Mementos

I'm up with the Christmas robin and Ho! Ho! Ho! This is the first time in my seven years at the Saturday blog face that I've been required to post something on Christmas Day. The stocking, the presents, turkey and trimmings will have to wait then, as coffee and duty calls. 😉

My first five Christmases were hot and sunny affairs, for I was born and spent my early years in Nigeria, West Africa. Christmas cards from England depicting snowy scenes struck me as incredibly strange as a child. I remember stockings and presents but I have no idea what Christmas dinner consisted of; goat stew and yam probably, or maybe roast duck as my dad kept a few in a big enclosure in the garden. I'm guessing Father Christmas drank palm wine and the reindeers got corn-on-the-cob, though we had neither chimneys nor fireplaces. My mum made Christmas sweets. Her fudge was the stuff of legend. We played carols on a wind-up gramophone.

Relocated to England from my sixth Christmas onward, it took me a while to see the real appeal of cold, fog, snow, turkey with sprouts and white Christmases (which seemed to descend on the frozen inhabitants of East Anglia with chilling predictability year on year).

Anyway, enough of the moaning, I am now fully acclimatised. After all, this post is supposed to be about mementos so let me tell you about the Radio Times. We got our first television set (rented in those days from Robinsons Rentals) in November 1963. I remember it quite clearly as it arrived in the week that John F Kennedy got assassinated and Doctor Who first aired. My dad started buying the Radio Times shortly afterwards and that's how I knew The Beatles were going to be on TV, both on Juke Box Jury and in concert from some improbable northern outpost like Blackpool or Manchester. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Happy days...

a yellowing memento from 1963

He didn't go on buying the Radio Times for very long because soon the daily newspapers were printing detailed TV schedules and recommending interesting programmes to their readers (the TV critic had been born). And yet he would go on to insist on purchasing it once a year at Christmas from 1964 right into the new millennium, so that the family (in its various changing configurations) could peruse and plot their festive viewing. Picking up a Radio Times at Christmas is a tradition I continue in his memory. 

I mentioned Christmas cards earlier, a fashion that really took off in England in the 1840s, coincidentally shortly after the introduction of the penny postage stamp - though in retrospect perhaps it wasn't such a coincidence after all, but an example of the fine entrepreneurial spirit of Victorian England. My parents used to receive hundreds of them and would string them up as part of their Christmas decorations, another habit I was happy to acquire in turn for a few decades. Of course our transition to a more digital world has meant fewer people send and receive physical Christmas cards these days but I am happy with the two dozen or so I send and receive.

It's a curious tradition if one stops to think about it. How many Christmas cards are themselves like mementos of relationships that are rarely remembered or celebrated  beyond that once a year communique? 

The earliest documented Christmas card was handmade by one Michael Maier and was sent to James I in 1611 bearing the greeting: "To the most worshipful and energetic lord and most eminent James, King of Great Britain and Ireland, and Defender of the true faith, with a gesture of celebration of the Birthday of the Lord, in the most joyful fortune, we enter into the new auspicious year 1612." I wonder what he was after! It's housed in the Scottish Records Office.

However, I recently came upon what appears to be a much older specimen of Christmas artwork. 😁

the First Pre-Christmas

That one is for all my conspiracy-theory loving acquaintances to get excited about, and pretty much runs me dry on the memento theme, so it's on to to the poetic bit, and then I can unwrap a present or two with a clear conscience.

Back at the end of July the weekly blog theme was Sestina but I nimbly swerved the challenge by cheekily writing about Retsina instead, given that it was a very hot Saturday and difficult to concentrate on the intricacies of such a complex poetic form. However, I made a promise that I would write a sestina one day, perhaps when the weather was a little cooler; so before the year outruns me, that promise is fulfilled here in appropriately seasonal guise, although yet another composition in the narrative mode from which I'm trying to break free!  

I must say that when I started to write it I had no idea where it would go. It's perhaps a little dark, but then peace on earth and goodwill to all men is not universally guaranteed. I'll also throw in a couple of caveats. The first is that I found the rigid, circulating and repetitive formula of the sestina construct hugely constricting, even more so than a pantoum or villanelle  - but hey, job done. The second is that I reserve the right to change the poem if/when improvements come to mind. But for now, here it is. Cheers.

Christina

Al-Assad's criminal carpet bombing of Homs city shattered all

that represented family, home and happiness for her.  Now she

flees with thousands of the ragged dispossessed,  often wishes

she had died along. Seeing your parents and husband killed for

the vanity of an ideologue leaves a lasting bitter taste.  But this

child, growing wondrously within, is her imperative, Christmas

conceived, best present from the man she loved. Last Christmas

together, a precious time in retrospect, but civil war changed all

to darkness and despair. During cold nights in open country this

hunted band that dare not show itself by day has made sure she

can stay the pace,   her new family now.  The young look out for

the old, strong for the weak, humanity in action.   All she wishes

is that the nightmare will end, Syria is no longer a friend, wishes

to escape its border for a safer haven anywhere, and a Christmas

next year maybe with baby. Southwards into Lebanon is out, for

civil war has forced that country also to its knees,  a free-for-all

with people of her faith no longer secure. It's to Europe then she

turns her face, finds a first resting place in a refugee camp.  This

is not the life she dreamed of as a girl,  all gone wrong.  And this

is not the wife she expected to be, widowed at thirty, but wishes

can't turn back events.  Morning star and morning sickness, she

greets them each lonely dawn, waits to be processed. Christmas

in a Christian land would be some solace. It drags out so long all

hope begins to drain away despite the firstborn she clings on for.

Her tiny girl enters the world in some Bulgarian transit-camp for

asylum-seekers wanting west. With her mother's good looks, this

means officials try to buy the baby for adoption,  pointing out all

the benefits of a better future for a rescued child. And she wishes

she had the will to resist, but can't even afford to buy a Christmas

gift for her little daughter,  so what hope of providing more?  She

lets them remove the baby on the promise of a visa, knowing she

will regret that separation for ever but believing she has acted for

the best.  Her child will grow up German or Dutch, and Christmas

will be a happy time in another loving family for the little girl. This

she tells herself each night as she slips into tented sleep. If wishes

could solve statelessness, hopelessness, constant hunger, cold. All

All she wishes for this Christmas

a few restorative days of warmth, some peace,

a tiny glimmer of hope about her future's lease.

Thanks for reading. Merry Festives everyone, S ;-)

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Sestina - The Secret

After dealing with the bindweed on the buddleia and nursing the contents of my over-full planters towards flowering, it has been lovely to sit out in the sunshine enjoying what passes for a garden. This sitting out time has been spent wisely, refreshing my memory on the discipline of the Sestina poetic form. Years have passed since my last (forced) encounter and you’d be correct to think that this is not my favourite. Anyway, rising to the challenge, I managed to get the rusty workings of my brain pointing in the right direction for long enough to compose something. I don’t know where the subject came from apart from the dark side of my imagination, iambic pentameter a bit hit and miss, but I hope it meets the criteria.

“A sestina is a poem written using a very specific, complex form. The form is French, and the poem includes six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three line stanza at the end. Each stanza repeats the end words of the first stanza, not in the same order but in a strict formation.” See illustration.

Here is my sestina.

The Secret

After the passing of so many years
She still thought she would know him anywhere.
Decades ago, she wrote him a letter
But did not send it, instead tore it up
And decided it was best for their child
To remain unknown to him, a secret.

What started as a burdening secret
Became less important over the years.
Happy and healthy, this beautiful child
Was delightful company anywhere,
Cheerful and bright and always on the up,
Sometimes, she wished she had sent the letter.

All the details contained in that letter,
The reasons for having such a secret
And how important it was to keep up
For all the childhood and growing up years,
To guarantee acceptance anywhere,
And offer the best of all to this child.

A talented and inquisitive child,
Doing everything right to the letter.
A child going places, not anywhere.
Adult, needing answers to the secret
Of where a father might hide all these years,
Deserves to know the truth, so bring it up.

Then hours of searching and looking up.
So many questions you’re asking, dear child,
Travelling back over so many years,
This grown-up child composes a letter.
Confronted, she shares the truth, her secret,
Oh child, your father could be anywhere.

She always thought she’d know him, anywhere.
The mem’ry of him made her smile light up.
He would hate her for keeping this secret,
Denying him the chance to share their child.
Long ago, he had sent her a letter:
‘Return to Sender’, not lived here for years.

A secret lover, anywhere, now found.
After all the years, a chance to make up
Now he’s received a letter from his child.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading. Whether you embrace freedom or not, stay safe. Pam x

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