What the Butler Saw - A 'Y' Shaped Coffin

When I was a child I remember my father having a novelty pen. From behind clear plastic, a picture of a young, attractive lady smiled. She was fully clothed, but a twist of the pen and she was just in a bathing suit. The pen would have been quite a popular thing at the time. Blackpool promenade gift shops would have been full of them – perhaps they still are, I wouldn’t know, but I hope not. At the time, early to mid ‘60s, they were harmless fun and not intended to degrade women any more than ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines in the amusement arcades or live striptease shows. Dad always told me that she, the model in the pen, wasn’t a patch on my beautiful mother. And of course, she wasn’t. Nobody was.

I laughed at something being hilariously funny before I was old enough to understand what it was really about and got seriously told off by my mother who was horrified at my amusement. I ended up in tears. I hated being trouble and I didn’t know why she was so cross with me. It was to do with a woman being born with her legs apart and would need a ‘Y’ shaped coffin when she died. I know now that what I probably overheard was likely to be something to do with Joe Orton’s play ‘What the Butler Saw’ which was new and considered risqué, though I didn’t know anything about that at the time. I was thirteen and a naïve thirteen by modern day standards. My mirth was completely innocent. Had I known then what I know now, I certainly wouldn’t have shared it with my mother. This was the lady who wouldn’t let me watch ‘A Taste of Honey’ on television, around the same time, I think. I’d just got into it when she shooed me off to bed. She went downstairs to help in our pub and I crept back to our lounge, watching the film from the doorway but listening for her coming back. At the time, things in ‘A Taste of Honey’ went way over my head, probably the things my mother wanted to shield me from. During the last fifty-odd years, I’ve seen the film many times, I have the DVD and I’ve read the play. Shelagh Delaney, pure perfection.

The ‘Y’ shaped coffin comes from a famous quote from Joe Orton’s ‘What the Butler Saw’. When I was old enough to understand why my mother must have been so mad at me, she was no longer there, I couldn’t explain. She passed away later that year and I had to grow up without her and learn to steer myself through the abyss of life. I hope she wouldn’t be too dismayed at what I’ve read, studied, written and achieved.

At the age of thirteen, the names Shelagh Delaney and Joe Orton wouldn’t have meant anything to me but their written work was there, waiting for an older me and I have devoured every word, over again.

Joe Orton was before his time, lived his own life, took chances and packed a great deal into his thirty-four years before his partner murdered him and committed suicide.

Read at Joe Orton’s funeral:

Hilarium Memoriam J. O.

Some met together when he died
Not in the name of any God
But in his name
Whom they lost to the coffin,
The box which caused him endless mirth.
His lesson – which he would not read again.
Hilarity in death.
And now his censored spirit
In oblivion – free.
Perhaps it’s hard to see that
He’d have thought it funny – mad.
They will not weep for him.
They know that if they did
He’d think they’d missed the joke.
The joke that some would say
Was ‘in bad taste’,
And others who are calmer
‘Just a waste.’

                                         Josephine Crombie

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Snow - Fun in Padfield

It snowed yesterday. Just a tiny bit. Enough for my grandson to notice and tell me and sure enough, there was a flurry. We watched through the back room window, taking a break – I should say another break – from my efforts to home school him. Some snowflakes were big, but they didn’t hang around. The sun came out again, the sky was blue, and the last snowflake melted on the window and rolled down like a big tear-drop.  My grandson isn’t bothered. They’re not used to snow. He didn’t want to go out in it the other day when we had a depth of half a centimetre. He’d rather stay in and keep warm, but as he had walked round in his wellies I thought he might be hopeful of us quickly fashioning a tiny snow person in my back garden.

We hardly ever get proper snow here on the coast. I think it was 1981 when I trudged home from a nearby friend’s house in borrowed wellies which just about protected me, so deep was the snowfall that took us all by surprise when we opened the door. Luckily, as we were planning on staying in, I had walked. Usually I would take my car expecting us to be going off somewhere. The snow lasted a few days. Telephones were not working. I couldn’t get a message to work, but it didn’t matter, no one else made it in. There were a couple of times in the ‘90s when school was closed due to snow and my children played out in it. Very rare. It’s different further inland.

Padfield School 

During my childhood, for a short time we lived in Padfield, a village near Glossop in the Peak District. My parents were managing the local pub / small hotel, The Peels Arms, still there and it’s a great place, by the way. I made lots of friends at the village school and had a party for my ninth birthday in the hotel dining room. It was a very quiet neighbourhood and not many cars in those days. We had previously lived in pubs on busy streets or in town centres so being allowed out to play was a first for me and I loved it. Once, and it was only ever the once for reasons you’ll understand, I was allowed to take my toddler sister out in her pushchair. I took her to the nearby playground where she watched me play on the swings and roundabout with my friends. I must have got distracted. I don’t know the length of time involved, but at some point back at home, someone asked, ‘Where’s Anne?’ and the realisation hit me. I’d left her at the park.  She was still there, safe and well and I expect she was happy that someone came to rescue her. I was in the biggest trouble.

It snowed that winter, as it does every winter up there, and we were cut off. It must have been after Christmas because I remember sitting  by the fire in the ‘snug’ bar making the baskets from the gift of a basket weaving set I had received. No one could get in or out of Padfield.  Everything carried on as normal. The school had four classes with three teachers. Standard One and Standard Two shared a classroom with one teacher and all the staff lived locally. Snowy schooldays were fun, messing about all the way there and all the way back. The problem was that deliveries couldn’t get in, so provisions at the shop ran low or eventually ran out. I remember my mother helping out with food from the hotel to whoever needed it.

If the travel news on the radio gives information about the Snake Pass or Woodhead Road being closed due to snow, I know that Padfield and possibly Hadfield are cut off. I think back on my time there with fondness – apart from the incident with my sister – some great memories.

Padfield in the Snow
A snowman stood by every gate
Watching us marching down to school.
“Hurry up, we’re gonna be late,
Last one in is Mrs Swift’s fool!”

It’s hard to rush in such deep snow
With a blizzard freezing your face,
Making snowballs ready to throw
At some mates, nearly keeping pace.

Mrs Swift is standing, waiting,
About to close the classroom door,
Watching us dripping, creating
The puddles on the wooden floor.

Her eyes are narrow, looking cross.
Above her glasses, angry frown,
No doubt to nine-year olds who’s boss,
“Come in quickly and settle down!”

Prayers, assembly and work to do.
Writing and reading and hard sums,
Then we’re painting in shades of blue.
At home time, some letters for mums.

More snowball fighting up the street,
Climb the hill, laughing and falling,
Icy fingers and frozen feet,
“Pamela, your mum is calling!”


PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep well, Pam x

The photo is Padfield School, not mine.

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Gardens

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with gardens. I love sitting in them, hate working in them.

 

That's not always been the case. Years ago, when I first got married and we moved into a little house with a tiny back yard I asked the old couple next door if I could use part of their garden to grow vegetables.  They agreed readily to this arrangement, and, over the next few months, told me how much they were looking forward to the carrots, potatoes and beans that I'd promised to share with them. I tackled the vegetable patch with a great deal of enthusiasm, a huge amount of digging, a mountain of seeds and absolutely no skills or knowledge.

 

Needless to say, I think it gradually dawned on the old couple that they would probably be pushing up daisies before the promised bumper harvest was gathered.  One day their middle aged son appeared at the door to inform me that the gardening arrangement was causing his parents not a little stress, and he thought it best if I stuck to my own back yard in future.  Offended but somewhat relieved, I collected my spade, trowel and watering can and made the short journey back to our yard, head held high.

 

And there the story might have ended, had I not been married to somebody who was even less knowledgeable and skilled than his wife, and sadly didn't have the enthusiasm which might have made up for that.  The only things that grew in that back yard were four beautiful yellow rose bushes that had been there since Domesday, bloomed abundantly each year, and smelled as sweet as summer.

 

Every few months I used to pack up the children and take them to London on the train to see their grandparents.  Their dad stayed behind, ostensibly to work.  On one occasion I phoned home, only to be told the rose bushes had been removed to make the yard look neater. I was furious. I loved those rose bushes. They were part of summer. They WERE summer. I couldn't believe they had gone. I shouted and cried and left the Anti-Percy Thrower in no doubt that this misdemeanour would have serious consequences.

 

He didn't sound too worried, but when I returned I found four brown and wilted rose bushes exactly where I'd left them. On further investigation I discovered they were rootless and had obviously been rammed back into their tiny beds by an inexperienced and panicky hand.

 

Unlike the rose bushes, the husband survived - just.

 

When we moved house we were delighted and dismayed, in equal measure, to suddenly inherit a large garden with a huge lawn and flower beds. For the first ten years, with three young children and their friends, the lawn was soon known as Soweto Football Ground by all who played on her: a little grass in the middle and big bare patches around the makeshift goalposts at either end: dry and dusty in summer, thick with mud in winter.

 

Now, the mini footballers have flown the nest,  the grass has been seeded and tamed and the husband has passed his mowing test.  He is now let loose with the petrol mower. He is not allowed near the roses, although he was caught  in the act, quite recently, frantically chopping at a healthy flowering bush.

 

I decide more supervision is needed as I plump the cushions on my sunbed, settle back with a sigh and raise a cool drink to my lips...

 

The sign that mysteriously appeared in our garden one morning circa 1996

I thought this song by Lynn Anderson might be appropriate...

 

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there's gotta be a little rain sometime

When you take you gotta give so live and let live and let go oh oh oh oh

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

 

I could promise you things like big diamond rings

But you don't find roses growin' on stalks of clover

So you better think it over

Well, if sweet talking you could make it come true

I would give you the world right now on a silver platter

But what would it matter

So smile for a while and let's be jolly love shouldn't be so melancholy

Come along and share the good times while we can

 

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there's gotta be a little rain sometime

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

 

I could sing you a tune and promise you the moon

But if that's what it takes to hold you I'd just as soon let you go

But there's one thing I want you to know

You'd better look before you leap still waters run deep

And there won't always be someone there to pull you out

And you know what I'm talking about

So smile for a while and let's be jolly love shouldn't be so melancholy

Come along and share the good times while we can

 

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there's gotta be a little rain sometime...

 

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there's gotta be a little rain sometime...

 

Thanks for reading, Jill Reidy.

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