Calendars - It's A Date

 
“Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
February has twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting leap year, that’s the time
When February’s days are twenty-nine.

I’d be lost without our calendar. It hangs on the wall in the back room, telling us what we’re doing and where we’re doing it, year in, year out. Everything is there, birthdays, appointments, football fixtures, holidays and all manner of notable events. I tried a ‘Filofax’ once but found it completely unsuitable for my needs. I wasn’t jetting off round the world, just travelling the North West of the UK by road in my first Nissan Micra and the journeys were infrequent, so a lot of the features were wasted on me. My husband logs everything into his phone calendar. I haven’t bothered to teach myself how to do it. I prefer pen and paper where I can flip over one month to the next. Some aspects of modern technology I’m happy to do without.

I found some interesting history and discovered that the Ancient Egyptians were the first civilisation to use a solar calendar, to help predict the River Nile’s annual flooding. The information failed to state how accurate it was.

From Wikipedia, “Roman Calendar and Julian Reform: The Romans developed the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC, which was a significant step in organising the solar year. Gregorian Calendar (1582): Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar as a refinement of the Julian calendar in 1582, which is now the internationally accepted civil calendar.”

Based on a true story and with a strong cast of ‘A’ list actors, ‘Calendar Girls’, released in 2003, was awarded the British Comedy Award for the Best Comedy Film. It gives a light-hearted insight into serious illness and a brilliant idea to raise awareness and boost funds for charity. A stage production is currently on tour and there is a musical version.

My childhood spent with my mother’s choice of music from her rack of records included Neil Sedaka. We would dance to Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen and Calendar Girl.

If I was fortunate enough to be given an Advent Calendar on the run up to Christmas, it would be a pretty, sparkly addition to our decorations, covered in a fine glitter that left shiny dust behind each time it was touched. Behind each tiny door, numbered with the date, a symbol of Christmas waited to be found. No sweet, no chocolate, yet magi

The Good Old Days

Pity the poor children
Of today, with their calendars
Stuffed with chocolates,

Never to know the thrill
Of opening a small cardboard door
And discovering behind it

A picture of a bell.

Brian Bilston

Anyway, we’re off to one of our ‘notable events’ that has been on our calendar since last year and carried forward to the actual date this year. John Lodge ‘Days of Future Passed’ concert at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. Tuesday, 8th April. I just need to breathe slowly, not get too excited and I’ll be fine.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Greatest Dancer - It Isn't Me!

Sunday afternoons in the winter, watching the ‘Hollywood Musical’ at the home of my school-friend, Lorna, were very happy times. It was cosy, relaxing in front of the coal fire, drinking tea or sometimes hot chocolate while Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire had us mesmerised. It didn’t matter which musical was on, there was dancing and Lorna, her mum and I wished we could do it. Sometimes we would try to spin each other round or make a few steps up – not much space in the living room – we would lose balance and end up in a heap of laughter. It was simple pleasures for two fourteen year olds sharing an interest. Not surprisingly, neither of us became dancers, apart from a few twirls round our handbags when we were older. Great memories. R.I.P., Lorna.

As for the greatest dancer, I think I’ve established that it is certainly not me, but not for the lack of trying. From a young age I pestered to go to dancing class, when I decided that I wanted to be a ballerina, quite a common aspiration for little girls in the 1950s. I remember the disappointment of not being given a frilly tutu but I soon accepted being in the tap class and loved my noisy tap shoes. Apart from loving the sound, I couldn’t get the hang of it. I couldn’t follow instructions, even literally one step at a time. I just wanted to tap my feet but not in any particular order. I was probably too young or awkward, but the teachers didn’t give up on me straight away. They were planning a little concert and chose me to be the Pink Toothbrush and someone else to be the Blue Toothbrush as we did a simple tap dance to Max Bygraves recording of ‘I’m a Pink Toothbrush’. I don’t remember how far we got into it, but it didn’t happen. One of the teachers gave my mum what would be my costume. It was pieces of something pink, later I knew it was seersucker. It had been cut out from a pattern and just needed sewing together, apparently. My mother did many things but sewing dancing costumes was not amongst her skills. Popping a button back on or repairing a hem was about her limit, so she would task the costume to my dressmaking grandmother. Before that happened, dancing class and I parted company as it was decided to be not my forte. Many years later, I was helping my grandmother to sort out my late mother’s things and there, in its paper bag, was the fabric for my dancing costume.

In my teens and still at school, I escaped to London as much as I was allowed during the holidays. An aunt, uncle and cousins lived in Roehampton and were always happy to have me to stay. I usually travelled on my own by train and my aunt would meet me at Euston station. One such visit, I met Kathy, who was the family’s au pair, close in age to me. She was, well, still is, lovely. We are still in touch. Kathy didn’t speak much English then and I didn’t speak German – she’s Swiss-German, but we became friends and managed to communicate well enough. We went to the cinema one evening to see ‘The Boyfriend’. I really liked Twiggy and enjoyed the musical, but it was Christopher Gable who stole the show for me and I couldn’t take my eyes off his dancing. He made it look to easy, like Fred and Ginger did. That was my introduction to the ballet dancer Christopher Gable. He became a director of the Northern Ballet and was involved in ‘A Simple Man’, the ballet about L.S.Lowry. The combination of the greatest dancer and my favourite artist.

My poem,

When I was a child, I longed to dance
And I was given chance after chance
By a kind lady at dancing class,
Who thought I was a sweet little lass.

I was picked to be the ‘Pink Toothbrush’
My mum could make my costume, no rush.
It was all cut out, ready to sew,
Pink seersucker with satin bow.

The teachers had to admit defeat,
I was cute enough, but two left feet.
I tried my best, all the ‘heel and toe’
Tap, tap, tapping, but I had to go.

PMW 2024

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Scales

When I was thinking about writing about Scales I had a vague idea of checking on the two or three meanings of the word I could think of from the top of my head and then zeroing in on one of them to concentrate on. Maybe as in fish scales.

It was a bit of a surprise, therefore, when I discovered that there are loads of different meanings such as the aforementioned fish, then balances, music, marks to determine length, magnitude, mathematics etc. But the more interesting aspect of the word, to me, is the differing roots of the same word. I would have thought that Latin and French would have featured predominately. But how about these:

Scales as in a weighing instrument derives from Old Norse skal ‘bowl, drinking cup,’ in plural, ‘weighing scale'.

Scales as in marks laid down at determinate distances along a line, for purposes of measurement or computation comes from the Middle English noun scale, skale, ‘ladder, rung of a ladder,’ from Latin scālae ‘ladder, stairs’.

As for scales on fish or snakes, the derivation is from Old French escale ‘cup, scale, shell pod, husk’ which is from Proto-Germanic.

And this is where I go off piste... because I started to wonder about all the other languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Swahili etc that might have roots in other older forms. Which then took me to thinking about whether all languages could be traced back to some original sounds.

This seems to be a highly controversial subject which goes something like this:

Around 50,000 years ago, something happened to our ancestors in Africa. Anatomically modern humans, who had existed for at least 150,000 years prior, suddenly began behaving differently. Until then, their conduct scarcely differed from that of their hominid cousins, the Neanderthals. Both buried their dead; both used stone tools; and as social apes, both had some form of communication, which some think was gestural.

Then something changed as humans began making much better stone tools. They started burying their dead with accoutrements that suggested religion. And perhaps most telling, Homo Sapiens began creating art. Some scientists think that fully modern human language enabled this great leap forward. It enabled abstract thought, the deciding factor in archaic humans becoming me and you. And because some scientists surmise that language arose only once, they believe that before leaving Africa to colonize the world, all humankind spoke one language.

They think that language arose only once because human genetic evidence appears to support some basic assumptions. The human genome indicates that all humanity traces its ancestry to as few as 1,000 individuals who lived between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. This small founding population may explain how the capacity for language spread so quickly.

One example of this theory which I’ve heard of before is a word roughly corresponding to ‘water,’ which could be rendered in proto-sapiens as ‘AQWA’ which appears in many languages. In Latin it's ‘aqua’, in Japanese ‘aka’ means ‘bilge water’, in Chechen ‘aq’ means ‘to suck, in an African Kung dialect ‘kau’ means "to rain" and in Central American Yucatec, ‘uk’ means ‘to be thirsty’.

The trouble is that all this can’t be proved. But it is fascinating isn’t it?

Belvoir Bay

Scales are balances, so:

On Balance

a half moon bay
mid summer
midday

on the horizon
islands were perfectly matched

that’s when I asked her the question
the perfect spot
at the perfect time
minds and bodies meeting

ten years later
she’s still not replied
my best friend
how good is that

               (First published in Purple Patch)

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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