The Joys Of Sunday

pub lunch

Yesterday was Sunday.

Depending on your perception, Sunday is the first or seventh day, a religious high day, or  just  part of the weekend, a day off from work, or school; for many it is a day to work at or from home, doing the jobs for which there isn't time during the week. When I was still gainfully employed, Saturdays were a slog but Sunday morning was for lying in, a leisurely perusal of the paper, a home cooked meal for lunch, and quality time with the family in the afternoon.

By Sunday evening the joys of quality time had palled, and all three of us were  bored to distraction, the kids were looking forward to seeing their friends at school and I was usually ready to go back to work next morning.

Neither Beloved nor I work for money now, our time is our own, all week, Sundays included. However, my catholic training from long ago still makes me feel that Sundays are special, that I must do something to lift Sunday out of the pleasant but mundane routine and make each one memorable, whatever the effort involved. No gain without pain.

It's a feeling I fight very hard to overcome.

Sadly, we lack all the usual Sunday diversions: we have no grannies to entertain, children to bore with family games, or the endurance test of family visits; we are not given to going on strenuous nature rambles - nature is strictly for weekdays. Sunday pub lunches are a definite no-no:  all you can eat of the set meal, the Sunday Roast, two kinds of potato and various vegetables, all swimming in gravy, with a steam pudding and custard to follow, until you need the help of a crane to lift you off your chair at the end of it. The pub is crammed full with robust and hearty eaters tucking in,  granny and widowed uncle Bertie included;  the younger couples have brought their children and small kids are racing each other between the tables. Strong-armed  waitresses, red-faced and glowing with perspiration,  heaving laden plates and heavy dishes, keep the throng supplied.

Carl Spitzweg  -  Der Spaziergang

Childhood Sundays were equally nightmarish. On Summer Sundays one went for a walk.

In those far off days there was still a difference in clothing between work-a-day clothing and Sunday Best. Dad and custom decreed that for Sunday walks in the park only Sunday Best was good enough. Dad set the tone by wearing a light weight, light coloured suit, topped with a hat and a walking stick over his arm. Mother wore her best floral  silk, a fetching hat, gloves, and high heels, which were killing her halfway through the walk.

But the tortured child suffered the most. Picture the poor innocent in her pretty, smocked or ruched frock, often white but certainly no darker than pastel-hued, white cotton ankle socks and tight fitting, black patent leather shoes. Every scuffed step would leave a black mark on the sock, there was no skipping off or kicking stones, no touching anything that could cause a smudge on the dress. "Pick up your feet,", "Don't dawdle",  "Don't touch". All the other families were out too, this was an occasion to see and be seen, to meet and greet. Dad's hat was lifted and replaced every few steps, women stepped aside for a moment to exchange a pleasant word, while keeping an eagle eye on the young, who were required to  curtsey or bow, depending on gender, every time this happened. Adults shook hands formally.

These walks were interminable, from one end of the park to the other, around the lake, and back again.
The highlight was getting too close to the swans on the lake and squealing in terror when these made to
 follow the culprit, who was then roundly admonished to "behave yourself", or "stop being silly".

Once safely back home, suits and dresses were taking off, brushed and hung up again, to await the next outing. Mothers said "just look at your socks and shoes, whatever have you been doing?"

 

Sunday lunch in the garden

Sundays  chez nous are simplicity itself. Lunch is important to us, but we eat the food suitable for the occasion, considering the weather, the effort involved and our appetites.  Nobody is obliged to do anything they don't feel like doing and we never play games. We might whistle for the dog, grab a stick and take a gentle walk by the river; we might pick up a book and spend the afternoon reading. We might linger over a bottle, sit in the shade of the old plum tree, talk, and even fall asleep. Whether we are joined by friends or we are on our own, the procedure is the same. Relaxation is the order of the day. 

Sunday Best never gets a look-in. 

Flaming June

Will there ever be such  summers again as the ones we knew when we were small?

What summers they were, summers that never ended, stretched out in the shimmering haze of the endless sky, summers when even the bees faded to the drowsiest hum, hardly able to lift their heavy load of pollen to tumble drunkenly  amongst the blooms in the golden gorse on the railway embankment . The games we played there or in  fragrant swathes of camomile on the banks of the stream hardly mattered, we were soon  overcome by the heat and lay in the tall grass, talking and boasting, inventing tall tales, as only innocent children will. And when we had even tired of that, we just lay back and watched bugs and beetles crawl up the grass stem next to our face, the insects, like us, wanting to get out of the shadows, to bask in the sun.

We had been sent to collect the flowers of the camomile plant, a herb useful in many ways. The flower heads were dried in the attic, on wooden boards, which, come autumn, would hold apples and pears for winter storage. The pleasant smell quickly became all-pervasive, an integral part of home.

Camomile was used as a panacea for all ills as well as a herbal tea. For colds and coughs, flu and fevers, via tummy aches, constipation and haemorrhoids, to inflammations, infections, as a diuretic and 'blood cleanser' as well as a refreshing drink, camomile tinctures, mixed with grease as a cream and in sachets for hot and cold compresses, were an absolute necessity in the German housewife's household pharmacopeia.

The Saints help the child who came home without its bag, stitched together from an old cotton tea cloth, filled with the heads of camomile plants. Cheating was not allowed, stems were not wanted. We were sent out to gather the herb for weeks, on as many sunny days as there were, from the end of June to the middle of July, the time of ripening. At weekends the adults came too, it was classified as a family outing  for a useful purpose. What is known as 'quality time' nowadays, I suppose.

We were out for many hours on our own, picking not just the herb, but also poppies, cornflowers and daisies. By the time we arrived home,  the bunches of flowers wilted, we children were happily tired out and intoxicated with freedom and summer.

Standing Your Ground

We like a glass of wine or two, with meals, as an aperitif,  or for no particular reason, while reading or watching TV, maybe. A lot of our everyday wines come from supermarkets and when we see that a particular favourite is on 'special offer'. we buy a box or two.

The other day we saw that one of the wines we enjoy had been seriously reduced; the labels were there, but there were no bottles left on the shelf.  We made enquiries and were told that deliveries were being held up by a fire and an overturned lorry on the motorway but that the store was expecting to re-stock the next day. As we live about an hour away from the town it was unlikely that we would return, we therefore ordered a dozen bottles to be collected at our convenience. "Certainly, madam, that will be fine. Let me have your number and I will ring you when deliveries get through."

I asked if the reduction in price would apply. " Yes indeed, this wine is on offer until the end of the month."

Lovely, thank you very much, good-bye.

Having heard nothing for over a week, I rang the supermarket last night. "Yes, the wine is here; sorry, I can't find your order; unfortunately, it doesn't look as if it has been put aside for you."   I asked, and they agreed, to put a dozen bottles aside for me there and then, to be collected  from the customer services desk today.

When we presented ourselves before midday, the wine was found to have gone back to its full price as from this morning.

I let the desk staff know that I was hurt, disappointed, even angry at their inefficiency and unwilling to buy the wine, order or no order, except at the reduced price.

The culprit who had mislaid the order was called, the supervisor appeared, as did the suit responsible for the wine department. Heads were shaken, sorrowful faces presented, apologies offered.

I was unwilling to relent, it was a misery of their own making.

Reader, I walked out of the store clutching my one dozen bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, not only at the reduced price but also with a small reduction for the quantity purchased.

Standing your ground brings benefits. I advise you to do likewise.

Cheers!

Summer Solstice combined with Good Housekeeping

Arise, Oh Sun!

The 20th century greets midsummer day

at Stonehenge

in white-robed anticipation.

When ancient druids worshipped in Britain,

Stonehenge was already a ruin, its priests dead and its builders forgotten.

Such is the power of the lintelled sarsens on Salisbury Plain, people still

come to make their own prayers.

If that's not your bag, you could

gather and dry herbs this month.

'Of leaves choose only such as are green, and full of juice, and cast away such as are any way declining, for they will putrefy the rest. Dry them well in the sun (and not in the shade, as the saying of physicians is): for if the Sun draw away the virtues of the herb, it must needs do the like by hay  . . . . which the experience of every country farmer will explode for a notable piece of nonsense. Having well dried them, put them up in brown paper, sewing the paper up like a sack, and press them not too hard together, and keep them in a dry place near the fire.'

(Culpeper, English physician 1653)

if, however, you are too lazy to do that,

you could

catch yourself a fairy to do the work for you.

Fairies being particularly active in the period between midsummer and St. Peter's Day, now is a good time to bind them to your service; but if you do see the fairies, be sure you never tell.

(late 17th century)

I know of a long-established way to catch yourself a fairy, which I am willing to

divulge, for a small consideration, naturally.

Or else, you could look it up yourselves in 

Elias Ashmole's manuscript, late 17th century.

Whatever you do,

with Midsummer Eve so close,

be sure to keep your house clean.

Farewell, rewards and fairies

Good Housewives now may say

For now foul sluts in Dairies

Do fare as well as they

And though they sweep their hearths no less

Than maids were wont to do

Yet who of late for Cleanliness

Finds six-pence in her Shoe?

Not Me. folks.

Our Revels Now Are Ended

“Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended.”

The birthday week is over; Beloved and I have a birthday within two days of each other, which makes the whole thing either less of an ordeal or more of a celebration, whichever way you want to look at it.

Firstly, I must make amends. Having slept well for several nights, and having come to terms with ‘hanging yet another year on the line’, I must give the ladies, about whom I was so very rude in my last post, their due.  They gave me a splendid lunch at Mellington Hall, a hotel set in lovely countryside, deep in the Shropshire/Welsh Marches.  Because there were eight of us, gossipy huddles were difficult to arrange, a bonus for me; instead the conversation was good-natured, friendly, and very jolly. I enjoyed myself. There was just one slightly awkward moment when the waiter came in, bearing the tiniest birthday cake with a tiny birthday candle -  and the group burst into a very giggly and unmelodious rendition of “Happy Birthday To You”.

I don’t mind pushing myself into the limelight on occasion, but I hate it when others do it.

We had B’s birthday meal at a Michelin-starred ‘pub-restaurant with rooms’.
(I love that description; it conjures up all kinds of naughty ideas for me. Do you avail yourself of ‘the rooms’ before or after the meal, or possibly spend the night?) However, The Stagg Inn is a very proper establishment, with glorious food, served unobtrusively and efficiently and not a frilly pink shell-folded napkin in sight. At the next table sat a middle-aged couple, who obviously didn’t officially belong together; they were much too lively, talkative and amused with each other to have a high mileage behind them.

When they arrived, they made a great fuss over a warning on the menu that certain items would require a lengthy cooking time. It’s what happens with freshly cooked dishes; food slammed into the microwave straight from the freezer comes more quickly. However, Mrs. Naughty then went into the bar where she stayed for ages. Her ‘partner’ eventually went to fetch her; not in the least embarrassed, she exclaimed loudly: “ I was looking at the bar menu and got talking to some delightful people there.” Only then did they study the restaurant menu and order.

You might think, this Friko person is a busybody, sticking her nose in where it has no business to be, watching and recording; you might be right – how else am I going to get blogging material on a slow day.

Yesterday, three charming bloggers and I met at a North Shropshire Garden.
Wollerton Old Hall Gardens are small but ‘perfectly formed’, with formal and informal garden rooms divided from each other by hedges, walls and pergolas.
The planting is very attractive, with colour co-ordinated rooms, some pale and monochrome and others bright and colourful. I particularly liked some beautiful trees, which had obviously been in situ long before the current gardens were established.



Sadly, it rained for part of the visit. We spent the dry part in the coffee shop, only venturing out after the rain had started, which made it all very eccentric. During the worst of the rain, we took shelter in a lovely little summer pavilion with a swagged roof like a baldachin. Having met before, and all four being keen gardeners, there was none of that initial awkwardness; speaking purely for myself, I enjoyed the trip.

I hope the others did too.

PS: I did not bake the delicious birthday cake shown in the first picture; The village cake baker made it for us.

Confession Is Bad For The Soul

About as bad for the soul as it gets.

In the wee small hours of the morning

When the whole wide world is fast asleep,

I think of  . . .

And never ever think of counting sheep . . . .

Having had a full body massage today/yesterday doesn’t help, a massage always stirs up all the aches and pains that normally get buried during the day and then proceed to nag me all night. And without a massage I’d never get full control of my joints and never get rid of the rocks lodged in them.

It is 3 in the morning and sleep is as far away as the man in the moon.

Tomorrow/Today is my birthday, one of those with a big fat nought, the one where retirement and old age start, where you finally have to face up to the fact that you will never do any of the things your vast talents promised you’d do when you were young,

I have just been downstairs to the drinks cupboard and poured a large glass of sherry; on top of 20mg of temazepam and a double dose of paracetamol that should at least dull the feeling of dissatisfaction, even if it doesn’t knock me out sufficiently to send me into the arms of Morpheus. 

I wish I could be the kind of nightowl who sits over a glass of whiskey on the rocks, a gently smoking cigarette in the ashtray and a romantic tear glistening on her cheek. I am not even granted that dreary stereotype, being far too damned realistic and down-to-earth for any fancy rubbish like that. Besides, I neither smoke nor drink spirits.

I am the sort of insomniac who tosses and turns all night, whose thoughts are of the pointless, circular kind, who feels nothing but self pity and useless regret. And is going to be a complete wreck in the morning.

A group of boring women is taking me out to lunch tomorrow. There is no other kind of woman in rural England; the sort, for whom a good gossip is all the intellectual stimulation needed to provide a warm glow of rather nasty self satisfaction. I shall look a complete mess, which can barely be hidden under a layer of make-up. Still, at least I know how to put on a party face and these poor souls mean well; they went to the trouble of booking a table, organized others of their sort to come along and make up the numbers and they probably feel they are doing me a great favour, when all the time I feel I’m doing  penance.

I’m too bloody kind in spite of my nasty, sneering nature. I should have told them I was busy. It is my birthday, after all.

All of you would probably be overrun with family. The number of female bloggers who describe themselves as “mother of ../ wife . . ./grandmother of…./ always surprises me. I thought we’d left the era when we were somebody’s appendage behind us, and had become women and people in our own right and not valid only because we filled a niche in somebody else’s life. I’m wrong there.

I am all those wheels on somebody else’s carriage myself but I’ll be damned if I validate my existence other than by my own efforts, on my behalf. Still, it would be nice if any of the brood could be bothered to make a fuss of me on my birthday.

I was a rotten mother, always too busy earning a living and being a friend to my children. “I don’t want a friend”, my daughter, who no longer speaks to me, said, “ I want a mum, like the other kids have”. Tough tittie. Food and clothes and a roof over your head came first, my girl.

Right, that’s got rid of most of my readers. In my present state of mind I don’t care, although it would be very kind of you if you could overlook this lapse of good manners and give me the benefit of the doubt. I might behave better in future.

But now I am depressed; I am aching to go to sleep and stop talking rubbish into nothingness, which is all there is to the virtual world.

Thank Goodness, You don’t know who I am.

Confession is bad for the soul, not to mention embarrassing.

If I post this, I deserve to be evicted for stupidity.


Would you believe that the thrush has started his morning concert, and there is already enough light in the sky to see the river? I think I'll go down the bank in my nightdress and drown myself. 

Eva's Tale - Eva meets Death

Eva is a little girl growing up in post-war Germany. She has been telling us about her adventures while she was on an island in the North Sea, Norderney,  where she was in a sanatorium and children's home, to cure her of incipient TB. She is much improved and back in her home village now. She likes telling stories and has agreed to tell us about more of her life.


This is the first story since she has been back. 




Eva Meets Death

I’m bored. Lucy isn’t coming out to play. She can only come to the window to talk to me, her mum won’t let me in. My mum says that Lucy is really sick and that I shouldn’t keep knocking on her door, that it would make her too tired. That is ridiculous, we don’t talk much and it’s not as if I were climbing up to the window or anything.

Lucy looks clean all the time, really white and pink and she doesn’t stay at the window for long. But we can still play because I take my box of transparencies and paper dollies and we play with the pictures and dress the dollies up in paper clothes.

Mrs. Jansen came to the window and said we’d have to stop playing because Lucy had to have her rest. I could see that Lucy was tired and Mrs. Jansen looked tired too. Mrs. Jansen looked more tired than Lucy and her eyes had gone a bit red and puffy, like mine do, when I cry and when I look in the mirror afterwards, I can see it. Mum says I’m too old to be such a crybaby but I think all children cry sometimes; I know that the kids in school cry when Miss Speer tells them off.  I don’t cry because even if Miss Speer tells me off I don’t want to cry and I hold my breath until the tears don’t want to come anymore.

o - o -o - o - o - o

It’s really hot today. I wanted to ask Lucy if she was better and could come out into the garden. Mum has put the big tin bath out for me and she filled it with water right to the top. I am allowed to wear my swimming costume and it would be nice to have Lucy come over. We could sit in the bath together and just talk.  She is only next door and she wouldn’t have to walk very far in this heat.

Mrs. Jansen came to the door and said that Lucy wasn’t better yet and that she couldn’t come to play. I really think that Lucy has been sick for ages now and if she doesn’t get better soon she’ll miss the holidays and the hot weather.

Mum told me off for knocking on Lucy’s door. She said that I was a pest and should leave people alone. She looked very serious, but then I think she was sorry for telling me off and she gave me a big, sticky hug. And she put her face into my hair which was a funny thing to do. When I looked at her, her eyes had gone shiny and she saw that I was looking at her, so she quickly clapped her arms around me; then I couldn’t see her face anymore.

Grown-ups are peculiar, one minute they’re cross, the next minute they go all gooey. But I don’t mind, mum’s okay, really.

o - o - o - o - o - o

When I got up this morning, I could see that mum had her serious face on. She said that I should be a big brave girl because she had something to tell me which was very sad. My friend Lucy had died, that she wasn’t sick anymore and that she had gone to a place where little girls are well looked after. I asked If I could go there to play with her but mum said that wasn’t possible. But I could go to Lucy’s house to say goodbye to her. Perhaps they are sending her to  a sanatorium to make her better.

In the afternoon mum took me over. I had to wear a proper dress in the middle of the week and in the holidays; I didn’t think I should, but mum said I’d have to, it would be more fitting. All my dresses are getting too small for me, Dad says he can't keep up with how I shoot up from one day to the next and how I am outgrowing all my clothes too fast and nothing fits me anyway.

When we got there, there were some other children from the street in the hall; Mrs. Jansen opened the door to the front room and told us to be quiet and not to shuffle our feet, and not to touch anything, and to go in now.

The parlour table was in the middle of the room and there was a kind of long white box on it and in the box there was Lucy, just lying there, with her head on a white pillow and a white coverlet over her. Mrs. Jansen told us not to go further into the room but I could see Lucy well from where I was standing. She didn’t look dead one little bit. Mum says dead is when you have no life in you, but even when you are asleep you have life in you. You can always tell if someone has life in them when they breathe. I wanted to go up to Lucy and see if she was breathing because she looked just like she was asleep, not a bit like she had no life in her. It was all very strange. But Mrs. Jansen stopped me from going closer to the box and I couldn’t tell for sure if Lucy was breathing or not.

Mrs. Jansen said to say goodbye to Lucy and to say a little prayer for her and to be good children and leave quietly.

I went into the garden and sat in my secret den by the rabbit hutch. Mum came out and asked if I was hiding, if I was okay and did I want some lemonade.

I told her that I had some thinking to do and that a glass of lemonade would be fine and if she wanted she could come and sit in the den for a bit.

Family Ties

My friend Jayne and I went for a walk the other day. It was a long, companionable walk, dogs running ahead, the stream alongside the path  gently purling and swirling in eddies where stones and small boulders hindered its free flow. Squadrons of rooks bustled overhead in formation, swooping, diving, then settling in the tops of the trees lining the hollow lane, cawing raucously, the black rags of their untidy plumage fluttering in the breeze.

It was a day to be at peace with yourself and the world.

My friend has had a troubled past; recently she lost two close relatives, leaving her with a ragbag of emotions, unanswered questions, and an inner turmoil which will take a long time to resolve.

When your protagonist is dead, whatever is unresolved, remains unresolved.

Jayne has family, from most of whom she is estranged; I am an only child, I have no family other than very distant cousins.  For entirely different reasons we therefore find ourselves in very similar circumstances, without close family ties.  (I am speaking here only of  the current generation , not children or grandchildren)

Did I mind, she asked. Did I feel the lack of close kin?

"Yes and No, or maybe just Maybe?"

Well, what was I supposed to say? There’s no easy answer to that.

As we climbed  higher up the lane, we pondered the question. I have often thought how very pleasant it would be to have brothers or sisters, but here I had the example of Jayne before me, whose relationship with her brothers and sisters is difficult, to say the least.

History and novels are full of dysfunctional families, sibling rivalry, jealousy, even murder. I am not saying that fact and fiction are the same or that fiction is always based on commonplace reality, but  plenty of those ‘misery memoirs’ have been published, where one person’s view of family history is another person’s fiction.

If, like me, you are an ex-patriate, on a very mundane level, being an only child means you have no one to visit in your home country, no automatic right of entry into “your family”.  Continuity, your ‘slot’, your connection, have gone, you are a tourist in your own home town. Of course, there’s no guarantee that your siblings have stayed ‘home’ and that they’d want you to descend on them.

Being the only one of your generation means that you have no one to share your memories, which can be a very isolating feeling. Growing up as the only child probably also means that you have always been  solitary,  thrown back on your own resources, possibly lacking social skills and the ability to make friends easily, and to keep those you have.  Again, on the other hand, the lucky ones gain early independence and the ability to make their own decisions.

Jayne grew up as a member of an extended family, has a large circle of friends and is very easy company.  Her friendships with others are no closer or deeper than the very few I have. Like me she has little in the way of family contact.

I don’t know whether Jayne and I are exceptions to the rule or representative of our own backgrounds in our different ways; I don’t even know if there are rules.  I know several very close siblings, who have chosen to live near each other and who provide each other with help and support;  I know of others who live far apart but visit as often as they can and would consider their relationship to be a close one. I also know of siblings who positively dislike each other and even some, who might be as well be at war with each other.

As we came back down the hill, I was no nearer to answering her question than I had been when she first asked it. The nearest I could get to an answer, was to say:  “It all depends”.

Ideally, I would like to have had siblings, of the kind, compatible and supportive sort, and lived in the fantasy of a large and happy family; but then I would now most probably be a very different person to who I am. To my mind, a feuding family would be hell, a happy family, heaven. Either way, I have no experience of “The Family  -  that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape”,  as Dodie Smith said,  and never will.

Which is what?  Sad, not sad, a good thing, a bad thing? You tell me.

A June Miscellany

Are you ready to sail around the world?

Bring your own sail,

the paddle is available!

Summertime,

and the living is easy.

June is the month of Plenty,

the month of roses and all

manner of beauty in the garden.

The beautiful and all-curing rose now beginning to bloom.
'The rose doth deserve the chief and prime place among all flowers whatsoever, 
being  esteemed for his beauty, virtues, and his fragrant and
odoriferous smell.'
Gerard's Herbal 1633




o-o-o-o-o-o


June might also be the month when I kill gardener.
He decided that some of the corpses
littering the garden after the winter frosts ought
to be burned before being buried in the compost heap,
in a fire basket close to my bed of miniature conifers
which have taken ten years to grow to their present size,

and just under the walnut tree.




"This stuff is so dry", he said,
"it'll go whoosh".


It did.

In case you were wondering,
this is not a black and white photo,
but the charred branches of part of the tree under
grey skies, mourning in sympathy with me.

Gardener also says 

"they call me the arsonist, because I never fail to light a fire".

Should I be gone from blogland in the near future,
I shall be languishing in gaol for murder.
I shall plead guilty and cite extreme provocation.

The Dream

She knew she had to hurry if she wanted to get off in time to catch the train, but there were so many things she had to do first. The three others were ready to leave the house. It was a wild night, rain lashing  the window panes, adding to her feeling of dread. She was breathing hard, the pressure mounting.

The others left; the man looked back at her angrily, his face a grimace of impatience.

She was very late when she finally locked the front door behind her, pushing her bicycle into the road. The rain and wind caught at her, as she mounted her bike, trying to push her back.

She reached the four-lane boulevard; traffic was heavy, the wet asphalt black and shiny in the bright headlights and street lamps, large plate glass shop fronts mirrored and increased the busyness tenfold. She managed to weave  her way through lines of cars and buses, overtaking knots of cyclists, who swerved out into her lane at the same time as she was trying to pass them.

Her legs pumped furiously, heart pounding and throat aching with the effort of breathing, she raced the race of her life.

At the station the train was still on the platform. Dishevelled, panting, the sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades, she jumped off her bike and was about to lift it into the guards’ carriage when she looked up and saw the man standing at the open door to their compartment, his arm beckoning her on imperiously, a look of fury mixed with disgust on his face.

She stopped abruptly, put down the bike again. Dimly she heard a whistle being blown. Her right hand let go of the handlebar of her bike, and slowly rose into the air in one smooth and graceful movement, two fingers sticking up triumphantly.

A few seconds later she took the handlebar again. turned the bike round in a semicircle and wheeled it back down along the platform. She never once looked back and therefore missed entirely the look of utter, dumbfounded, open-mouthed astonishment on his face.

Dog Owner Training

A photo of the English Heritage Board

We live on the edge of the wide open space that is the castle mound, the field surrounding it and the river enclosing the whole in a semicircle. My garden hedge runs alongside the dry moat and footpath leading to the castle ruins. It's summertime and on sunny days the trippers come, bringing children and dogs.

Valley's End is far off the beaten track,  so the number of visitors is modest, by no means unpleasant. 

The excited voices of little boys who run ahead of their parents across the bridge,  and clamber up the hill, from where they get their first sight of the castle, always make me smile.  "Dad, Dad, there's a castle! I can see it from here, come quick!" Their delighted squeals echo across the greensward. Many of the visitors come from the cities of the Midlands and to have this amount of space freely available is a treat for many of the children.

Dogs get equally excited. The moment they are let off the lead, they start their mad games, running the length of the field, jumping into the river and generally behave in a doglike fashion. Which pleases me.

But there is one thing which really irritates me and that is dog owners who lack training.

The river in late Spring

They've crossed the bridge, and let the dog go. 

Almost instantly they shout the dog's name. The dog doesn't react, naturally.  So they shout again. And again; and once more, for luck.

The dog is off, taking no notice. I can hear the dog owner's voice go the whole gamut from a normal call, through frustration, resignation, anger, alarm and, finally, panic. The beast has gone awol, having the time of its life.

And still the owners call their dog's name, over and over, never once adding a command. Up until now I have been able to keep my tongue in check, but I can't promise the same for the future.

Untrained dog owners:

Presumably, your dog knows its name,

tell it what you want it to do!

Autobiography

I was born one summer’s day in the ruins of defeat.

My father was a soldier
My mother was afraid.

My father’s father praised The Lord
And beat the children.

My mother’s father denied The Lord
And loved the children.

I was born in the ruins of defeat.

Black nuns taught me the meaning of life.
Black priests taught me the wages of sin.

I was born in the ruins of defeat.

The day the circus came to town
Elephants and lions danced.
Whips cracked.
Round and round the horses rode,
The knife thrower’s knives were sharp and shiny,
They always found their target.

The circus left, the animals went,
The knife thrower sheathed his knives.

The day my circus came to town
I danced and danced and danced.
Whips cracked.
Round and round the knife thrower rode me,
His knives where sharp and shiny.
He always found his target.

Pinned to the target
I danced and danced in a whirl of black shadows,
Sharp shining knives, whips, fear and despair,
Faster and faster,
In an endless circle,
And the knife thrower threw his knives.

I awoke, the dance ended.
I sheathed the knife thrower’s knives.

And rose from the ruins of defeat.

Rubble Children - Trümmerkinder

For the whole of one very hot summer two little girls played at housekeeping every day. Each took over a couple of rooms in the ruins of the large house on the corner plot, whose lower floor was almost intact except for the space furthest away from where the entrance door had been, where an iron girder was laid bare between the black and white  tiles of the vestibule. The children spent most of the time in what had been the kitchen of the house, with two large basins of white china clay, miraculously undamaged, having come to rest on the floor at a crazy angle. Twisted pipes hung down over the basins; there was, of course, no water, but as there was no other kitchen furniture at all except for the basins, imagination supplied what they needed. There was enough rubble inside and outside to build your own cooker and table and benches. Broken tiles became pots and pans. What they couldn’t invent they imagined and what couldn’t be imagined they discarded as unnecessary.

Having access to a whole house with floor space for playing was luck indeed. The whole street was in ruins; although all the rubble had been cleared from the roadway itself, most of the remains of former houses were standing amid fallen masonry, shattered chimneys and smashed roof tiles. The wood had all gone, used as firewood. The girls were adventurous, to them the ruins were not dangerous places; they made sure they stayed away from black, gaping holes which opened into the cellars.  They knew that if they fell in, there was no easy way to clamber out again. Besides, they had heard the adults talk about people who had been inside the cellars when the houses collapsed on top of  them. “Who knows”, they said, “ their ghosts might still be down there”.

It was dead people they feared, not the adults they knew. And certainly not houses which had once been houses for real people to live in.  

The upper floors to the house were missing, fragments of walls reached into the friendly  skies whose deep blue was safe now.  The children knew nothing of what had brought about the world in which they lived. The old world the adults spoke of was alien to them, they knew that the houses had not always been in ruins, that they had had walls and roofs and doorways and windows that could be opened and shut, much like the flats they lived in now.  The word ‘makeshift’ meant nothing to the children. When the adults said that the day would come when all would be well again, the children looked at them as if to say “ what is not well now?” The adults spoke of toys and food and clothes and shoes they had once had and would have again one day, and the children didn’t understand. They had shoes on their feet and clothes to wear and food in their bellies, and above all, they had their wonderful ruined house, where they could take their rag dolls and play housekeeping.

The house had once stood in its own grounds and although much of the former garden was covered in rubble from the cleared roadway, a small patch right in the middle of it was left free. The black frocked priest in church had talked of paradise and the girls thought they must have found it. Being secretive and unwilling to share the secret, they kept their discovery to themselves, forcing their way through the rubble which was partly hidden under the by now rampant vegetation and overgrown with long strands of trailing brambles, patches of thigh high nettles and thorny rose bushes, until they reached their own special den, the heart of the original garden, where flowering shrubs mingled with a large stand of willowherb. The scent was overpowering. The girls flattened some of the tall willowherb, which was taller than they were; when sitting on the ground they were completely hidden from view. 

Here they took their afternoon picnic. They had brought precious lemonade to drink out of toy cups, they had a few sweets; sometimes they had a biscuit each;  everything else their imagination supplied. They did as children do, and always will.

Summer that year was a miracle, paradise indeed, never to be forgotten. But all summers have to come to an end eventually.

The following year rebuilding began; the ruined house was demolished completely. One little girl moved away and the other remained a while longer, searching for a long time for her lost garden in the hustle and bustle of rebirth. It had disappeared completely and become the foundation for a whole new world.