writing, not drowning

Here comes Jerry Keller

Even though McDonald's stands for everything that I don't, I have to admit that it makes exceedingly good ads. The one currently showing on British TV has taken me straight back to 1959 and the very first 45rpm record I bought, with my very own pocket money. Still have it, still in its white and blue striped London American Recordings cover. 

In 1959, this record matched the weather; it was, unusually (and unlike this year's typically wet and soggy one), a perfect English summer and we don't get many of those. So there I was, on the very brink of teenagerhood, desperate to be one, drifting about in the sunshine, dreaming about the future and listening to Jerry Keller. 

Just in case you're interested in random facts, Jerry went to the same church as Pat Boone, wrote Almost There for Andy WIlliams and is now 72. I expect that he is wondering where that half century went too.  

"Up there"*

Last week I brought down the boxes and cases that had been stored in the loft. There weren't many; the builder had warned me years ago that the joists wouldn't stand too much weight. 

When I first arrived here in 1998, I was moving from a smaller to a much larger house, so didn't bother to rationalise all my stuff. This time, it's different. As it happens, small furry rodents have already done some rationalising for me and have chewed their way through part of my Newspapers of Historic Importance collection. How very dare they. Mr and Mrs Mouse had thoughtfully eaten into the centrefold of several papers, dating from 1939, which had been stored in an ancient suitcase. There is a now sizeable hole right in the middle of every page. I hope those junior mice appreciated their informative nest linings.

Two cases of theatre programmes, dating from 1961, when I went to see Stop the World I Want to Get Off, which starred Anthony Newley, via Antony Sher's iconic and mesemerising performance as Richard III in the mid-1980s (seen twice, including the final performance), to the present day, had survived intact. Phew. Writers need access to this sort of stuff. For essential research and authentic detail, you understand.

Then there were the cases bulging with the more personal memorabilia: letters and cards from my mother; my daughter's very first school exercise books; letters from a friend living in the Bahamas, mentioning her (holiday-time) neighbours, the Parkinsons (as in Cecil and Anne, not Michael and Mary); letters from family members and friends from the Guyanese / Brazilian border, from California and Ohio, from across Canada, from Spain, Israel, Australia, and 1960s post cards from full-on hippie friends as they tuned in, turned on and dropped out across the universe. But were still compos mentis enough to remember to write home to their part-time hippie friends like us. (Us, as in my then husband and me, and part-time because, when flower power was at its height, we were already parents, so we did the hippie thing at weekends and only when my mother babysat . . . )

And there were other letters, from loves lost, in two instances for ever. Time, thankfully, softens the harsher edges of memory but rereading them (some for the first time in 30 years), I was taken aback by the feelings they stirred. So I packed them all away again and took the Edinburgh Boy for a rather weepy walk by the river, hoping that I wouldn't bump into anyone from the village  - I like to do my snivelling in private - but thinking how comforting it would be to see a kindred spirit. And that's when good friend, the Only Other Blonde in Village appeared, as if my magic. She understood completely and offered the perfect distraction: a video clip on her mobile phone of her 99-year-old mother singing All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor.  Priceless, as they say in the ad.

At times like this, there's only one singer I can wallow in listen to, the late Clifford T Ward, one of the best songwriters England has produced - and very much missed. Home Thoughts from Abroad, was my final bit of indulgence for the day.

 

But enough is enough. Looking backwards is fine in small doses but it gets in the way of being fully present in the moment and of looking forward with anticipation and hope, which is what I do most of the time. I took the appropriate homeopathic remedy (Ignatia, since you asked) and took myself off to bed. Feel much better this morning.

* * *

*"Up there" is the title of a poem by W H Auden. If I had succeeded in finding the words online, I would have included a link, so that you could see, if you were unfamiliar with the poem, its significance. But I couldn't and I couldn't find my collected works of Wystan Hugh A either, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Miss Kennedy's guide to gracious living

When my friend C was here last week, we found ourselves reminsicing about Miss Kennedy, who taught general science at our school, Gumley House, for many years. Anyone who attended Miss Kennedy's classes will have vivid memories of those classes and not just of matters scientific.

She was something of a wonder to behold. At a time when many of our teachers still wore their black, academic gowns, Miss Kennedy went for colour, the more vibrant the better. Purple and red was a popular combination (tight, straight, purple wool skirt, worn with bright red jacket, for example), a gash of crimson lipstick and hair dyed to within an inch of its life. Deepest red. She had a voice like a cultured foghorn, which would boom across the science lab.

Ah, happy days, messing around with Bunsen burners, charting the production of coal tar or dissecting frogs (except for the squeamish, like me). But Miss Kennedy was about so much more than science. She was our very own version of Miss Jean Brodie and our weekly double science lessons were interspresed with little homilies on how to conduct ourselves when we left the shelter of the convent for life in the big wide world.

Topics ranged from  underwear ("never, ever go bra-less at any time, to avoid sagging"), to preferred places to take tea ("only the Ritz or Fortnum and Mason"), and there was sound advice on accessories ("never buy plastic shoes or handbags"). Memories posted on Friends Reunited include a mention of her glasses; these invariably had only one arm that she would suck, absent-mindedly, from time to time. She once used this arm to prod one of the dissected frogs and then forgot where it had been . . .

Miss Kennedy drove a Mini (very badly) and pupils were advised to stand well clear, especially if it was raining, as she swept in and out of the school drive. We played endless practical jokes on her; one former pupil claims to have put an eyeball into her handbag. No details, I'm afraid about the type or source of the eyeball. (The shelves of the lab were lined with jars of ancient and grim-looking body parts, all of which had been pickled in formaldehyde.) Nevertheless, even though her temper was as flame-like as her hair, for the most part she took the practical jokes in good heart.

On sunny summer days, she would eschew the stuffy confines of the staff room, walk across to the school playing field, hitch up her skirt, scramble on top of one of the old air-raid shelters and perch there, legs crossed, reading her daily newspaper. And did I imagine it, or was this also where she would light up a cigarette . . . ?

Despite all the diversions for advice on etiquette and gracious living, I can still remember so much of what she taught. How could one forget? I cannot, sadly, say the same of the chemistry teacher with whom we studied in the following two years and under whose uninspiring tutelage many of us lost our way with science. 

After I left Gumley House, I never expected to see any of my teachers again. (Did I assume that they remained sealed up within the convent walls? We certainly never imagined them having lives outside the school.) But I did meet Miss Kennedy once more, in the mid-1980s at Brompton Oratory's* very upmarket summer fair. The Oratory has long been the most fashionable and most sumptuous of London's Catholic churches and the company I was working for had taken a page of advertising in the programme. I'd been sent a complimentary ticket for the fair and went along. And there was my old science teacher, still a riot of colour, up to and including the red hair and lipstick.

It never occurred to me that she would remember me. But she did and, for half an hour, plied me with questions about what I had done with my life in the previous 20 years. We had tea together and, as we left, she put her arm through mine and said what a pleasure our meeting had been. As, indeed it was. I left her trying her luck on the bottle stall.

Years later, I heard that Miss Kennedy had been devastated when she eventually had to retire from the school; Gumley House and its pupils had been everything to her. Retirement meant life in a small bed-sit, somewhere in South Kensington, within walking distance of the Oratory. But then, for Miss Kennedy, this ornate church, with its exceptionally well-heeled and elegant congregation and its glorious music, would have been a natural choice as a place of worship. As she had so frequently reminded us: "Always choose the very best that you can, girls."

. . . and they were a perfect fit . . .

Just spent a whistle-stop 24 hours with one of my oldest friends, C. Come September, we'll have known each other for 50 years and we're planning to have a bit of a celebration. Our lives have run on parallel and frequently intertwined lines throughout that time and our interest in and concern for one another remains as strong as ever.

In the half century of our friendship, we have never run out out of things to talk (or laugh) about. This visit was no exception. Apart from all the usual catching up with personal and family news, we cover books, films, mutual friends and schooldays, not to mention religion and politics (which is fine because we have similar views on both) and going to see the Rolling Stones for the first time (early 1963, the Crawdaddy Club, the Station Hotel, Richmond). We also reminisce about our science teacher, the wonderfully eccentric Miss Kennedy. (But Miss Kennedy deserves a post all to herself.)

And then we talk about shoes because we've always had a bit of a thing about shoes; I admire her Menorcan sandals - and her tanned feet; she likes my multi-coloured Balinese ballet flats. And then we get all nostalgic about a pair of shoes once owned by her friend, B. Originally red, then dyed black, the shoes consisted of several wide horizontal straps and what we used to call a lavatory pan heel. The shoes were French and came from the Regent Street branch of Galeries Lafayette of distant memory. They hadn't fitted B properly and were passed on to C. But they didn't fit her either, so I ended up with them. (And, yes, I am D.) To be honest, they were too small for me, but I loved them so much, I insisted on wearing them and ignoring the pain. What was it about those shoes that we can still recall them in finest detail after 45 years? Maybe we saw them as the essence of French cool; in the 1960s, anything French was still perceived as ultra-cool - and therefore something to be aspired to.

These days, while we are still drawn to footwear beauty, we are a touch more practical and make sure that our shoes are as perfect a fit as our friendship.

Before she left, I sorted out some books that I knew she would enjoy. I'd also wanted to read her a sentence from Helen Garner's The Spare Room because it went to the heart of the nature of friendship between women. Needless to say, when I looked for the book, it was nowhere to be seen but, as so often happens, I found it this morning, exactly where I had left it . . .

So, this for you C - and for women friends, everywhere.

Helen, the narrator, is looking back to the first time she spent a weekend at Nicola's hillside house, along the coast from Sydney's northern beaches:

"That night we took the bottle of Stoly down the rough path to the landing where, sitting on our jackets in the dark, we launched the long conversation that would become our friendship."

Tortoise tales

We - as in my daughter and I - have reached the kitchen cupboards - as in clearing out/downsizing/decluttering. At the back of the cupboard where most of the crockery is stored, I find  two jelly moulds, one glass, one metal, in the shape of tortoises. I hold them up to my daughter.

"Nana used to make greengage jelly in these for me when I was little." Nana was her grandmother, my mother but in the years since she died in 1995, we have always called her Nana, because, well, it just seems right. And, in that moment, I see my mother in the kitchen, stirring the scalding, jewel-coloured liquid that will, magically - and provided that I don't sneak into the larder and move the moulds while the jelly is setting - transform itself into into shimmering, quivering tortoises. I always feel slightly guilty when my spoon makes that first indentation . . .

Years later I make jellies and blancmanges in the same moulds for my daughter. 

As I turn the moulds over in my hand, time telescopes and I feel a very deep sniff and prickly eyes coming on. I put the jelly moulds back in the cupboard. Where I go, they go.

Later I find myself thinking about my real tortoise, Susan, who joined the childhood menagerie when I was about 10. I was fascinated by the way she moved around the garden, at a measured but determined pace, in search of dandelion leaves.

Next door's cat was equally fascinated. Sleek, shiny and black, Timmy was originally known in our house as the Bed and Breakfast Boy, because he slept in our kitchen, ate his breakfast with our cats and would then nip back to his owners next door to put in a token appearance. When they emigrated to New Zealand, there was no question about what should happen to Timmy. He moved in with us permanently and was, from then on, called by his full name - Timothy.

Timothy was devoted to Susan. He watched over her every movement, and would follow her round the garden, at a discreet distance, and was very protective towards her. He was a gentle, trusting cat, which probably explains why he didn't recognise the warning signs when the only vicious dog in our street spotted him early one morning . . .

Rex was a fat, black and white mongrel, who was never given much more than a desultory walk round the block by one of his owners, Mr or Mrs Smith - or Mr Smith's brother, who lived with them. (There was always a good deal of muttering about the Smiths at our house - mutterings that I now realise indicated that the Smiths had some sort of ménage à trois arrangement. At 10, I didn't understand what this meant. It was, after all, 1957 and children were still, generally speaking, children and not quasi-adults - o tempora, o mores and all that.) Rex would stand behind his firmly shut front gate growling and snapping  at anyone - and any other animal - that walked past. No-one lingered at that gate to pat the dog.

But on this particular morning, someone forgot to shut the gate. I was in my bedroom when I heard a terrible cry. Looking out of the window, I saw Rex shaking something. He had my beautiful, black cat by the throat. The anger in our house that morning was palpable and heated words were exchanged with the Smiths.

We buried Timothy beneath the Worcester apple tree at the end of the garden and, shortly afterwards, Susan disappeared. We searched and searched but never saw her again.

Extraordinary the memories that a couple of jelly moulds can trigger.

(Apologies for the iffy line spacing - Typepad's frustrating auto-formatting messes things up again and cannot be undone.)