Afternoon all,

how are you doing? Getting a bit fed up? A bit bored with your own company? I am. Not madly depressed or sad, just a bit bored. Mind you, would I be any better off if I had a family now, maybe a few brothers and sisters, an aunt or uncle tucked away somewhere? Kids closer by, kids that actually liked me enough to want to live close by? Who knows. But then I was the one who moved far away from everybody.

A time like this concentrates the mind, come the rainy day and there’s not much else but dandelions around - it’s dandelion time in the garden and the hedgerows and verges - and all the family you’ve ever had is either dead or they’ve forgotten about you and live a life that's neither more nor less happy and contented than the life you yourself live. Once I had a lovely aunt, she’s the one I remember with affection; she was poor, with a husband who cut hair for a living in a tiny rural hamlet. Not much money to be made there. Auntie loved life, laughed a lot, celebrated every birthday, every occasion that lent itself to celebration and some that didn’t, and always had a plate of Dutch cheese open sandwiches ready to share. Auntie is long gone, I wonder what she would have made of it all now? Laughed, raised her shoulders 'what do I know’, and said, "it is what it is”. I know what Mum’s sister, my other auntie, would have done. She was the one much given to bursting into tears at the least opportunity, everything that ever happened was chosen by ill fate and aimed directly at her. Both of them are dead now but I know which one I’d rather sit with round the kitchen table.

They are all gone now, Mum and Dad, the aunties and uncles, even some of the cousins, not that I ever had many. Two kids max. per household was the going rate in the family, at least the side of the family I knew. And some only had the one, like my Mum and Dad. All of that generation had a hard time of it, two world wars, hungry childhoods and not much prosperity until much later when things generally got better. But they never experienced a pandemic, Spanish flu, avian, swine, HIV/aids, sars, mers, all scourges of the last 100 years, passed them by. Would they have borne them as stoically as they lived through their own times?

I miss them and, most of all, I miss Beloved. Not that I would want him as he was at the end, but the way he was when we sat opposite each other in the kitchen, when one of us would ask a question and so a conversation would start about a wide range of subjects, subjects which would need exploring in detail, whether we knew the answer or not.

I miss the old people and I miss Beloved. Often now my thoughts turn to the past and I want to ask what they think about this and that, do they have any advice to give or do they know as little as I do. The latter probably, but it would be good to find out.

Liar Liar Pants On Fire

In the era of Donald Trump and Brexit, Oxford Dictionaries has declared “post-truth” to be its international word of the year 2016.

US election and EU referendum drive popularity of adjective.....

.......defined by the dictionary as  “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, editors said that use of the term “post-truth” had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to last year. The spike in usage, it said, is “in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.  

Well, there we are then, it’s official. Telling lies is the new normal,  accepted if not acceptable. Morally defensible? Maybe even that. The end justifies the means. And so on.

What will we tell children?  Tell the truth or each lie will make your nose grow longer? If you tell lies nobody will believe you when you tell the truth?  Even if you shout ‘fire’ and there really is one and you are in danger of burning to death? (It’s called ‘putting the fear of God into children - I hope we don’t really do that to them anymore.)

When I was in junior school our teacher encouraged us to put on a play about Saint Nicholas, the one who brings good children presents while bad children are threatened with the cane wielded by Ruprecht, Nicholas’ servant. I was a bit of an uppity know-all, not only did I make up the play, I also appropriated to myself the role of Nicholas, dishing out praise and admonishments as I saw fit in my misplaced enthusiasm and infantile eagerness. Most of my fellow class mates received mild praise, a few I told off for minor (imaginary) misdeeds but for just one girl, chosen at utter random, St Nicholas, i.e. me, had a serious face, a slow and ponderous voice and the ultimate accusation: “you tell lies”.

The girl instantly dissolved into floods of tears, sobbing that she never lied, that lying was bad and a sin and that she would never do that. Teacher cradled her in his arms, trying to calm her down, saying how the whole thing was made up and not true and nobody believed that she lied. He threw me a very filthy look, told me to say sorry, to go away and be ashamed of myself for being so unkind. I was crushed, indeed feeling ashamed and guilty and very disappointed that my grand play had come to such an ignominious end. I got carried away, as they say, didn’t know when to stop.

I had accused a class mate of lying; not in a playground rough and tumble way, but seriously, on an important occasion, with teacher and the whole class being present. The poor child’s pitiful sobs took a long time to subside. The fact that I remember it so well all these many years later shows how deeply memorable the incident was, probably not just for me.

Today we know that the Brexiteers led by Johnson and Farage in the UK and election campaign Trumpism in the US have made lying into an art form; the more they lied the more people applauded them. One day after Brexit Farage was asked about that repeatedly promised extra 350 m  for the NHS. His answer? Oh well . . . . .

And  "post-truth" nobody holds them and their cronies accountable. The sensation is not the demise of truth but the fact that we already have a word for it. Oh Brave New World.

Permutations on Lamps and The People Who Owned Them - (V)

At Grammar School my trials and tribulations hadn’t quite come to an end, but I learned to keep my head down and follow the rules. I was now a pupil at a fee-paying Catholic Girls’ School, the child from a poor background and the offspring of communist/socialist atheists, who took their convictions seriously; I should therefore have been totally out of my element. Like many children lacking in confidence, I was only too happy to blend into the background; I’d had enough of being the focus of attention, temporarily anyway.

I made friends with girls whose background was as unlike mine as possible; girls whose parents were well on the way to renewed prosperity, girls from professional backgrounds, business people, farmers who had got rich during the period when most people were starving, and the daughters of minor ex-Nazis. Germany's ‘economic miracle’ was taking hold but there was still a lot of confusion.

The last time a lamp made a particular impression on me was at a birthday party at the house of one of these friends. Birthday parties were rare and modest affairs, and I didn’t really feel like going because Mum couldn’t give me money to buy a present. On the very few occasions I accepted an invitation all I could take was a tablet of chocolate or a second hand paperback. Sigrid was the daughter of a businessman, she had new clothes and a proper haircut and lived on one floor of a large house in a once well-to-do area. I remember the living room as enormous, although it would probably not be as grand today as it seemed to me then. The room was well and comfortably furnished, with a special and separate seating area near the large window: three upholstered easy chairs around a small table, and a standard lamp in the corner behind it. The lamp drew me like a magnet and I asked if we could sit there instead of at the dining table at the other end of the room. Sigrid was surprised when I sat down in the chair under the lamp, leaned back and stretched out my arms on the arm rests. In the end we sat on the carpet and admired her presents, until her mother came in with hot drinks and cake for the three of us, Sigrid,  Elke, whose war widow mother was a teacher, and me.

I’ve got used to all sorts of lamps now; our lighting is slightly haphazard, some lamps have permanent positions, others are moved about the room to wherever they are needed. Ceiling lights are strong and have shades; Beloved with his poor eyesight likes them best and, if he had his way, they would all blaze away at the same time and cosy little corners with dim lighting would be done away with in our house.

Afterword

Writing this necessarily abbreviated series has not been easy. I’ve smoothed over some of the rough edges, yet a whole host of painful memories came flooding back and I felt great pity for the sad and lonely girl who didn’t really fit in anywhere. As an only child I carried the full weight of my parents’ hopes and aspirations; inevitably, they were disappointed many times. Ungrateful, they called me when I displeased them yet again. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child. Away Away!” so said King Lear in a fit of rage to Cordelia, and, like her, I left.

None of that matters now, one can’t live ones life in permanent regret for what happened in the past; it becomes a story to tell like so many other ups and downs one lives through; looking back, events become distant and unreal. There is, however, one aspect I regret very much nowadays, particularly when I read bloggers’ posts or listen to friends’ accounts about their close connections with siblings, the places they lived in as children and throughout adulthood, from school years to university and through professional lives. I envy the continuity and the ties that keep such lucky people firmly anchored and deeply rooted. I know that rarely do two people remember their joint past in quite the same way but I would love to be able to argue about it. I have lots of unanswered questions and no one left to ask, much less answer them.

Permutations on Lamps and The People Who Owned Them (IV)

Yes, there had indeed been a meeting, possibly the sort of thing that might be called an emergency council. We didn’t know about it at the time, it was much later that a fellow pupil in my new school told me in confidence, urging me never to reveal the ‘secret’. Or else her Dad, who was a member of the school’s governing body, would get into deep trouble. She also confided that her Dad and my Dad shared political sympathies; if these were known they would jeopardise his position. I was a loyal little body but also so cowed by now that I obeyed without thought, not even telling my parents. I don’t think I ever did.

Herr Thomanek stood above us on the level half landing with Mum and me on the steps below him. His physical attitude was that of a bully but his voice had softened a little. He seemed to be uncomfortable and spoke quietly. I was crying enough not to be able to hear him anyway; Mum listened, she didn’t speak for a long time. She nodded and appeared to agree with him and said to me “I’ll tell you when we get home.” They didn’t explain or ask my opinion..

Before we turned back down the stairs to leave I urgently wanted to make Thomanek understand that I never meant to be ‘cynical’ (whatever the word meant) and that I only smiled at him during lessons because I liked them. Hopefully, I lifted my tear-streaked face, but he turned abruptly, without looking at me.

In the German Secondary School System Middle School was the less academic branch of higher education. Although core subjects were taught, i.e. foreign languages, maths, geography, history etc., the school for academically gifted children was the Grammar School, where subjects included classics, science, music, German literature, etc. School fees were higher and students stayed on to 18/19 years of age.

At that time, in the 1950s and early 60s, both Middle and Grammar schools were occupying the same large building. It was one of the few in the town left unbombed and everywhere schools and other establishments budged up to make room for those who had lost their premises.

The heads of both schools, their senior staff and representatives of the governing body, including my fellow student’s Dad, had decided that the situation in Thomaneks’ classroom had become toxic and it would be impossible to restore order. I would have to leave. I would be offered a place in the same year at the Grammar School; school fees would be waived and I would continue to receive a scholarship. It was to be hoped that I was bright enough to catch up. It was fait accompli. Take it or leave it. The alternative was to return to basic education in the ordinary compulsory state system for all children, which precluded any chance of further academic education. Nowadays the choice would be called a No-Brainer.

Within days I was a Grammar School pupil. Some teachers disliked me from the beginning, rumours of misconduct had gone round both schools but, as now and always, gossip and rumours come and go. The girl whose Dad had spoken up for me and my parents befriended me, we discovered a joint liking for literature and poetry. I didn’t catch up in all subjects, certainly not in those I hadn’t been taught for three years, and I slipped from being top of the class to somewhere in the middle. By and by new, younger teachers came for whom I was an ordinary pupil, not tainted with having caused a teacher’s fall from grace, and we took/didn’t take to each other as such things are arranged in the natural course of events.

Middle School and Grammar School took outdoor breaks at different times but on the same school playground. Sometimes we’d overlap slightly and I’d see Thomanek doing supervising duty. I knew better than to smile at him and besides, he always turned his back on me.



there’s a paragraph or two to do with another lamp to come and a bit of an afterword. But the drama is all over.

Permutations on Lamps and The People Who Owned Them (III)

“You can’t just barge in here without an appointment”, he blustered. “This is my home and my family and I are about to eat our supper. If you have anything to say about what happens at school you have to bring it up there.”

Mum stood her ground, but he wouldn’t budge. “You have no right to invade my privacy.” He continued to attack us, insisting that he was not going to discuss any complaints except at school. A time was fixed for the next day and we left, having achieved nothing. He had bullied us into submission but his extreme reaction made Mum determined not to let the matter rest. Thomanek knew this, he knew that he would have to answer for his behaviour; Mum, working class, with no more than a basic education and quite unsophisticated, would demand answers from the school establishment.

Alas, she never got them. At least, not in so many words. In 1950s Germany most ordinary people kept their political allegiance, past and present, quiet. My parents, however, were among the few exceptions, foolishly perhaps, but definitely bravely, as they and the family had been during the whole of Nazi-Germany, for which they paid a heavy price. In the 50s the Cold War was raging, with divided and four-sectored Germany the buffer zone between East and West. Twelve million people had fled and migrated from East to West and, until the erection of The Wall in 1961 put an end to it, the mass exodus still continued.

In the end, Herr Thomanek's persecution of me was not due to personal antipathy, but the politics of hatred and fear. He was one of those who had gone on the long trek from East to West.

As a child I was sickly. Weak, under-nourished, too tall, too thin, with lung disease and all the ailments that befell children who had had a poor start in life. I wasn’t the only one, there were many of us. Twice I had been sent to sanatoria, once during the war to the mountains of Bavaria and once after the war to the island of Norderney in the North Sea. It was hoped that mountain and sea air would heal, or at least strengthen, my lungs.

During the time I was a student in Herr Thomanek’s class, Dad was offered a place for me in a sanatorium on the Baltic coast by one of his friends in the Socialist Movement; the problem was the holiday would have to be during term time and require permission from the school authorities. Permission would probably have been granted had the sanatorium been anywhere else but in East Germany, the place many of the teachers at the local schools had called home and had been forced, or had chosen, to leave. Dad, in his naiveté, had committed a monumental blunder. Permission was refused and Herr Thomanek turned against one of his star pupils.

Mum and I still had to meet him. She knew nothing about the politics of the staff room, all she knew was that her child was hurting and she wanted to know why.

We met him during morning break on the half-landing between two floors, leaning against the stone banister. Thomanek was standing above us, looking down. I was half sitting in a window embrasure, crying bitterly all the time of the interview. Although he was physically in a position of superiority, he was noticeably quieter, even conciliatory. The Headmistress had spoken to him and advised that he try to calm Mum down. There had been a meeting, he admitted as much as that.

But what would happen to me?



to be continued

Permutations on Lamps and The People Who Owned Them (II)

I caught a cold, a snot-rattling, throat-rasping, eye-watering, croaking-voiced cold.

Fräulein Optenberg was certain the cold would be gone by the day of the concert. All would be well. I begged to differ. The cold was the perfect excuse for backing out. What teacher didn’t know was that I had long had cold feet and the nearer the day came the more terrified I became. "No, Miss, I am certain the cold won't be gone in time and please excuse me from going on stage”.

Snivelling little idiot.

Frl. Optenberg was frantic. I hadn’t ever heard the phrase ‘The Show Must Go On’; Miss begged, cajoled, implored. I sneezed pitifully, then I had an idea. If it meant that much to her I’d get her a replacement. I’d get her Klara. Klara was plump, small, stupid and in possession of a much healthier, more powerful voice than my lung-sick one. Klara jumped at the chance and was so abjectly grateful that I began to doubt the wisdom of my abdication. Aladdin’s cave was no longer mine for half an hour twice a week.

My cold evaporated, the day of the Christmas concert came and Klara was a great success. Neither Mum, Dad or I were in the audience.

This was the beginning of a lifetime of doubt in my own abilities.

Then came Middle School; I passed the entrance exam with flying colours and was granted a scholarship. There were school fees which my parents couldn’t afford, ends were barely meeting. Still pig-tailed, tall and very skinny and ten years old I joined children from varying backgrounds, some already well-off, particularly the children of farmers and professional people, and some from poor backgrounds like mine, on scholarships. We scholarship kids were the bright ones, the kids from the farms the least able. (That’s not prejudice, that’s how it was. After the war many farmers were rich, had their girls been bright enough they would have gone to Grammar School, where the fees were higher.)

Herr Thomanek was my form master. I adored him and he seemed to enjoy teaching me. For three years all went well. When kids from professional households made fun of my pronunciation of foreign words he shut them up and patiently explained where these words came from and how to pronounce them. Herr Thomanek was my favourite master and I had a bit of a crush on him, as a thirteen year old  might.

When from one day to the next he turned on me I was devastated. Open-mouthed incredulity met every unkindness, every jibe at my expense, every shouted term of abuse. It’s no exaggeration to say that my form master bullied me unmercifully. He focussed the attention of the whole class on me. “There she goes, sneering again. That cynical grin of hers, look at it. What makes you so superior, I would like to know." Once I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I got up from my seat, howling in fear and frustration, making for the door. “Look at her, look how she runs and howls; exactly like one of the Furies.” I went home and finally told my Mum.

That same afternoon Mum grabbed me and we went to Herr Thomanek’s house. His wife came to the door and said we couldn’t come in, they were about to have their evening meal. Mum insisted. For once she believed me without looking for confirmation elsewhere and she was going to get the truth out of him there and then.

We were let into the sitting room. I was probably too distraught to take in details, but I instantly saw an old fashioned roll top desk in an alcove, with lots of papers on the open flap and a lit desk lamp on the shelf above. Otherwise the room was in shadow. Herr Thomanek turned towards us as we entered, his face, illuminated by the lamp, a study in angry discomfort.




to be continued

Permutations on Lamps and The People Who Owned Them. (I)

"I can’t stand a naked light bulb,

amy more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”,

Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” gives herself away with this line as someone who prefers illusion to reality; who believes that dressing up naked truth prettily makes everyone happier and everything pleasant and easy. “I don’t want realism, I want magic,” she says in a later scene.

I woud hate to take Blanche as my role model but I admit, that as far as the softly glowing light of a prettily shaded table lamp - or standard lamp - is concerned, I am firmly of her opinion. It’s the kind of magic I want for myself. Standing lamps have always fascinated me, perhaps because such luxury was never my lot as a small child. Naked bulbs dangling from the low ceilings of cellars where Mum and I hid, the narrow glory hole of my bedroom or the slightly higher ceiling of the kitchen/sitting room in which we spent most of our time provided sufficient light but no comfort.  The apparent security and privacy of an individual light wasn’t mine to enjoy until I was an adult, in my own home. Once the hardship of the early postwar period was over, my parents had the means to buy lamps but, although ceiling lights were now provided with lampshades, table lamps were outside any experience they themselves had ever had. Light was a matter of necessity, not comfort; light had to be efficient, nothing more.

Fräulein Optenberg was my Infant School teacher;  she lived with another woman and it was in their sitting room where I saw my first ever upright lamp. It was Advent and a school Christmas concert was planned and I was to go on stage and sing some songs, solo. I was bright and enjoyed singing;  for teacher to choose me from all other children was flattering beyond all measure. But I was also shy and inhibited. I had none of the natural confidence some children are handed in the cradle. Rehearsals were to be held at Frl. Optenberg’s and progressed well. The first time I went, properly cleaned up, my long hair plaited and in my Sunday smock, the two ladies invited me into a room the like of which I’d never seen before. It was probably very modest by today’s standards but to me it was like Aladdin’s cave. There was a carpet, a small dining table and chairs, a desk in a corner, a pair of easy chairs and, in the alcove by the window, a piano, and, on the piano, a table lamp. It was afternoon, the lamp was lit. Immediately I knew that I had no right to be in this room, a room like this was not for me, and that all my life I would strive to win one. I was seven years old.

During the course of rehearsals a nasty episode happened. On the way home from school I daily passed  the house where Frl. Optenberg and her friend lived. On this particular day a group of boys, some infants like me, others up to fourteen years old, stood in front of her house, shouting and jeering. I couldn’t make out what it was they were shouting and when I did, I couldn’t understand what the word meant. ‘Mannweib’, the boys shouted, over and over. (Literally ‘Mannish Woman’, ‘Virago’.) I saw Frl. Optenberg appear at the window and I ran off, I didn’t want her to think that I was part of the rowdy group of children, the numbers now swelled by other girls returning home from school. I told my Dad what I had heard and he said to take no notice, that the boys were naughty and rude. The next time I went to rehearsals I stammered that “it wasn’t me who shouted at you” to Frl. Optenberg and she smiled and said “I know, child.”

The day of the concert came nearer and I caught a cold.



to be continued.

A Family Reunion - All Saints Day - Part III

The more specific maintenance of the graves fell to Uncle Peter and Aunt Katie. They often grumbled about it. Grandfather, who owned the plots, felt that it was only right and proper that the task of looking after the family graves should fall to his surviving son. He was the only one still living in the family home, rent free, as grandfather frequently pointed out. Aunt Johanna, one of his daughters, who lived in  a village less than an hour’s walk across the water meadows away and whose husband had a truck, pleaded ill health, which made her cry a lot every time somebody asked her to do something. Uncle Peter and Aunt Katie carried on working on the graves, spending time and money they could ill afford.  Aunt Katie liked to keep the peace, besides, there was nowhere else for them to go, they were dependent on grandfather’s goodwill. The old man spent little time thanking Aunt Katie for the hard work she did for him, the way she put up with his moods, fell in with his demands and tolerated his high-handed and sometimes scornful treatment of his son, her husband.

The mourners for the day stood around in the biting wind, murmuring platitudes and wishing themselves out of it and back in Aunt Katie’s warm kitchen, but not quite daring to suggest retreat for as long as grandfather stood his ground.

“I wonder who’ll be next”, they said, each hoping it wouldn’t be them but allowing enough suffering into their voices to imply it might be.

“All gone, all of them gone, who knows where.”

“Stupid woman,” I heard father whisper to mother, “dead and gone, with nothing left of them, that’s where.” Father was getting tetchy, mother’s family could be trying at times. He had long ago fallen out with two of his siblings and disliked his own father heartily.

“The old man is going to catch his death of cold”, his daughters muttered, “somebody should get him to move.”

Grandfather was a stubborn old man, he knew the family had had enough but he would be the one to decide when it was time to leave, be the wind ever so chill. He had lost his wife many years ago and celibacy and loneliness had hardened his once kind heart.

But even grandfather couldn’t go on ignoring the cold seeping into his old bones. “How much longer do you want to stay here,” he asked, sounding impatient for the others to make a move. “We’ve done what we came for.” He’d done nothing. “I for one have had enough and I’m off, stay if you want.”

He turned away from the graves and without a backward glance went towards the centre path dividing the cemetery, and made for the main gate.

Women and children scuttled after him, The men followed in a more deliberate, statelier procession.

The short day was ending, we had a train to catch, the widow of grandfather’s second son and her two children had an hour’s walk ahead to reach their home in the next village the other side of Muehlhausen.. Only Uncle Hans had brought his family in his truck. It was too soon after the war, long before the economic miracle took hold; nobody else in the family owned more than a bicycle. Petrol was expensive and not easy to come by, and Uncle Hans never offered anyone a lift.

Aunt Katie provided coffee, while the women cut sandwiches; the talk was loud and free now, the relief at having escaped for another year palpable. They were alive, they had survived, not just the day but the years of hardship and terror lay behind them. Life was still a struggle but they could see the promise of a future without fear.

“See you at Christmas”, they said jovially, and “get home safely”. The men slapped each other on the back and the women hugged and smiled broadly.

The kitchen heat had warmed the blood. My coat felt heavy and unnecessary, my hat and mittens itched. I wanted to take them off, stay here and climb the stairs to the cold attic and get into bed with Gisela.

“Kommt gut nach Haus”, Aunt Katie shouted after us from the open cottage door as we trudged back to the station. The night was dark, there was no street lighting. I clung to father, who held my hand. Afraid of the dark, afraid of the potholes waiting to trip me up, I stumbled along as fast as I could.

Nobody in the family was ever late for anything, setting out in good time was a virtue. Perhaps their generation had had punctuality and reliability drilled into them to the extent where it had become second nature.

We arrived at the tiny, single-storey brick-built station and the waiting room with its wooden benches with enough time to spare before departure, for me to study the signs over two doors in one side of the room once again. I was a good reader from an early age, but these signs defeated me. “HOMMESGENTLEMEN” and “DAMESLADIES” they said in capital letters. Each time I saw them I separated the syllables, saying them quietly to myself. “hom – mess – ghent – lem - men” and “dah-mess-lah-dees”.

When I asked mother what the words meant she said “they’re Klosetts; do you need to use them?”  “No thanks,” I said, but was no wiser than before. “Toilets?” Klosetts were called ‘Männer’ and ‘Frauen’ not these strange words which made no sense to me.

On the journey home the monotonous rumble of the train rocked me to sleep.  Father was still an invalid and not strong enough to carry me on to the connecting train at the market town and he certainly couldn’t carry me on the walk home from the station to our house in St. Toenis.

During the last half hour I made slow progress. My legs ached. Shivering with cold and tiredness, I stumbled along in the middle of the road, mother and father almost dragging me, both of them holding me by a hand.  “Not far now”, they said encouragingly, “home soon.” It had been a very long day.

A Family Reunion - All Saints’ Day - Part II

Aunt Katie’s welcome smile ushered us in. The black and white tiled hall of the cottage was unheated. We shed our coats, hats, scarves and gloves as  quickly as we could and  made for the kitchen-livingroom  where the round cast iron stove blazed fiercely. Grandfather was sitting in state on his sofa under the window; he didn’t get up for us, and we had to squeeze past the table in front of the sofa to shake his hand. I didn’t like to hug him, a peculiarly stale and dusty smell enveloped him, which offended my nose. Although we liked each other well enough, I was never his favourite grandchild; that honour belonged to my cousin Gisela, Aunt Katie’s daughter, who had lived with grandfather since the day she was born.

I loved Aunt Katie. Her smile lit up her whole face and her deep blue eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her kitchen was always cosy, and the large kettle on top of the black stove sang a sweet song of hot drinks to come. The aroma of a good thick soup tickled my nostrils. I was always hungry at Aunt Katie’s; mother hated that. She never stopped complaining about what she called my greediness in Aunt Katie’s kitchen and my lack of appetite at home.

“Let the child eat if she’s hungry,” Aunt Katie blustered in her forthright manner. “Food in other people’s houses is always tastier than food at home, that’s how it is. Everybody knows that.”

By and by Aunt Katie dished up and we all ate her nourishing soup and a piece of good country bread to mop up the last drop and wipe the bowl clean.

Soon other members of the family arrived and grandfather’s cottage began to feel very small. It was time to wrap up again and walk to the cemetery, which was a mile out of the village. We children were not excused the trek, honouring the dead was a duty we learned to perform early.

Once out of the village, a forbidding reddish brown brick wall rising to more than two metres loomed out of the mist. It was breached by equally tall wrought iron carriage gates which rarely opened. The only other entry into the nunnery and convent school, for that was what lay behind the wall, was a much smaller gate let into one wing of the carriage gates. To the villagers the nuns were mysterious creatures, who  never left the convent but allowed services to be held in their chapel on special occasions and, if you paid them, for funerals and weddings. No village child attended the convent school in those days. Cousin Gisela and her friends thought it a spooky, frightening place; they told each other gruesome stories about little girls being whipped and kept prisoner within the high walls. Whenever we visited grandfather, I refused to walk past the gates without holding on tightly to a grown-up, for fear of a hand reaching out and dragging me inside.

The convent was the last building we passed before we left the main road and took the turning towards the cemetery, an avenue of mighty horse chestnut trees, the candle decked branches a picture in spring, but now dark and bare, shiny brown conkers freed from their prickly wrappers sprinkled in the thick layer of dead leaves underfoot.

The cemetery itself was enclosed by low stone walls, with wrought iron gates, wide enough to allow entrance to a hearse, in the side facing the road. There were no other buildings, no chapel, no trees, just bare open fields in all directions; only the dead safely tucked up underground could escape the bitter East wind and its spiteful, bone-chilling whistle. I kept close to the larger adults, their bulk affording my skinny little frame a small measure of protection.

It was the custom in our family that Aunt Katie and her husband, my mother’s brother, my Uncle Peter, ordered wreaths and flowers in the village and that the others paid for their share on the day. Uncle Peter had only very recently returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, and his little barber shop barely earned him enough to feed his family. Grandfather, whose savings languished untouched, didn’t like to advance him the cost of the wreaths, which meant that the flower seller didn’t get his money until after All Souls Day.

Traditional grave decorations were bouquets and wreaths of asters and chrysanthemums, interwoven with ivy and holly and ferns and backed with fir twigs. The men had been carrying them and now they were fussing over their position on the graves. Mother’s family had three plots, all in a row, one large family grave reserved for couples and two narrower ones for single men and women, much like the large wooden sided double beds and the narrower cots in the bedrooms at home.

When each man was satisfied that his contribution had a prominent enough place on the graves,  the women lit everlasting candles, which burned from the afternoon of All Saints’ day until the morning of the day after All Souls. The candles were placed in small lanterns, heavy based to stop them toppling over in the wind, and set on flat stones, each of which denoted the final resting place of an ancestor or sibling. Great grandparents lay there, grandmother too, and uncles and aunts who had died young. There was room for grandfather and a few more awaiting their turn.

“The graves are looking good this year, the cemetery gardener has done well. " He always did, he was conscientious about performing his task. “Very orderly the way he’s raked the pebbles;  zigzags are so attractive."

If you owned a grave, you paid a small annual sum for general maintenance to the cemetery authorities.

“We must do something about the headstone, is it leaning to the right, do you think? And what about the moss, shouldn’t somebody clean it off?” There was always someone finding fault. Making a fuss made the complainant look concerned.


to be concluded tomorrow.

A Family Reunion - All Saints’ Day - Part I

In November the wide and fertile flatlands of the Northern Rhineland cower in the path of angry storms, which travel unimpeded for thousands of miles across the North European plains from as far away as the Urals, mercilessly sweeping a never-ending army of lowering clouds before them; when they arrive, trees in the woods huddle close together, bending their crowns and weeping raindrops into muddy puddles; October’s fireworks are dead and gone. Fallen leaves rot underfoot, the air is dank and in the lanes, along the banks of hidden brooks and by secretive ponds, in the copses and clearings in the woods, where timeless mosses grow deep and soft, the smell of mould is all pervasive.  Grey days lean heavily on the bony backs of black and white cows, listlessly standing in damp meadows, yearning for shelter, while white mists rise from the ground like shrouds abandoned by the long dead.

November wears a mourning band.

The feast of All Saints on the first of the month is followed by the feast day of All Souls, the day when tradition demands that we remember our dead. It is the day when families get together at the graveside of those they have lost.

In my childhood, we travelled to my mother’s home village;  Allerheiligen or All Saints was a solemn public holiday.  Early in the morning of the feast day, before daylight had fully woken, we stood out in the open on a draughty station platform, stamping our feet and rubbing mittened hands curled into fists to keep warm, clouds of breath visible in the morning chill. The station consisted of a wooden hut, where the stationmaster sheltered from the worst of the weather, and a pair of wooden benches for the convenience of passengers, one each on the down line and the up line. Here we waited on the edge of the down line for the train to transport us from St Toenis, the small village where we lived, to the sleepy little hamlet crouching among aspen lined streams and mist shrouded fields, where grandfather’s house stood. Muehlhausen was no more than one long street, a continuous row of houses lining it on both sides; occasionally a farmyard interrupted this line, leaving a broad strip of muddy, grassy verge free between it and the road. Wherever a break occurred, a ditch ran along the side of the road, nearly always half full of stagnant water. In winter the ditch froze over and children, their feet shod in clogs, skated upon the run of ice. Halfway along the village street stood a chapel dedicated to St Vitus. Every time we passed the tiny chapel, which was really more a shrine than a chapel, I expected to be smitten with St. Vitus’ Dance and start jerking uncontrollably. I had been warned not to get too near the Saint’s statue and certainly never to touch the icon or remove the flowers devout villagers had placed in his niche. Grown-ups always assumed children would do damage and needed dire warnings to stop them.

A long slow whistle pierced the gloom of the station platform, announcing the arrival of the smoke plumed train, the engine showing its displeasure at being forced to stop by hissing hot steam in all directions. We were usually the only people embarking; knots of people alighted, pulling their coats close about them as they stood for a moment on the platform; the men settling hats more firmly and women fussing with children’s shawls and woolen caps and securing their own scarves more tightly under their chins, before they started the cold walk down the Chaussee into the village and thence the cemetery, bound to perform the same offices for their dead as we were.

The stationmaster held aloft his red signal disk, and put the whistle to his lips. Doors slammed shut, a short blast on the whistle sent out a shrill warning and the disk slapped down. The locomotive hissed once more, the train chug-chugged into motion. The smoky plume renewed itself triumphantly above the carriages.

Black and white cows floating on deep cushions of pure white mists briefly looked up as the train drifted past and an occasional avenue of poplars marched into the distance. Farmhouses, embraced by barns on three sides, lay low, broad and solid among them, sheltered from the prevailing East wind by a stand of oak or beech.

Inside the stuffy carriage with its wooden seats you could smell the smoke snaking back from the engine; the fug and regular rat-tat-tat of the wheels induced a light doze. “Don’t fall asleep,” father chided me, “you know it takes you forever to shift yourself.” Father had to stay alert, it took less than an hour to reach the small market town where we had to change to a branch line which would take us to just one village away from the hamlet where mother’s family home stood. The train’s destination was Kaldenkirchen, a town on the Dutch border. Up to now it had been slow, with frequent stops at villages along the way, but once past the junction with the branch line, where we would have to change trains, it would gather speed and make for the border without further delay.

Although it was fully daylight now, I found it hard to alight into the cold, damp, air at our destination. The open road from the station to grandfather’s house was the part of the journey I liked the least; the wind blew across the fields, the mist clung in cold droplets to my nose and eyelashes, blurring my vision. I constantly wiped my sleeve across my face.



to be continued tomorrow

Beechnuts

That crackle and crunch underfoot is beech mast.
The big beech is aiming missiles at me from a great height,
and when her aim is true, I feel it.
Ouch!

Once in every five to ten years, they say, can we expect such bounty.
Last year was a good one too, so either they are wrong,
or nature is changing her rhythm.
A hot, dry summer helps.

I have need of a pig.
Could you lend me a pig?
Free of charge to both of us?
I have no acorns but plenty of beechnuts.
But do remember to ring the pig’s nose, I don’t want it rooting up my garden.

There was a time, a long-ago time,
when they gave you a voucher for a litre of oil,
in exchange for six kilos of beechnuts.

Diligence can do it,
they said.
All it takes is three days of back breaking work in the forest.
If you have little ones,
and maybe sing a happy song,
collecting six kilos of beechnuts
is child’s play.

Collect more and keep them to enhance your diet.
You want bread?
Cracked and ground into flour,
beechnuts are very tasty, make excellent bread.
But remember,
oxalic acid is harmful,
so roast these pretty little delicacies first
to avoid bad pain in the gut.
And warn the little ones.

A pig, on the other hand,
enjoys a forest meal, no ill-effects at all.
No need for roasting.
Yet.

The Black Dog Remembers

For the life of me I can’t settle to anything except reading at the moment. And walking Millie; Millie-walking is obligatory, if I had the choice I’d probably shirk that job too. Just look at my ‘writing’ desk (as opposed to my ‘computer’ desk). There are invoices, receipts, official letters remaining unopened after a week, private letters gathering dust, bank statements, yellowing newspaper cuttings, ticket stubs, programmes and even orders of service for two funerals. What is happening to me?

I was always tidy; the need for tidiness was drilled into me from a very early age, like an act of faith, never to be abandoned. “You’ve dropped something, pick it up this minute!” “Have you finished with your book? Put it on the shelf, don’t leave things lying around.” I had few indoor toys but I knew better than to play with more than one at a time. I was a mainly silent child, reading or inventing stories which took place entirely in my head and never ended; neat and tidy, they could be picked up and put down again without leaving a visible trace.

This compulsion for order could have a nightmarish effect. I can’t have been much more than six when I had to go into hospital to have my adenoids removed. This was in the early years after the war, there were few fully functioning hospitals in rural Germany and I had to spend the night on the women’s ward. I was the only child there. Having come round from the anaesthetic I dislodged a piece of paper from my bedside table, which sailed to the floor. I knew I had committed a cardinal sin, I’d made a mess. My thoughts ran along familiar lines: I should not have reached for the paper in the first place and thereby caused it to land on the floor. In the dim light the white square gleamed malevolently. Somehow I had to pick it up. But I had also been told not to get out of bed. My cot had bars and I didn’t dare climb out. The only thing I could do was to stick my arm out and grope. Alas, the harder I tried the more the bars rattled. The sheet of paper stayed just out of reach. Perhaps being poorly and fresh out of the anaesthetic had something to do with it but I remember being terror-stricken.

The woman in the bed next to mine stirred. “What’s the matter,” she asked, “ is something wrong?” How could I tell her that I’d been really naughty? I mumbled no. “Then stay still now,” she said. There was nothing I could do. I lay there, fully expecting to be told off in the morning.

Mum came to fetch me home. “Has she been a good girl?” she asked the woman. “She was a bit restless at first but then she settled down,” the woman answered.

The sheet of paper had gone, a nurse bringing me a drink first thing had bent down and picked it up without a word.

The Day of the Little Bear

The Martyrdom of St Ursula

German art - 16th century

It’s been my name day today. In mainly catholic countries in Europe as well as Latin America, somebody’s name day is at least as important as their birthday, sometimes more so. In olden days a child was christened the day after birth and given the name of the saint who had died or been martyred on that day. For instance, Martin Luther was born on the 10th November and christened on the 11th, the feast day of Martin of Tours.

Birthday celebrations have taken over in secular life and when I mention name days I always get “what’s that?” in return. But for my aunt Katie and her friends, who lived in a small rural community on the Lower Rhine, name days were the highlight of their personal year. Each one of them baked cakes and pastries in advance of their  own great day and invited the others and anyone whom they valued, brothers and sisters and cousins, to ‘Namenstag Kaffee und Kuchen’ and a little something home brewed to round off the festivities. They made fruit liqueurs in those days, potent enough to redden checks and loosen tongues; wine and ready bottled alcohol was beyond their means. Everybody brought flowers, often pot plants, and a small present. The more friends and family you had, with whom you were on good terms, the more often you were part of this harmless indulgence. My father disapproved and when he made his usual dog-in-the-mangerish remarks, my mum said “nothing to do with you; let them have their fun”; living in town she wasn’t part of aunt Katie's jolly circles. I am sure she often regretted it.

I got my Christian name quite by accident. Mum and Dad had lost their first child and may therefore not have wanted to be too certain that the second child, i.e. me, would live; anyway, they didn't discuss names. When the nurse came to enquire, they looked at each other and said “we don’t have a name for her.” (Good start, wouldn’t you say?) Babies were kept away from mothers in communal nurseries until they were handed over to be fed.  The next time the nurse distributed her squalling and hungry charges, she said to my mother: “and for you I have a little Ursula”. “So be it”, my parents said, “one name’s as good as any other.” That’s how I became “the little bear”.


The legend of Ursula is based on a 4th- or 5th-century inscription from the Church of St. Ursula (on the Ursulaplatz) in Cologne. It states that the ancient basilica had been restored on the site where some holy virgins were killed. St Ursula is no longer wholeheartedly endorsed as a Christian martyr, too many different versions of her story exist and there is little evidence that any of them are true. Ursula and 11.000 virgins were supposedly killed by the Huns when they overran Cologne. The figure of 11.000 is probably a misreading of the Latin text, and the 11.000 virgins were more likely 11 ladies of Ursula’s royal train.

Be that as it may, I quite like the idea of being named after a Romano-British royal personage, who did good deeds and led a short but exemplary life. Granted, her ending wasn’t much fun, I’d have probably married the Hun prince rather than opted for martyrdom - where there’s life there’s hope of getting out of a sticky situation - but she wouldn’t have become famous if she had.

I didn’t celebrate my name day but I had a lovely present anyway: the absolutely delightful Frances of City Views Country Dreams came all the way from New York to Ludlow, in the pouring rain, to spend a glorious afternoon with me, no sacrifice required.

PS: that’s Ludlow in the UK, so from New York, NY to Ludlow, UK, is quite a distance.

Adventures During The Age Of Aquarius

Part VI

For the story so far click HERE


 “They’re all thieves”, Johnny said, “ anyone of them would nip behind the bar and steal what they could get their hands on. Never leave the till unlocked and always make sure all spirits are safely returned to the top shelf. I wouldn’t put it past them to fill their glass for free.” Johnny had a very low opinion of his customers.

Shortly before eleven - last orders time in those days - he counted the takings and, depending on his mood, the number of customers still drinking and the day of the week, he either locked the doors and continued serving after hours or he would ring the bell and shoo everybody out. If he decided to stay open he advised me to stay too; by this time the customers were becoming more and more generous tippers and to give him his due, Johnny made sure I got all the tips left for me. People still used cash to pay and the later it was the less they counted their change.

Although it must have been totally obvious to the local police what went on behind closed doors in bars and drinking clubs in the seedy areas off Hampstead Lane, they never turned up while I was there. After hours the windows were shut and curtains drawn but the noise became louder. By now the air was thick with cigarette smoke, male dancers took off their jackets, and women, their faces flushed and perspiring, ola’d and opa'd and clapped their hands in time with the shrill sounds of Cypriot music. Tsifteteli is a free form dance which includes both male and female dancers, whereas women danced the Arabiye,  heads thrown back, shoulders and chests shaking and bellies and hips swinging. It’s a very voluptuous dance, a sexy woman could get a whole room of men staring, whistling and clapping. But the best Arabiye I saw was danced by a man, a very tall North African, pale-skinned and quiet. I never saw him with any kind of companion, male or female, although he was friendly enough towards everybody. They called him  "The Arab”. He drank only water; in spite of that Johnny always allowed him entry and treated him with respect.  I was curious about him, tried to involve him in conversation, but he politely but firmly put me in my place.

There were other mysterious men who occasionally came up the stairs to the bar. Three brothers, two older ones and one younger, very tall, well, but soberly dressed in dark suits and crisp white shirts, not at all like the usual customers who were, at best, casually attired, appeared twice a month. They were English, spoke exclusively to Johnny, hung about for a bit, rarely accepted a drink but, if they did, it was on the house. The younger brother tried to flirt with me;  he was telling me how he had had his heart broken and was afraid to become involved with another woman; but, somehow, he felt that I was different, he trusted me and knew that a girl like me wouldn’t let him down. Like his brothers, I found him vaguely threatening and was in no way inclined to take him up on his offer.

His brothers were aware of what he was doing; they called him back, much like you call a dog to heel, and my would-be suitor obeyed quickly, winking at me and mouthing ’sorry'. Negotiations with Johnny over, they left. Johnny, who was often rude to, and dismissive of, most of his customers, treated both “The Arab” and the three English brothers with respect. In fact, while they were around, particularly the three Englishmen, the bar quietened down considerably. Johnny never said what their business with him was, but, in hindsight, I’d go for protection racket as the most likely explanation.

Three months into my employment I had settled into the routine quite well. I felt relatively safe. Johnny never seriously bothered me and he made sure no drunken customer pestered me more than I could cope with. The reason I left was nothing to do with me personally; one night, on the way out, I witnessed a nasty and brutish attack by a man on a woman which made me feel sick to my stomach and caused me to run down the stairs and out the door as fast as my heels would allow. I didn’t even stop to pick up my coat.


to be continued. . . . .

Adventures during the Age of Aquarius

Part V

Click here for  The story so far . . . .


Considering London’s Soho at the time, La Rocca had been a reasonably respectable environment; although George was definitely walking on the shady side of the law, he kept the other waitress and me in the dark about whatever it was he dealt in. I never had the slightest idea what was involved, drugs, fencing, smuggling, or maybe even politics.  Most of the regular customers were young people, students, office clerks and shop workers, and illegally employed foreigners like me, all proudly shabby and determined to rebel. New and exciting music was the common bond.

The Age of Aquarius was still in its infancy, the free and easy sex came later. I was aware that some girls were different; we’d sit and have a chat over a coffee, but when a man came up to speak to them they’d disappear for a short time. They all had steady boyfriends, who turned up several times during the afternoon and evening and took the girls aside without leaving the premises. Once, a girl who was small and slight and very pale, came back to our table after such an encounter, sobbing and shaking and collapsing on her chair. She was obviously very distressed and, foolishly, I said to her that, if her boyfriend made her unhappy, 'why didn’t she just walk out on him?’ For a moment the others stared in disbelief, but nobody chose to enlighten me. It took me weeks to understand.

In the meantime, finding a job which would pay my rent was my first priority. I was told that Johnny, a Cypriot who ran a combined restaurant and drinking club on two floors of an old Victorian house in Robert Street was looking for a waitress. The area north of Soho, between Warren Street and what was to become posh Highgate was seedy and run-down, with rabbit warrens of dank and insalubrious side streets off Hampstead Lane.  Robert Street was one of them. A lot of the area was subsequently flattened and high rise blocks of flats replaced the Victorian houses. It took an army of yuppies to step in and stop the destruction; thanks to their efforts whole streets were rescued from the bulldozers and turned into very desirable residences. Prices rocketed and many of the large houses were sub-divided into flats. In the late eighties and at the beginning of the nineties  Beloved and I lived in the top three floors of one of these houses in a lovely street called Montpelier Grove in Kentish Town, by then thoroughly gentrified.

Johnny looked me up and down. “Have you done waitressing?”, he asked. I had, first in the fish shop for one disastrous day and then several weeks at La Rocca. Johnny was short and square, with a shiny face and restless hands and full, rather moist lips. I didn’t like him at all. Johnny’s wife was running the restaurant downstairs which I found reassuring. Surely, no man would try it on with his wife a short flight of stairs away? He said I could start in the drinking club and we’d see how I got on with the customers. He took me behind the bar and explained the shelves of drinks, the cash register and the baskets of food. The bar served meze and the waitress had to cut up and dish out appetisers on very small plates. There were strict rules as to who got what: the man who came in for a beer had a dish of peanuts and a few olives and under no circumstances was I to give him more. “ Some of them sit all evening over a beer and expect me to feed them”, Johnny said. “You’ll get to know them soon enough”. The customer buying the most expensive drinks, such as a whole bottle of whisky, had a lavish spread, from olives and celery sticks to stuffed vine leaves, freshly grilled sardines, spiced and smoked meats and chunks of Greek bread. Sometimes there were tables of four who had a bottle of wine between them. To begin with they were to be given a reasonably generous array of plates; if they made no effort to buy another bottle, their dishes were not to be replenished.

During the week I was often left alone upstairs, Johnny coming up around ten o’clock to make sure nobody had got drunk and made trouble. He didn’t mind them getting drunk, it was the trouble he objected to. He had impressed on me not to leave my station behind the bar except to serve a table. It was a small room, with the tables ranged around the outside and a small area in the middle left free for dancing. Often it was the men who danced, arms spread wide and interlinked and heels kicking. At weekends a fiddler and a bouzouki player provided live entertainment.

I soon got used to it. Johnny was behaving himself.  Occasionally, just before closing time, he rubbed up against me when he squeezed past to get to the cash register; I could cope with that. Once he himself was behind the bar I was free to move into the room. At times I enjoyed myself.




to be continued . . . . .

Do Those Chips Need Oscillating ?

The Martyrdom of St Lawrence 

Tintoretto - Christ Church, Oxford

Yesterday was St Laurence’s Day, not a feast day with which I am particularly familiar; apparently he was a Spanish deacon supposedly martyred at Rome in the year 258 by being roasted on a grid-iron. This grisly fate promptly qualified him to become the special patron of confectioners, bakers, and cooks. Obviously. Stands to reason.

I came to cooking late in life. Before I met, and threw in my lot with Beloved, cooking was something confined to tin opening, defrosting and maybe frying in a pan. There was little time to produce elaborate meals, even had I known how to. The kids were home two hours before me and my shouts of “kids, I’m home” were drowned in a great rustle of biscuit wrappers hastily being brushed under the beds as I shut the front door behind me. I always found them at weekends, when I did the cleaning, but couldn’t very well complain. They were old enough by then to make themselves a sandwich, but when do kids do the sensible thing? Most of the time I felt guilty for leaving them home alone to earn our living and couldn’t get up enough steam to make our evenings miserable by wasting time arguing with them. Yes, yes, I know; say what you like, such was life in those days. And, no, neither of them has robbed a bank or become an axe murderer. Yet.

My mother taught me how to make stews by default. It wasn't that I ever paid any attention at the time or that she made a point of explaining what she was doing, but somehow, in spite of our mutual lack of interest in handing over the few secrets of her culinary expertise to the next generation, I picked up the odd pointer here and there which stuck. I suppose being in the room in which cooking is done, automatically leaves an impression on the bystander, particularly when the process is repeated time after time during childhood. Mum wasn’t a bad cook, just not an inventive or adventurous one. She knew her dozen or two recipes, the food she produced was good and tasty, and my dad loved it. Which is really all that matters.

Markham (1568-1637) in The English Huswife has it, that “the cook must be cleanly in both body and garments. She must have a quick eye, a curious nose, a perfect taste, and a ready ear; and she must not be butter-fingered, sweet-toothed, nor faint-hearted. For the first will let everything fall, the second will consume what it should increase, and the last will lose time with too much niceness.

Note how even then it was the male who told the female how to execute her duties. And not a word about showing her how it’s done.

The title question is a Beloved special: the chips were coming to the end of their time in the oven and this was his way of gently reminding me not to forget them.

Tables

I am from a poor people’s kitchen with a large table . . . . . . 

What has happened to tables? In particular kitchen tables? What has happened to the idea of sitting around a table for meals, for work, for conversation? A place for families to sit at the end of the day and exchange the day’s news, to air small hurts and share happy moments, at eye level, as equals. The anchor that provides a safe place, a place where body and soul find nourishment.

We had supper at a friend’s house not long ago, six of us sitting around a large kitchen table. There would have been room for at least two more, but as it was, we could  spread ourselves and when wine and conviviality loosened our tongues, there was plenty of space for elbows leaning on the table and hands gesturing to make a point. I remember how happy this expansiveness made me feel. I was also aware that there are now very few houses where sitting in such comfort is possible. Many younger people go without tables and eat their food from a plate held on a tray, even in company.

Am I just showing my age again, lamenting the demise of shared meals round a table? In my childhood and my children’s childhood the kitchen was the centre of the house. When I was small we had what was called a live-in-kitchen, a large room with a table and chairs in the middle, a cast iron range to one side and a dresser to the other. Lifestyles have changed and I am not advocating a return to the ‘olden days’, far from it. I am very grateful I no longer have to work as hard as my mother did early in her marriage.

If the kitchen was the centre, the table was the heart of our home. We had our meals at it, father spread his newspaper out on it and I did my homework. Extended family discussions were held here, fists banging the table for emphasis when the talk became heated. The few visitors we had were invited to take a seat, and uncles and aunts had their own regular places. I took my books here, from colouring and picture books to  reading books. In the evenings mum and dad and I played cards or board games, and after I had gone to bed they would still be there, finishing off their day. When we moved from the country to the town and the old table had to go because there was no room for it in the new home I missed it terribly.

We have five tables now, too many you might say. If ever we decide to downsize, several will have to go. But three at least have a history and losing them would mean the loss of that history.

The Bomber Over Hampstead Heath

sweffling at stopping by woods wrote a thoughtful post about seeing and hearing a Lancaster bomber flying in the skies above her peaceful Derbyshire hills on the recent anniversary of RAF raids on the Ruhr dams, the Dambusters.  When she heard it,  "My legs turned to jelly, and silly old woman that I am, I felt very tearful and afraid.  It was the shape, the low rumble of engines, the vibrations and the potential.  Also the history.” she wrote. 

It’s alright, I want to say to her, don’t be afraid, it’s one of yours. 

RAF Lancaster Bomber

It’s very different when the sound is deeply etched into your subconscious as a fearful noise you heard as a toddler, when your mother carried you, in your laundry basket bed, down steep stairs into the dark recesses of the coal cellar, lit, at pavement level, by the narrow slit of the open coal hole. The terror a mother feels, alone and helpless, is automatically transmitted to her baby. 

The day I was suddenly, literally out of the blue, reminded of the terror, Beloved and I were walking on Hampstead Health. It was one of those rare summer mornings in England when the air is soft and balmy, when the greensward shimmers with the last of the overnight dew, and people smile greetings at each other. London lay spread out below us and we could see the dome of St Paul’s and the towers of the City glinting in the light. We were also newly in love and nothing was further from my blissful mind than long-forgotten demons. And then it happened: one minute we were walking side by side, holding hands, the next I was diving into a gorse and bramble thicket edging the path. “What on earth are you doing,” Beloved shouted, utterly surprised. “The plane, the bomber, can you not hear it”, I said, cowering in the dirt.  On that day too the Lancaster’s flight commemorated a sortie in the bombers’ eventful and deadly history and the deep drone had caused a small child’s terror to resurface,  the very instant of hearing it, in the adult woman.

“It’s alright”, Beloved laughed, “It’s one of ours.” But, of course, it hadn’t been, all those years ago.

Eyes Bigger Than Your Stomach?

Before greed became morally acceptable in the circles of the Haves as well as many of the Have-Not-Quite-As-Muchs, and we all strove to make it into a commendable contribution to society to demand more and more, we made do with ambition, a much nicer word. I leave you to decide how closely ambition and greed are related; I’d say second-cousins-once-removed, but I’ve definitely seen them in bed together.

As a small child, having not only heard tell about hunger but experienced a definite feeling of hollow tummy, it was my ambition to sit in front of a well-filled plate of food at every mealtime. Mum dished up and, feeling the large, dark, pleading eyes of her first live-born and only child upon her, she was often more generous than she should have been. “Are you sure you can manage that?”, was her permanent refrain, and “You must eat it up. Dad will be cross if food is wasted.” The food was never wasted; Dad remembered too well a time when shortages were the norm and great inventiveness and imagination were needed to bring it to the table. He always finished my leftovers. But the phrases “eyes too large for your stomach?” and “bitten off more than you can chew?” were a constant reminder that there was something wrong with me and his disapproving tone left me feeling vaguely uneasy and grubby.

My table habits have changed since then, and plates piled high put me off altogether. I feel full before I even start eating. I wish I could say the same about books. There’s been a perilously unstable pile of books sitting on top of a large wooden box in my study for weeks, mostly poetry books, I thought. Each new one I took off the shelves to flick through ended up on the pile. Notepads, bookmarks, magazines, folders of notes, all found a ’temporary’ home on the box. With Kelly coming to clean up after us, the pile needed sorting.

Besides poetry books, which have all gone back on the shelves, I was surprised to find these which had slipped my mind, all non-fiction, with bookmarks keeping my place between the read and unread chapters.

In 'Die Deutsche Seele' the writers survey and research 64 themes of "Germanness,” from ‘Abendstille, via Bauhaus and Beer,  Doktor Faust, Gemuetlichkeit, Heimat, Music,  Luther, Schadenfreude, Father Rhine, to Weihnachtsmarkt, and the eternal German longing for the abyss.
I must not lose this book again, it’s wonderful for dipping into whenever homesickness overwhelms me. It makes the homesickness worse, but in a perverse way that feels good.

The American writer Bill Bryson is a lightweight. He had the idea for the 600+ pages of ‘At Home' (and many of his other books) while trawling his own life for copy. He appears to be looking around hisVictorian rectory in Norfolk, and finding each room the inspiration for an amusing - and possibly well-researched - chapter on generations of people going quietly about their business in his house and others like it. This too is a book which can be abandoned and returned to at any chapter. Bryson is never boring, but never truly gripping either. Amusing is the best I can say; I’ll save the rest of it for a rainy day when I have nothing better to do.

A.C. Grayling’s ‘Among the Dead Cities’ asks if the targeting of civilians in war is ever justified. Grayling is an English philosopher and Master of  New College of the Humanities, London. It is a book for those interested not only in the Second World War and the destruction of cities in Germany and Japan, but also the ethics of warfare in a world where governments still seek to justify the bombing of civilian targets. Published in 2006, the book is relevant today and examines the lessons we can learn about how people should behave in a world of tension and moral confusion. In spite of the subject matter the book reads well and I have promised myself that I will pick it up again soon and consume great platefuls of it in each sitting.


Simon Winder professes to have a ‘crazed love affair’ with Germany, a country he has visited many times over the years. According to the sleeve notes ‘he is mesmerized by its cuisine, its architecture and its fairy tale landscape. He is equally passionate about the region’s history, folklore, monarchs and changing borders'. Winder describes Germany’s past afresh, taking in the story from the shaggy world of the ancient forests right through to the Nazi catastrophy in the 1930s, in an accessible and startlingly vivid account of a tortured but also brilliant country, which has at different times revealed the best and the worst aspects of Europe’s culture.

Since I was given Germania nearly a year ago I have picked it up and thrown it down in disgust many times. It lacks gravitas, historical cohesion and rigorous research, and yet . . . . the man has a warped sense of humour which appeals to me.


There is nothing funny about Sebald. How ‘Vertigo’ came to be buried at the bottom of the pile is incomprehensible to me. My plate, when I first started to read it, must have been full to overflowing, thus making me turn to
a form of entertainment other than reading.

I can always read Sebald and my great regret is that he didn’t live to write more of his compelling, deceptively simple, eccentric masterpieces. Part fiction, part travelogue, Sebald pursues his solitary course from England to Italy, combining, along the way, Stendhal, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona.



I would get back to any one of these books without delay, if it weren’t for the fact that I am in the middle of consuming two others: Richard Russo’s ‘Straight Man’ which makes me want to live among American college professors on a campus somewhere in small-town USA. It’s the only novel I have on the go and I am enjoying it tremendously. I’ll only put it down to pick another chapter of the second book currently on my plate: Oliver Burkeman’s ‘The Antidote’,  self-styled ‘Bracing Detox for the Self-Help Junkie’. Never having been a self-help addict the book shouldn’t make sense to me, but it does. Burkeman gives woolly old ‘positive thinking’ rather than actual thinking a well-aimed kick in the teeth. His ideas on how to stop frantically striving for happiness and actually getting closer to a semblance of it by letting go suit me down to the ground.

Bon Appétit.

Those Were The Days

Spring, 1935 by Kuzma Petrov-Vodin 

The MAG 164 provided by Tess Kincaid

when boys and girls 'walking out'  really did go for walks together.  Do you remember summer days when your heart beat faster because the two of you had escaped from parents and friends and he led you to the quieter parts of the local park? Did you have a favourite park bench for those daring bits of dialogue so embarrassing in retrospect?

It was a long walk to the town woods but getting there was definitely worth the effort. My boy and I thought ourselves fortunate if we found the little pavilion overlooking the lake empty. Open on three sides, roofed and with a stone bench running along the rounded back wall, the little ‘temple’ was the perfect place for assignations. Once a pair of lovers was installed inside, nobody else entered while they were there. Sometimes families occupied the space and teenage couples slunk away into the woods, waiting their turn. It was the town’s hardier teenagers' favourite place for a rendezvous. Because of the long walk there, the cold stone bench to sit on and the draughty sides, nobody lingered for very long. The boy, being a gentleman, stretched his arm out behind the girl, so that she  could rest her back on it rather than the unyielding stone wall and if his hand should stray and squeeze her shoulder, well, she was ready for that. Cool lips met in chaste kisses and by and by both his arms encircled her and she lent into him for comfort, heart beating wildly.

How sweetly innocent it was.

'The Deuss Temple'

Would today’s young couples ‘walk’ out together? Could they walk?  There they are, she poured into her skin-tight trousers, tottering on 4” stilettos, holding his hand for safety rather than romance, while he has a job keeping his jeans decent and is barely able to lift his feet in boat-sized, dangly-laced trainers. I always feel I should post a letter in that strip of bumcrack or perhaps stick one of those little plastic flags in it, suitably at half-mast. And I admire her bravery: sitting down in those trousers for more than a few minutes must be hell, not to mention the danger of splitting the seams.

image: block couponsherpa

Yes, I know, I am showing my age. Perhaps these kids are just as tenderly in love as we were all those years ago. Perhaps it’s only ever the fashions which change, not the feelings.  But do pull your jeans up, young man, before I forget myself and do something we might both regret.