Birthday weekend

On Friday we went to Bournemouth, ready to celebrate our grandson's birthday on the following day. Glorious weather was promised and we made an early start in order to avoid being stuck in traffic as everyone made a dash to the coast. I love being by the sea, but these are strange times and we knew that although others would be packed like sardines on Bournemouth beach we would not be venturing anywhere near it. We went instead  to the river to wade in the shallows with our fishing nets in the hope of catching one of the many small fish.

He was so tired at the end of the day that he feel asleep in the chair and was taken upstairs, given a sponge wash, put in his pjs  and popped into bed without waking up! The last photo of him age two.

It was a different story on the birthday morning!

A bike!

Although balloons take some beating!

Adjustments to the saddle

and then onto the open road.

Where has the balloon gone?

We had a great time.

But it was good to sit down for a rest!

June reading list

In lockdown life this month I reread a few old favourites, including some Fitzgerald short stories, and two new books that share the theme of mother and daughter.
The first novel, 'Feebleminded' was the book choice for our reading group, which now takes place as a zoom meeting.

I disliked this book intensely and had it not been up for discussion would not have bothered to read beyond the first page. Mercifully it is a very short book! The author is a young Argentinian woman and her writing has received high praise. The story is constructed as the stream-of-consciousness howl of two damaged women, the mother and adult child, both nameless throughout.
"Ariana Harwich again takes us into the darkest recesses of the imagination with this deliriously disturbing account of a mother-daughter relationship. Driven to the edge by the men in their lives, both absent and present,they oscillate between erratic bursts of housework, lazing in the garden and drunken escapades."

I much preferred Laura Cumming's non-fiction account of the kidnapping of her mother when she was a child. The book tells the story of the detective work done by the author to discover the secret behind this strange happening.

Laura's mother had been adopted when she was three years old, prior to the kidnapping,  and many opportunities were missed to find out about her birth parentage, apparently due to a wish not to upset the woman who had brought her up.
The author is an art critic on the Observer newspaper and she references various art works and images through the book, making at times what, for me, were somewhat tenuous connections. I felt that it could have been edited a little more crisply so was quite a frustrating read at times. It was also very sad.

The two books could not be more different. Great love and respect of her mother was evident throughout Laura Cumming's book, whereas the relationship that Ariana Harwicz portrays in 'Feebleminded' is poisonous. (The book meeting was divided, one or two loved the book, other responses were more like mine.)

Presents

A present arrived in the post from the First Born, a very pretty-looking mask for when I go out to meet the world again!

I had a bit of a kerfuffle at first in trying it on, trying to fasten the ribbons at the back of my head, catching them in my hair and having the mask slip down from my face. Then it dawned on me that the ribbons needed be tied together. Success - I'm sometimes a bit slow to work things out!

But although the mask itself is pretty, the act of wearing it is not. You can convey so little. A smile is useless and much human interaction is lost. A masked face is disturbing and potentially threatening. Even so I shall be quite happy for EVERYONE to be masked when I do eventually leave this period of self-isolation.

When we opened the kitchen door we found that a courier had left a parcel.

A super little hamper of goodies from Fortnum and Mason

to thank us for looking after Sparky.

Sparky did his very best to pal up with Himself, but it was to no avail. I could have told him that it was a lost cause, and not helped one bit by tearing away at the planking on the wooden shed.

 The First Born is a journalist and I sometimes get maligned in print. This week she mentioned my gardening garb. Yes, I'll admit that when I garden I do dress rather like Worzel Gummidge, in my, or her, or her sister's old clothes. I'm comfortable like that and don't care if I get tangled in a rose bush or if something gets torn or covered in dirt. The concept of new clothes bought just to garden in is a strange one for me. Neighbours have got used to me looking like a bin lady. Perhaps they think me a bit eccentric. I wouldn't know.

After days of glorious weather it is now extremely windy and cold and we have retreated into the greenhouse. The bigger citrus trees have been put outside for the summer and we are sheltering inside. Having lived in shorts and skinny tops in recent weeks, (scruffy, old ones, as above!) I'm now back in trousers and warm jumpers. Me&Ems lovely light, yet cosy, cashmere jumper and cargo pants are not hand-me-downs so I won't be gardening in them any time soon. I'll probably need to wear out the elbows first.

Crazy weather. Crazy times. I hope, dear bloggers, you are keeping safe and well.

Windy Corner

Gracious, what a mess everything is! Look at my scarlet pompoms and the wind blowing your skirt about, and the ground so hard that not a prop will stick in, and then the carriage having to go out, when I had counted on having Powell, who - give everyone their due - does tie up dahlias properly.

It is Mrs Honeychurch in E. M. Foster's book, 'A Room With A View' who is speaking. Her house is called, 'Windy Corner' and she is in despair about the damage that has been done to the flowers in her garden. I know just how she feels! We have had some extremely strong winds, not a good thing at this time of year when  leaves and stems are young and easily damaged.

At least I'm not battling the wind in Edwardian clothing like Mrs Honeychurch. I think it's a beautiful period for women's fashion, but neither comfortable nor practical. I  pretty much live in either denim shorts or jeans when I'm working outside. I hadn't intended to work in the garden today, I find the wind stressing, but I'm still slobbed out in denim, a pinafore dress from the year dot and a much-loved little cashmere cardi from Brora.

I didn't stay out for long!

1965

Lewisham Road, London. 1965

During the 'swinging sixties' I was an art student in London. At weekends you might find me in my red leather boots, mini skirt and butcher's boy cap sauntering down Carnaby Street or along the King's Road. I lived in a bedsit on the Lewisham Road. The Indian landlord and his wife lived in the basement and the wonderful smell of cooking spices drifted up to my room on the ground floor. The rooms above me were crammed with other students. All of us shared the same bathroom which had French windows leading out into the long back garden, a space left to riot as it wished, entirely covered in rose bay willow herb. You know what they say about the sixties, that if you remember them you weren't really there. But I remember every aspect of 1965 very clearly.

Before coming to London I had spent four years as a fine art student at a northern art school. In the spring of '65 the young life model became pregnant. She asked me to lend her money as she was desperate to have an abortion. I lived carefully on my grant and small sum of scholarship money and was relieved that I had no moral decision to make and could honestly say that I didn't have any money to spare. No one else was prepared to lend her money for this illegal and life-risking deed and she went on to carry the child. Then a girl in my year discovered that she was pregnant. She and her boyfriend were delighted! I have photo of us all in the studio, mum-to-be with an ENORMOUS belly, her face smiling broadly above.

I went to London in the autumn where college didn't start until ten o'clock. I was used to an earlier start and sometimes caught the bus to Greenwich Park with friends so that we could walk in the quiet with grass under our feet. We would have breakfast at a transport caf at the bottom of the park and then catch a bus back to college. If there was to be a morning lecture students in the house would knock on each others' doors to be sure that they would be in the lecture theatre in good time. One morning we failed to rouse the girl in the room above me. She had taken an overdose in an attempt to take her own life. We pulled her out of bed and dragged her around the room. I sprinted down the road for a telephone, my heart hammering. It transpired that during the summer she had had an abortion and now was filled with despair and regret. When she was released from hospital she was sent to a recuperation centre where I visited her. It was a grim place, a large wooden hut that had been used after the war as somewhere for displaced persons. She was a forlorn sight. She returned home and did not complete her studies.

Sometime later I read Germaine Greer describing the delights of her youth, the joy of women in being sexually free. If you became pregnant, she wrote, it was easily solved by having an abortion. Silly bitch, I thought. How simplistic.
The 1962 film, The L-shaped Room stars Lesley Caron as a young unmarried pregnant woman. It is a black and white - and grey -  film, and is, for me a very accurate depiction of 'swinging' London in the sixties.

March reading

Some of this month's books have been a very mixed bag. The Ben Macintyre biography of Gordievsky was a book group choice. I didn't enjoy it although others found it exciting.

I thought that it was depressing that mankind chooses to spend so much time and energy in negativity and paranoia. 

A friend lent me this curious little autobiography by a descendant of the Victorian artist Holman Hunt. It describes her childhood, being shunted between two very different grandmothers. I found the result rather fey.

This was a traveling library choice. I say 'choice' but there is actually very little on the shelves that appeals. The main advantage is that we can order books. As I've mentioned before, the van stops right outside our house and provides a great service. 'The Dress' concept was interesting and well plotted, of a dress being owned, or borrowed, by a variety of women.

The book that I absolutely LOVED was the follow on to 'Olive Kitteridge'. The same format was followed in 'Olive Again' of  linked stories in which Olive featured to a greater or lesser extent. The characterisation throughout this book is wonderful.

Who knows when the libraries will reopen. I picked two large print books when they were last in the village, chosen only because they are easier to see when I'm reading in bed at night. I suspect that they are both tosh and I'll put them to one side in annoyance before I've got very far. Never mind, the house is full of books and the next few months will be a good time to re-read many of my favourites. Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, possibly Miss Austin!

(What is it about the name Elizabeth? Three of them, all wonderful writers.)

Keep safe, keep well, and tuck yourself up with a good book!

Visible Monday - bargain Boden.

Every other year the mail order clothing firm, Boden, holds a warehouse sale at the local show ground. In the past I've been with my friend, Janet, arriving when the sale first opens in the morning. It has been like taking part in a rugby scrum. This time we decided to be more lady-like and saunter in after lunch. Janet is a demon shopper, she used to work in the fashion industry and can work at speed through a mound of unlikely looking clothing like a truffle hound and pull out a bargain. She is also good at restraining me from making an ill-judged purchase with the mere lift of an eyebrow so she's a great person to go shopping with. I'm not in need of any clothes and for the last few years have been trying to buy as little as possible so I wasn't intending to buy anything for myself, but thought I would just take a look at the women's clothes while I was there. I was on the hunt for  children's wear, age 3 to 4yrs for my grandson who is growing up quickly.
It was very quiet when we arrived and the clothes remaining on the tables looked  unpromising, they had been well picked over. Had we made a big mistake by being so late? An organiser told us that in the morning women had descended like locusts and grabbed armfuls of clothes and had been busy photographing them. Individuals had bought so many items that it was suspected they were to be sold on later for a profit.
I managed to find some moleskin trousers and a lovely jumper for the boy, by which time Janet had decked herself out in a very natty jumpsuit. Dresses were £20. Janet gave me something crumpled and white to try on.
 
Cotton dress and with petticoat, pockets, scalloped hem and armholes.
My size, UK 12. What's not to like!

While in the changing room I saw someone wearing this pink shirtwaister, the only size left was UK16. "Try it on," said the expert. 100% cotton, pockets, button through, LOTS of room! It looks rather '40's/50's utility - just the thing for my sort of lifestyle!
 So we came home happy.


I'm sharing with Patti's Visible Monday at notdeadyetstyle.com She is talking about tuxedos/jackets. I've got a summery Boden jacket from several years back (bought full price!) that I usually wear with jeans. Perhaps it will go with the white dress. Though I'm going to have to wait until the weather warms and we've finished with storms!