer to a young bespectacled Nana Mouskouri in a short tartan skirt and white leatherette knee boots with zips up the side.
It was the job of this school boys’ dream to share with us stories of the tribes of Israel, loaves of bread and fishes (and a Mummy fishy too), lame men who picked up their beds and walked, tombs with huge stones that could move by themselves, and affable young men with multicoloured coats. “..and his brothers were really very jealous of him – do you know what jealous means Kenneth?” “Aye, Muss Cambull” “…and so they stole his….” I wonder what we’re having for lunch today. I wonder if they’ll make me go with Grandpa to pick up Aunt Mabel. “…. And does anyone remember what his Daddy was called?” “Jacob! It wuz Jacob!” “Aye, it was, dear, well done…”. Aunt Mabel is scary, she’s older than the Bible and the multicoloured coat and Jacob all put together. Even older than Miss Campbell. Her voice is made of greaseproof paper and she shakes and her cup rattles and her cutlery clatters and her soup goes ssssssslpsssst as she extracts it from the spoon and she holds her bowl the wrong way round so it tilts away from her and if she ever falls over she'll snap. Oh I hope we’re not going to get Aunt Mabel today. “Halleluyah. Amen!” AMEN. LET’S COLOUR!
It was also Miss Campbell’s job to take us single file – in a crocodile, as we called it – into the church, where we occupied the front pews, dangling feet swinging wildly, and answered a question or two cast our way from the pulpit during the “family” service. Then a hymn or two, and home, after the weekly up-date on the life of the parish and its nephews, outside on the crunchy church driveway. To keep myself awake during the sermon and, later, to stop myself from dozing off while vertical as I stood behind my parents’ legs during the ‘after-chat’, I resorted to my white hat. The one that meant the wearing of the pink coat. This hat, essentially a beret, had two small holes in the centre of the crown, and a white cord had been thoughtfully threaded through these holes before having a fluffy white pompom-ball attached to each end. If I pulled on one ball slowly, it slid downwards causing the other pompom to glide upwards. And if I did it fast enough, I could disconcert the minister. “ ..AND JUST THEN….mmm…I think I just saw…no…umm….so…what?... as I was saying… AND AN ANGEL…”. Once outside, while my parents discussed the progress of the pregnancy, a recipe heard on the Jimmy Young show, or the bleak outlook for the Scottish shipyards dependant on US investment given the precarious situation in Vietnam, I played at helicopters, moving my head in ever faster circles so that my pompoms whizzed around and around with glee, completely oblivious to my sister’s pending arrival, Charlotte pudding or mass unemployment and My Lai.
CUT. Next scene.
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