On the Doorstep - Stretford 1958

Stretford, 1958, me, my mum, my nanna and my great grandmother, Nanna Polly grouped together for a family photograph on the doorstep of Nanna Polly’s house. I can remember being shuffled about to place everyone exactly right, and wearing my beautiful dress made by my other nanna. Our four generations, never to happen again, which makes the photograph all the more special.  Nanna Polly passed away the following year then ten years later my mum died which broke the links in the chain.

It has been a year of everything being placed on our doorstep, quite literally.  On a personal level, Covid 19 changed the way we live and the way we shop. We’ve done grocery shopping online for years. This has increased to the, butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, or that’s how it sometimes seems.

The first lockdown brought me fear and worry as we stayed at home, shielding from the outside world. One day, there was a wonderful surprise that started with a message from our niece.

“I bet you a million pounds there’s a shoebox outside your front door.”

What? Of course, I went to look. On the doorstep was a shoebox, with a note wishing us well and hoping we enjoy the contents. It was jam packed – including jam – with all the tasty goodies to put together an afternoon tea with lots of extra treats.

I was overwhelmed. Our niece, a busy NHS frontline worker, adored by us all, had gone to such trouble to make us this fantastic gift which was very welcome. I didn’t see her or hear her drive away. What a special lady, our angel. I think she made one for her mum, too. If you’re reading this, Jo, we salute you.

Good old Amazon, I couldn’t have managed Christmas without you. Day after day, another parcel delivered and placed on the doorstep as I organised gifts for the family and planned some sort of socially distanced Christmas Dinner at our house.

I’m the only survivor of my four generations.  I’m in awe of the strength of character my nanna and great grandmother must have had to endure two world wars and all the hardship and heart break that life threw at them. Both of them lost children in infancy. My great grandmother was only twenty-seven when she was widowed and lost her five year old daughter all within a fortnight.  I’m proud to be standing on that doorstep, surrounded by their love. I hope they’ve passed some of their northern grit down to me.

I found this poem by Thomas Hardy,

On the Doorstep
The rain imprinted the step’s wet shine
With target-circles that quivered and crossed
As I was leaving this porch of mine;
When from within there swelled and paused
A song’s sweet note;
And back I turned, and thought,
“Here I’ll abide.”

The step shines wet beneath the rain,
Which prints its circles as heretofore;
I watch them from the porch again,
But no song-notes within the door
Now call to me
To shun the dripping lea
And forth I stride.

Thomas Hardy, written in January, 1914 – and I wanted to add, ‘Yep, out you go!’

(If you remember the photo, apologies for using it again, though it was ages ago.)

Thanks for reading, stay safe, Pam x

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Sand, Sea, Spray!

"Sand, Sea, Spray!" is the theme of the week, in deference to an arts festival going on in Blackpool at the moment. By rights, it should have been a jolly blog, celebrating summer and beach culture, but Sand & Cement would have been a more appropriate title.

Here's why. The last few days have turned into something of a householder's nightmare. I was having a bit of re-plastering done when it was discovered that the house on the strand has a serious combination of wet and dry rot. It seems the former owner was something of a DIY cowboy. I've only got half a living-room at present...the other half is a big hole; no floor-boards, no joists, just bare earth at the bottom and a pervading smell of damp. (And no, I didn't find the missing Ormerod money... that's an in-joke for long-suffering Blackpool fans.)

Sad to see and distressing though it is, all will be put right soon. Proper venting, damp-proofing, new joists and a complete new wooden floor will be in place some time next week and the only thing hurting will be my bank manager. I have had to turn the house upside down (metaphorically) while the problem is being remedied.

This unexpected and unpleasant twist  has thrown my original idea for the blog quite off track, so I've come up with another slant, one that concentrates on the Sand part of the theme (as in desert expanses) and ties in with a poem I've been working on at intervals over the last year ever since seeing the movie Timbuktu and a documentary about the civil war in Sudan.

Timbuktu, a film by Abderrahmane Sissako, is set among the sand dunes of Mali and is about the struggles of the local people against the oppressive encroachment of invading Jihadists - as if eking out a life in the middle of a desert weren't challenge enough. It is a very powerful drama and won many accolades on its release in 2014 (including Best Foreign Language Film).

The Sudan documentary was shocking for the bleakness it portrayed and for the fact that many of the 'soldiers' are just teenage boys and girls brutalised by the predicament they find themselves in.

Frontline
A mere slip of a girl,
sixteen, no older,
baby at her hip,
rifle slung from a shoulder.
Her unflinching stare
suggests
there will be no mercy here.

Under what tree,
within what canvas enclave
are peace
or happiness found?

Warlords hold sway.
Fear is the key
and all this dust of decay,
unsentimental sediment
of religious and racial discontent
grits ears, eyes, lips and souls,
a permanent scourge
in a howling dustbowl.

This is the brutal
way of the world -
kill or be killed;
as every raking spray of bullets,
every makeshift tomb of sand
marks the progress of implacable bigotry
across a desiccated land.

What have we become?
Animals with guns!
Using every excuse under the sun...

If he lives to be much older,
in ten years time
that hip-riding baby will be a boy soldier.

Thanks for reading. Here's hoping for a healing week, S ;-)

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