Family - Ties That Bind Us

I am fortunate to have been born into a medium-sized, close-knit family. My early childhood was filled with love and joy. For seven years I was the only grandchild to two sets of doting grandparents and my great-grandmother. I wasn’t spoilt in a materialistic way but I knew I was wanted, always welcome everywhere and people had time for me. By seven or eight, I had been taught how to knit, how to sew on buttons and sew a line of neat, tiny stitches. I wasn’t allowed near the dangers of a hot, steamy kitchen but I could prick my fingers to death with a sharp needle – not too many times before I got the hang of it. I gave everyone’s coal fire a wide berth, too. It is basic, the security of a loving family. I hope I’ve provided the same for my children and grandchildren.

I would like to nurture the same close relationship with my grandchildren as I had with my grandparents and I hope I’m doing it right. I have been home-schooling my eldest grandson a couple of afternoons a week since lockdown rules eased enough for me to see him. Home-schooling sounds very grand, but he only started school last September, just getting into the swing of it, which he loves, then along came ‘the germs’ and shut down. We play games, do lots of painting, drawing, colouring – this includes chalk, wax crayon, pencils, felt tips and anything else I can lay my hands on. I’ve recently introduced him to ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, excellent for practising phonics. He’s quite happy doing number work, he doesn’t like writing much but we do a little bit. He enjoys being here, having me and Grandad all to himself with no distractions from his siblings. It helps my daughter out, as well. Families help each other, as it always was with our lot.

Now and again I dip into my family history. I’ve been doing my ‘tree’ for years. It can be hard work sometimes, going round in circles or literally barking up the wrong tree. So many generations with the same first name passed down. Children named after a dead older sibling. I’d never do that, but it was quite common in the mid-eighteen hundreds. People had lots of children, but so many of them died in infancy. Such losses in my ancestry have saddened me. My grandparents were made of strong stuff. They lost a child at three years old, before my mother was born. I was full of my own heartache when they lost another daughter, my mother. Our family clung to each other and tried to weather the storm.

It was hard when my mother died so young. It got harder still when my father remarried to the point of being impossible, but I had a close relationship with my maternal grandmother until she passed away, and my god-mother, who is my rock to this day.

I lost a lot of people over a period of about ten years. It is said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’ve made it, so far. I suppose I'm the matriarch of my family now, with hidden strength and non-judgemental advice when required.

                                                                           My babes

My poem,  Family

There's cooking and cleaning and

The sound of children at play.

Infants having a squabble,

It's an ordinary day.

The strength of our family

Continues here, in our home,

A warm hub of love and care

Where everyone is welcome.

Everyone is important,

All are equal in our throng.

We look after each other,

Fam'ly is where we belong.

Somewhere to share a problem,

Always a listening ear

And a few words of wisdom

Help the worries disappear.

Family ties that bind us

Are stronger than any twine.

United in trust we stand,

I'm proud this fam'ly is mine.

PMW 2020

Thanks for reading, stay safe, Pam x

                                              

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Painting Up A Storm

I have quite a few art works up around the walls of the house on the strand: psychedelic San Francisco concert posters from the 1960s, Soviet Russian screen-prints, contemporary lithographs, Blackpool FC memorabilia and some framed LP sleeves among them. I also have a few original paintings by relatively modern British artists and the watercolour reproduced below is probably my favourite. It hangs in my bedroom and is a stormy seaside view of Nairn in Scotland (home of the healthy, humble oatcake).

It's quite typical of the work of Donald Bosher (1912-1977); his paintings turn up occasionally on online auction pages, mostly rural depictions or seascapes. I don't know a lot about the artist and the internet is remarkably under-informed about him, but from memory he taught at Leicester College of Art in the post-World War II years and he used to spend his summers painting watercolours to supplement his income in his preferred haunts of Norfolk and Scotland. Unfortunately this photograph, taken with my iPhone, doesn't do the colour and depth of the painting justice, but you get the idea...

Watercolour is particularly effective at painting up a storm, in my opinion, and appropriately so. Look at the effect Bosher has achieved here with his aqueous washes in the sky. Oil or gouache would never have rendered the elements so perfectly wetly.

The 'boys', that is to say my brothers (both in their sixties), are in town for the week-end to visit, catch up, see the illuminations and other delights of my adopted Blackpool home. They encountered torrential rain on the way up north and will almost certainly experience the same on the homeward journey, but today promises to be fine on the Fylde coast, despite the blog theme!

All things considered though, I thought this would be the fitting week for a poem inspired by the dependable deluge that is a regular feature of our weather-patterns on the Fylde coast as they roll off the Atlantic and Irish Sea. When it's hot and sunny (which it is much of the time in spring and summer) Blackpool is brilliant, the best seaside resort in the land. However, even when it's wet and/or stormy I have to say it's equally scintillating up in the glistening jewel of the north. I find that there is something exhilarating and strangely romantic about northern rain.

Northern Rain
Call me Wetbeard!
Sturdy falling northern rain
may beat a tattoo on my skull
and cross bones,
needle sharp and icy cold
to the point of numbing
soaking limbs and pirate brain -

yet how to explain that,
despite the toll in sodden clothes
and squelching boots
(for once you're wet, you're wet),
there's something in the soul
responds to terraced streets
of glistering grey-slate roofs
asheet with torrents, bubbling gutters
struggling to channel all this deluge,
oily rivulets amok among the cobbles
and that roiling yellow sky
so full of thunderment
it sets my timbers shivering.

Eventually there will be
a pot of scalding coffee
with perhaps a tot of rum,
but now I am both barque and bo'sun,
ballast, mast and mainsail
driving hard a homeward route
upon the mighty Blackpool main
and loving it for the insane fun
of swashbuckling through
the elements of yet another
most unordinary day.

After all that furious wet, I'll finish with a funny factlet about one of the driest places on the planet:
"A year's worth of rain fell on Aoulef, Algeria in just a single day last week - same as it does pretty much every year!" (Well, it made me smile...about half an inch.)

Stay storm-proof, and thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Storm

Steve invited me to write a guest blog and it's a new challenge for me, but I'm trying to develop my poetry and take it to another level, so I've accepted. This theme of storm appealed to me.

Metaphorical Storm Illustration

I don't have a lot to say beyond the poem, which I hope will speak for itself. I'd love to know what you think of it.

Storm
Something blew out of your eyes,
Twisted,
And did its turn.
I caught the drift of its tale,
Surprised myself at my approval,
Opened everything,
Allowed the victory
And in you came.

I have my terror still;
But you are generous in my defeat.
I cower in my personality
Which you are stripping slowly
To far away.
I watch the storm
Of lovedust engulf us both.

I look in glimpses to a new future.
Something, something forming and right.
And yet
My will, my will...
An arm contracts...
The fight is changing.
I resist;
Clutch at mind pieces.

There are no promises
About the promise you gave.
'It will be alright' echoes dangerously in the dark.
I try to walk
But can't find my feet.
What state am I in?
It's in between
What I was; between the God I will become.
The final storm.

I am without help.
There are people an ghosts in the wrong order
And in the wrong places.
But I'm still here.
Immortality is difficult.
I didn't expect this; but I know it.
My memory returns to millions of years before.
Each grain of recall
Strips me of something.
Where am I? What will happen?

And then sunlight. A bit of certainty.
The touch of true love
Replaces everything.
Every thought is gone.
The cure of sadness and boredom.
I wanted this.
Needed something.
Thought it would be a party
Not a storm.

But I'm glad.
Worth the long tunnel of fear.
Rearranged.
A strange walk to peace.
Outlived the storm.


Laura Colville

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