Bark - One Special Dog

The decision was made. We didn’t see it as giving in, relenting to pressure. It was more like the time was right. Lots had been going on in the family and as things settled down, I didn’t want to be thought of as “Mum always said ‘No’”.

 The four of us sat down to tea. Everyone had a small piece of paper, face down, not to be touched until we were ready. I think I should explain, we’re not a completely crazy family, at least not yet, but as parents we took pleasure in turning ordinary things into memorable events sometimes. We took turns to reveal the word or words on the other side.

‘WE’, ‘ARE’, ‘GETTING’, ‘A DOG’. Tea-time took on a party atmosphere as excited children burst with joy and parents knew they’d done exactly the right thing.

 Before involving the children, we’d done some research into the best breeds for a family dog and what would suit us all. I wouldn’t expect our son to be happy walking a ball of fluff with a bow in its hair and something large and heavy would be too much for me to handle. No puppies, either. There were lots of dogs needing a caring home. We would find one. The search began in local kennels and RSPCA homes. I can’t remember how we found North West Springer Spaniel Rescue, but that’s where we found our special Cassie, in their Warrington kennels.

 She was an old, Springer breeding bitch and had been subjected to some neglect since reaching the end of her usefulness. She was deaf and not very playful. She needed regular, short walks, but she was too old to chase a ball. She was perfect for our first family dog. Cassie was quiet. Because of her deafness, we didn’t let her off her lead. She didn’t hear the doorbell, so she never barked. I only remember hearing her bark once.

 We went on the beach at Cleveleys. We thought Cassie might not have experienced sand or sea. The tide was quite a way out, but there was a big pool in a shallow area near the sea wall. Cassie ambled in, water covering her feet and she stood still, taking us by surprise by barking her head off. Thinking she was unhappy, I brought her out, only for her to pull on the lead to go back in and bark again. Clearly she liked it. Perhaps it was the cold water on her feet combined with all the smells that might have been new to her. Bless her.

 She was an old girl of a dog, but she brought much joy in the time we had her. We all loved her. Whatever her life had been like before, we know we did the best we could to fill her twilight years with affection, care and comfort. This happened many years ago and paved the way for another, younger and more active dog, but Cassie will always be special.

Haiku poem for Cassie

Her name was Cassie,
A quiet Springer Spaniel.
She was unhappy.

“All you need is love
And lots and lots of cuddles
To know you’re wanted.”

She was getting old
And neglect had made her sad,
So we brought her home

And loved her to bits.
Our affection filled her days
And she loved us, too.

She was very deaf,
She had to stay on her lead
But she didn’t mind.

She liked a short stroll,
Her running days were over.
She would explore smells.

Once, we heard her bark
In a pool on Cleveleys beach.
She was excited.

It was her laughter,
A moment of enjoyment.
You were special, Cass.

PMW 2023

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Summer - Making Memories

It is here, at last, the moment we’ve been waiting for. Proper sultry, summer weather of hot sun and blue skies from dawn until dusk, which is around nine-thirty, and I would like to say it goes on day after day. It won’t. I think this is two days of heatwave, then rain, possibly storm, and cooler temperatures. My house is currently thirty-four degrees and I feel sticky and uncomfortable.  The heatwave may not be completely responsible.  After two and a half years of sticking to guidelines and looking out for myself and family, Covid has got me. I tested positive at the weekend after feeling unwell for a couple of days. There are no signs of recovery yet. When it cools down, I’ll rest in the garden, admiring the fruits of my labours, especially the planter I’ve called Tangerine and White.

The summers of our youth were everlasting and full of ice cream, the park, the beach and sometimes a holiday. Our holidays tended to be spent with family, when my dad could escape from running the pub for more than two days together. It was always good to spent time with our cousins. They are in the USA now, but they lived in London and the south of England when we were all children. My sister and I loved their big garden offering lots of room to play, even space for badminton.

For years home was a pub on South Promenade. We had the beach on our doorstep. Day after day we were there, not a care in the world and not a thought for how lucky we were. Someone would be with us until I, being the eldest, was considered old enough to take us across four lanes of traffic and the tramlines. My sister would choose an ice lolly or ice cream. I loved a portion of shrimps in a tiny paper bag. I can still taste how delicious they were. Better than anything sweet.

When our children were young, summer holidays meant the long road trip to Pembrokeshire and a couple of weeks staying in a static caravan. It was owned by family members who didn’t use it during the busy months of July and August, but were very happy for us and others to enjoy it. We were so privileged. We had holidays that wouldn’t have happened if not for the generosity of our extended family. Our children, and us have great memories of those wonderful times.

Making memories is what we’ll be doing in a few weeks when we take our grown up children and all our grandchildren to have a blast at Butlin’s. It’s our treat as grandparents and a one-off. It will be fun for all of us, of course, but it is centred on giving the grandchildren a fabulous time. My grandparents used to take me to Butlin’s when I was small, before I had a sister. Now I’m the nanna. It’s my turn.

Allow me the indulgence of my favourite of Shakespeare’s sonnets,

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare 1564-1616

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Mermaids - Of Course They Are Real!

I was thinking about mermaids, trying to decide how to approach this blog when I realised that the answers I was looking for might just be right in front of me. All four grandchildren come for tea on Mondays, or Mad Mondays, as they are known. Here they were, my cherubs, bursting with the knowledge from the magical world of the under eights and always eager to share what they know and to be helpful.

“Who can tell me what a mermaid is?” I ask.

“It’s a fish.” Someone offers.

“No, it’s a person with the body of a fish.” Someone else elaborated.

“That’s what I meant.”

With an argument about to break out between two of them about what is actually said and what is possibly implied, I intervened, separating the one being laid-back from the one being unusually pedantic.

“Never mind, I think I know what you both mean. Does anyone know where they live?” I look round, hoping to engage the younger children but one is glued to something more exciting on the tablet and doesn’t want to waste their ‘turn time’ talking to me and the other one wants to know if tea is ready. The others said, in the sea and on the beach.

“Nanna, mermaids aren’t real, you know.”

“What? Of course they’re real. There’s a statue of one in Copenhagen. Look at this!” Pretending to be shocked I quickly searched Google for The Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour and gleefully shared the picture as if it’s proof. “There she is.”

There was a bit of sniggering about the mermaid having boobs but the main point was that they were sure mermaids are not real. I was sure that they are.

“They must be,” I urge, “because, when I was a little girl…”

Slight rolling of eyes or glazed look. Either they are not old enough yet for my ‘When I was a little girl’ stories, or they think they have heard enough already. I’m mindful that the nearly seven and nearly six year olds have done a full school day and the little ones have been to nursery so they are tired and they’ve had enough paying attention. I really should be in the kitchen, but they are having this last snippet before I go.

“When I was little girl there was a film I really loved called Miranda. It was all about a mermaid called Miranda and she was definitely real.”

I told them a little bit about Miranda, what I could remember. Looking back, I don’t know why it appealed to me, it wouldn’t be as funny now and probably wouldn’t interest today’s sophisticated children. I won’t rush to find a DVD. Nothing will convince them that mermaids are real.

I made up a tale about a 19th century prostitute who sometimes wore a mermaid’s fish-tail. I won’t share that with my grandchildren, but I wrote a poem which I’ll share with you.

The Lass at The Mermaid Inn

In an attic room at The Mermaid Inn
She brushed her long and lustrous wavy hair
Preparing to entertain men within,
Smoothed fish-net stockings over slender legs
And poured another large pink gin.

She promised Paradise for a shillin’
Her delicate strokes with soft, gentle fingers,
Enough to send her guests a-quiverin’
Tender kiss from rose-bud lips, sweet, hot, moist,
With a subtle taste of pink gin.

Again and again, they keep returnin’
She takes their shillings and gives them her best.
There’s more for an extra tanner thrown in,
Loving and lusting at The Mermaid Inn,
Homesick sailors and more pink gin.

So sometimes, just for a joke and darin’
She would wear her opalescent fish-tail,
Close fitting, tight, a rainbow shimmerin’
Begging to be peeled away so slowly,
She seductively sips pink gin.

PMW 2022

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Magic Has Never Dimmed

Anybody who knows me, knows how much I love the sea. Not sailing on it. That’s a totally different story. And not swimming in it unless it’s several thousand miles from Blackpool and calm and warm. No, my love for the sea stems from childhood day trips and holidays to the seaside. These days my contact with the sea is limited to viewing it from the prom as I take a walk, and photographing it as it rages against the sea wall.  I love it in all its forms - still and calm, glistening in the sunlight or wild in the winds that hit this coast.

Living in London, the nearest place to swim was Tottenham Lido, which was outdoor and freezing.  I rarely saw my dad in less than shirt and trousers, so it was quite an event if he took me and my brothers to the pool on a Sunday morning. I’m guessing my mum persuaded him so she could getting on with cooking lunch without us kids in and out of the kitchen. My dad never really showed much enthusiasm for the outing, emerging from the changing rooms in his knitted trunks, body white as snow, and reluctantly dropping into the freezing water to keep an eye on three excited children.  What I do remember, vividly, is the colour of the water - which I only realised later, was, of course, the colour of the floor and walls of the pool. That colour has stayed with me for sixty years. If I see it now I’m instantly transported back to those Sunday mornings, and the shock of the cold as I carefully descended the steps into the not so welcoming water.

Anyway, I digress. Occasionally, instead of the Lido, we would drive to Southend, where we had young cousins. I only remember once going into the sea there. My mum had taken us kids down on the train and we obviously weren’t meeting the cousins that day. The sea was brown and dirty, but that was no deterrent. Having donned the home sewn elasticated costume, I ran into the sea with my brothers, emerging later with the swimsuit drooping dramatically, weighed down by sand and pebbles and resembling a baby’s full nappy. I wasn’t happy and insisted on getting changed behind a huge towel as quickly as possible. 

Our main holidays were to Margate where we had another set of cousins, nearer our own age. I defy any child to have a better holiday than those weeks by the seaside. Like many a family, I’m sure, we kids scoured the horizon for miles before catching our first glimpse of the sea. It was utter magic. Before we even arrived at our destination my happiness was complete.  The cousins’ house was just up the road from the prom. I couldn’t believe how lucky they were to have the sea on their doorstep. They, however, were pretty blasé about it all.  I couldn’t get enough of the beach and the sea and the tacky gift shops but my cousin was much more interested in mucking out and riding her adopted horse. One year I went alone to stay, and to my horror, although the sea winked seductively at me in the sunshine, I was lent a bike and told to follow my cousin to the stables. Here she handed me a stinking brush and a large dustpan and instructed me to muck out the stable, while she went off on an exhilarating gallop across the fields.  Not only was I scared of the giant horse that eyed me suspiciously but I also felt very resentful of the whole situation, which wasn’t helped by the loud and constant passing of wind from a huge and smelly behind. The horse’s, not mine. 

When I saw the bikes coming out for a second day  I lay back on the bed and feigned illness. I remember a tearful phone call home and the sympathetic voice of my mum, but no offer to come and get me.  I never got my sea fix that week, and returned home vowing to take reinforcements with me next time.

Imagine my delight when, twenty years later - and quite by chance, the husband got a teaching job in Blackpool.  We moved to the seaside, albeit a good thirty minutes’ walk from the actual sea. Ten years after that we decided to move.  Our house sold and in a desperate attempt to find another we drove around the whole area, three young children bored and arguing in the back of the car, and spotted a huge house just off the prom.  For whatever reason, it had been on the market for a year and subsequently reduced drastically.  We bought it, we’re still here, thirty six years later, and I still marvel that we can see the sea from every window.  The magic has never dimmed.

The Island*

Hardly a ripple

Shallow waves lap silently at sand

Approach slowly and with a quiet stealth

A family, deckchairs, buckets, spades 

And no awareness

Of impending danger

Spades digging

Buckets filling 

Castle building

When all around

That silent sea

glints in the sunlight

Gives a little smile

And calmly meanders 

Around the group 

forming pools 

That join and fill 

And finally

Without a sound

The island is complete. 

*If you live in Blackpool you'll be aware of the way the sea comes in and fills in the dips on the beach.  Many times, over the years, I've seen groups of holidaymakers trapped by the tide.  The sea creeps in behind them and leaves them on an ever decreasing island.

Jill Reidy

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The Sea - My Bit of Blackpool

 When my parent's wish for a pub on Blackpool promenade was granted, I had the joy of having a front bedroom facing the sea. I was fascinated by the view. The summer season was just starting, people were strolling past and each day seemed busier than the last one. Trams rumbled by, horses clopped along pulling landaus, bells rang out from the donkeys taking their place on the beach and squeals of delight or screams of fear came from the nearby Pleasure Beach. These new sounds were exciting but nothing compared to the noises of the sea. On a still and quiet day, with hardly a ripple on the incoming tide, there might by a gentle splash as the last wave met the sand. On a breezy day, the sea was louder and the tide came in with lively, white waves. One of my first memories of that room is of a sunny morning, the curtains half open and the nets billowing into the room on the fresh, salty breeze. In those early days, I shared the room with my little sister who was still in a cot and I would wake up properly to hear her calling my name and holding her arms up to be lifted out. I think she was two years old, which would put me at nine, nearly ten. I don’t know when she moved into a room of her own, though at some point she did.

My grandparents were regular visitors, leaving their pub to oversee ours – it was a family joke. Grandad would go and take an interest in the cellar lay-out and everything behind the bars. Nanna planted herself in the bay window of our private lounge and watched the world go by, tutting at some of the sights and loving the view of the sea. She would smoke her Park Drive and drink tea. Her knitting would remain untouched as the outside goings on captivated her.  I expected to be part of those goings on when I was old enough. I wasn’t, well, not quite.

We spent hours watching the illuminated trams when Blackpool Lights shone. We could see for miles up and down the promenade. My sister and I would be taken out by Dad in the car to enjoy a proper look and see the fabulous tableaux towards Bispham. Many years later, a story and a poem of mine featured along there, amongst others. Who could have known?

When the Illuminations end, Blackpool hibernates. The view from my window is dominated by the sea with no distractions. Trams, less frequent, thunder along but the horses and donkeys have gone. Gale force winds and high tides send waves crashing over the sea wall on to the tram tracks, into the road and often into our cellar. It wasn’t flooded completely, but Dad would need his wellingtons on. I watched the sea with my mum, from the comfort of our lounge. The noise of the sea would frighten me, roaring, pounding and fierce, rising at its most scary like some great water monster. It still scares me. I like to watch without being too close.

I loved that bedroom. Our family changed after my mother passed away and my bedroom was promised to another. I moved to a back room. I should have refused. That’s life.

During the full lockdown, I wished I lived close enough to the promenade to have a walk and a look at the sea. Suddenly, I missed it, everything, the sounds and the taste of salt on my lips. There was one very hot, sticky day during the summer when there was only one way to cool off. After tea, my husband and I drove to Anchorsholme and found a quiet spot. We had a short walk then stood by the railings, looking at the sea that was right out on the horizon. A gentle breeze was pleasantly cooling, swirling my summer skirt and loose-fitting top. We stood for an hour enjoying the fresh air, watching seagulls and the people in the distance. The Blackpool I like is the vast coast-line and the changing of the sea.

My chosen poem, a favourite from John Cooper Clarke, with a nod to John Masefield. It brings to mind the Golden Mile, 

i mustn't go down to the sea again

Sunken yachtsmen
Sinking yards
Drunken Scotsmen
Drinking hard
Every lunatic and his friend
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

The ocean drags
Its drowning men
Emotions flag
Me down again
Tell tracy babs and gwen
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

The rain whips
The promenade
It drips on chips
They turn to lard
I’d send a card if I had a pen
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

A string of pearls
From the bingo bar
For a girl
Who looks like Ringo Starr
She’s mad about married men
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

The clumsy kiss
That ends in tears
How I wish
I wasn’t here
Tell tony mike and len
I mustn’t go down to the sea again.

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

Photo from Blackpool Gazette

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Seashore - Beside the Sea

                                                    Isle of Vatersay, Outer Hebrides

I was so fortunate, as a child, to have a wonderful sea view from my bedroom window. My father had his wish granted, to run a pub on Blackpool promenade and the family had landed in paradise. It was the beginning of summer and I remember it as blue skies and a sun that turned orange and slipped into a shimmering sea. We went on the beach, a lot. My sister and I played there, all day sometimes.  I went out for walks on the shoreline at dusk with my mum. It was our time on a calm evening, quiet, thoughtful, listening to the gentle waves. We strolled between South Pier and Waterloo Road, not far, just in front of where we lived. We would look for creatures in the tangle of seaweed that marked the tideline, but we only found bits of dead crab. It was our mother-daughter bonding. Moments that became special memories to treasure. Even now, many years later, I still think of that stretch of beach as mine.

Although born inland, I’ve always been drawn to the coast. Any coast will do. When our children were young we had family holidays in Pembrokeshire where every seashore is stunning. There are lots of sandy beaches to play on, also the fun of finding a way over the boulders to poke about in rock pools at Wiseman’s Bridge, or skimming stones at Amroth. We covered the English East Coast between Redcar and Withernsea, where the North Sea claims a bit more of the land each year. On a returning visit to Skipsea we were shocked to discover how much land had broken away, including a road that we had used.

The Scottish seashores are breath-taking. I could spend all day looking at Ailsa Craig from the Ayrshire coast. We stayed in a caravan at Embo on the Scottish North East coast where we stepped out directly on to the beach and walked along the shoreline every day. It is somewhere I hope to return to. The most stunning seashores I have found so far are in the Outer Hebrides. At South Uist, the sand shines silver and white, shells are bleached white with the sun – I brought some home and keep them in a jar.

I’ll be on my travels again soon. It’s time to breathe some Scottish air.

Here is Simon Armitage,

 

 

The Stone Beach

 

A walk, not more than a mile

along the barricade of land

between the ocean and the grey lagoon.

Six of us, hand in hand,

 

connected by blood. Underfoot

a billion stones and pebbles-

new potatoes, mint imperials,

the eggs of birds-

 

each rock more infinitely formed

than anything we own.

Spoilt for choice - which one to throw,

which to pocket and take home.

 

The present tense, although

some angle of the sun, some slant of light

back-dates us thirty years.

Home-movie. Super 8.

 

Seaweed in ropes and rags.

The weightless, empty armour

of a crab. A jawbone, bleached

and blasted, manages a smile.

 

Long-shore-drift,

the ocean sorts and sifts

giving with this, getting back

with the next.

 

A sailboat thinks itself

across the bay.

Susan, nursing a thought of her own

unthreads and threads

 

the middle button of her coat.

Disturbed,

a colony of nesting terns

makes one full circle of the world

 

then drops.

But the beach, full of itself,

each round of rock

no smaller than a bottle top,

 

no bigger than a nephew's fist.

One minute more, as Jonathan, three, autistic,

hypnotised by flight and fall,

picks one more shape

 

and under-arms the last wish of the day -

look, like a stone - into the next wave.

 

Simon Armitage

 

 

 

                                                       South Uist, Outer Hebrides

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Elephants - Jumbo Jet

 

My recent travels have taken me to Cheshire, Yorkshire and Scotland over the last five or six weeks. Most of it has been during some of the warmest summer weather and at each location  I’ve benefitted from the comfort of my long, loose-fitting, printed skirts. I’m not really one for wearing a skirt but I’ll make an exception to stay cool. I don’t like to get dressed up either, so these are perfect with a tee-shirt.  The appeal, besides the easy-wear, easy-travel fabric is the print of decorated elephants creating a circular pattern.  Yesterday I added to my collection when I couldn’t resist an elephant-print dress in a sale.  This was me not supposed to be buying for myself but life’s too short.

I like elephants. I haven’t got a problem with their trunks up or down, facing doors inwards or outwards, or any other associated superstitions. My grandmother is probably wagging her finger at me from the after-life. Birds are surely worse, aren’t they, Nanna?

Elephants crossing the promenade used to be a pleasing feature of my drive to work in the summer. In those days I lived in South Shore and worked in North Shore. My preferred route, in my Austin A40 a long time ago, was to get on to the front at Harrowside and enjoy the sea views all the way up. I tried to time it in order to reach Central Promenade when the circus elephants were being escorted out of Blackpool Tower for a walk on the beach and a dip in the sea, depending on the tide. Many times I queued as they plodded across the road, trunk to tail, enormous and magnificent, and wished I was in the first car.

Information from WWF websites: Both African and Indian elephants are classed as endangered species. Illegal activity in poaching and ivory trading goes on and for African elephants there has been a loss of natural habitat due to the expansion of the human population and land being used for agriculture. The WWF is working towards preventing both these situations from worsening. 

To end on a lighter note, I found this poem by Spike Milligan,

 

Jumbo Jet  

 I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,

     I said ‘You don’t belong in here,’ he said ‘I beg your pardon?’,
     I said ‘This place is England, what are you doing here?’,
     He said ‘Ah, then I must be lost’ and then ‘Oh dear, oh dear’.

‘I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti’s Plain’,

     ‘Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?’.
    He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing Lane,
    And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.

The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,

     So they tied him to a lamp-post and he slept against the wall.
     But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
     The lamp-post and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!

So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,

     You can be sure that Africa’s the place he’s trying to get!

Spike Milligan  (1918-2002)

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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Sugar - A Little Stick of Blackpool Rock

 Somewhere, hidden in the maze of back alleys and side streets of South Shore, there once stood the rock factory. It was only a two minute jog away from our pub, very handy for my first summer holidays job and I was excited to start. Well, I was more excited at the prospect of earning a wage to fund the spends for my school trip to Yugoslavia at the end of August. Dad gave me pocket money for sorting empty bottles at weekends and re-stocking shelves when the pub was shut, but he’d paid for my adventure and anything more was down to me.

On my first morning, I presented my fourteen and a half year old self at a side door to the factory. It was only eight o’clock but already a hive of activity. I was ushered into an office where a fearsome looking man dressed in chef’s whites glanced my way and barked orders. I would work eight until six with an hour off at dinner time. I would brew up when told to for morning and afternoon breaks. I was given a pale blue, long sleeved overall, the same as all the ladies. Some wore headscarves tied like a turban. They were the ones who touched the soft, pliable rock when it was tipped from the sugar boiler. They rolled it, gently stretching it until it was the required thickness, or thinness. This was a skill. They had to work in unison and very quickly before the rock began to harden, otherwise it would crack when cut into lengths. The things we learn in life.

My place was in packing, no headscarf needed. I put labels on jars of ‘pebbles’, wrapped sticky tape round the lids and boxed them up ready to go. I put rock into walking-stick tubes and taped caps on them. I tied ribbons on to blue and pink plastic handles ready to be put into the ‘sugary dummy’ mould. Later, I was shown how to operate a machine that sealed cellophane wrapping round giant humbugs. I knew I’d reached a peak when, at last, I donned a pretty headscarf and went into the finishing room to learn how to wrap sticks of rock. There is a skill to it and I’m not sure if I mastered it. Holding one end still, it sort of twisted itself while my other hand rolled it quickly then twisted the other end, and remember to pop a ‘Blackpool Rock’ slip in as it rolled. It is likely that there's a machine to do it these days. Mainly, I was packing items up ready for despatch.

It was a learning curve about some aspects of the real world. Although I was brought up in pubs, some with ‘salt of the earth’ men’s vault bars, I must have had a sheltered life. I’d never heard so much swearing all at once and really rough talk from women and men alike. A couple of girls who had come to work in Blackpool for the summer talked openly about meeting lads and what they got up to on the beach at night. They weren’t much older than me and were friendly enough but laughed at my naivety.

The highlight of my time there was being pushed around the huge sugar store in a wheel-barrow by a boy I knew from school, also on a summer job, and jumping out quickly without being seen.

The low moments were nearly every day for the first week, probably longer, the sickly, sweet smell of molten sugar with a hint of mint or worse, aniseed, turned my stomach so much I’d be running down the yard hoping to make it to the loo before vomiting. At the very least, I’d have a headache.

I managed the full five weeks as arranged and had new clothes and holiday money for Yugoslavia. It was all worth it.

 

 

A light-hearted blog, a serious poem. I love this.

 

 

The God of Sugar (Sugar Shed, Greenock)

Cavernous – and empty now –
no shouts of dockers,
no barefoot women shovelling
molasses – it has the chill
and hush of a cathedral.

Like a pilgrim arrived at a shrine,
wanting something to touch
for a vision or sign
that a saint or god is there,
I rub the tip of my finger

against the rough bricks
of the wall and lick, tasting
sweet dirt, seeing, shining
in the gloom, an obese boy¬
like Elvis in a sequin suit.

What prayers should I offer
to this god of sugar?
Most fitting and proper,
prayers for the slaves
drowned in leaking holds;

or for those who survived
the voyage to the Caribbean
to cut the cane, lashed
until their backs were striped
with festering wounds.

Or prayers for the child
who spooned golden syrup
from the green lion tin, dribbling it
in spirals to form amber pools
in her porridge; who stole

from her mother’s purse
to buy red-tipped sugar cigarettes;
who ruined her teeth
on lollipops and seaside rock?
Prayers for the woman

who still craves sweetness:
savouring strawberries dipped
in the sugar dish, gobbets
of crystallised ginger, figs
almost rotten with ripeness.

by Vicki Feaver

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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Clouds - When the Storm Clouds Gather

Living over a Blackpool Promenade pub in the mid-sixties was wonderful and the ever-changing views from the front windows never lost their fascination for any of us. My mother, when she wasn’t busy, sat in the bay window of our living room, often accompanied by my nanna, a frequent visitor.  My father kept a pair of binoculars on the window sill and liked to look at the horizon on a clear day.

I sat with my mother one sunny day, nothing special, just watching holiday-makers on the sands. It was full of deck-chairs, wind-breakers and families having fun.

“They will be coming off the beach in a minute.”  I remember my mother saying. She told me to look at the clouds coming in with the tide, how they were darkening. The horizon had vanished into the blur of grey and dusky pink that was moving closer until it covered the sun and what was left of blue sky. A rumble of thunder was followed by huge raindrops. People on the beach made haste to gather their belongings and make a run for shelter. Some dashed under South Pier, but they would have to move again as the tide came in. Mum and I watched the lightning fill the sky like electric charges breaking the clouds, and the rain, now heavy, sweeping across the promenade, not a soul in sight.

Many years later I recognised the same cloud formation. We were having a family holiday in Pembrokeshire, my husband and I with our two young children. Between Saundersfoot and Amroth there is a lovely stretch of beach and rock pools at Wiseman’s Bridge, so called because of the small, stone built bridge over the stream of fresh water filtering from the land to the sea. There were toilets nearby, a shop for ice creams and always somewhere to park. The only down-side was clambering over unstable rocks to get on to the beach or down the concrete path on the other side of the bridge carrying picnic, towels, fishing nets, buckets and spades and our beach tent. My husband and I would struggle to feed the flexible poles through the correct channels in the beach tent, especially if it was breezy, but when it was finished and anchored with rocks, it was perfect. I’m sure modern day versions are simpler, but those days are gone. We were all in or close to the tent, tucking into our picnic when I noticed the clouds on the horizon and wondered how long we had before the rain would arrive. Should we pack up and go to the car taking into account getting across the rocks again, or all four of us huddle together in the tent with the open side fully zipped up? I’ve got a feeling that we did both, on separate occasions. I’ll have to ask the kids.

It’s lovely to lie back on the ground and watch the sky on a summer’s day. Imagine being up there, floating on one of those fluffy, feathery, cotton-wool clouds, just resting.

Looking down on clouds is an enchanting sight, too. Natural beauty.

 

Two choices of poem,

 

Dylan Thomas

 

Shall gods be said to thump the clouds
When clouds are cursed by thunder,
Be said to weep when weather howls?
Shall rainbows be their tunics' colour?

When it is rain where are the gods?
Shall it be said they sprinkle water
From garden cans, or free the floods?

Shall it be said that, venuswise,
An old god's dugs are pressed and pricked,
The wet night scolds me like a nurse?

It shall be said that gods are stone.
Shall a dropped stone drum on the ground,
Flung gravel chime? Let the stones speak
With tongues that talk all tongues.

 

 

and Emily Dickinson

     The sky is low, the clouds are mean,

     A travelling flake of snow

     Across a barn or through a rut

     Debates if it will go.

 

    A narrow wind complains all day

    How some one treated him;

    Nature, like us, is sometimes caught

    Without her diadem.

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shells - Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive Oh

There’s something I’ve always found relaxing about a stroll on a beach and the sound of the sea. Most of the places I visit are coastal or within reasonable striking distance.  It is a strange thing that I live on the Fylde Coast with our wonderful expanse of beaches yet never set foot on them. I can’t remember last time I was on the sands at Blackpool but probably not since my children, now adults, were small.

The beach was my playground when I was a girl. We lived on the front, just the promenade and the tram tracks to cross and I was there, usually with others. After I’d grown out of making sand-pies and digging for water, my interests turned to marine life and I would go looking for creatures. A good place to search was in the rock pools around the outside of the old open-air swimming baths. My mother was not impressed with a collection of starfish I took home in a bucket to our pub and my father was tasked with taking them back ‘before any more climb out on to the stairs’. Starfish getting stuck on the stairs isn’t what you expect to see when you call in the vault for a pint, not even in Blackpool. I was given a lecture on sea-life needing a proper, natural habitat and those poor starfish would have been suffering. I’d done a similar thing with tadpoles in a jam jar a couple of years earlier, before we moved to Blackpool, and I clearly hadn’t learnt, but that’s another story.

These days I look for interesting shells and I’m not harming anything by keeping them. A few times a year my travels take me to the South and South West coasts of Scotland, where I will search for shells and watch our dog having the time of his life in the sea. Storage jars are great for keeping my shells safe and for display purposes. The large mussel shells are a beautiful dark blue in the sunlight and the mother-of-pearl shines on the inside. A couple of trips to the Outer Hebrides gave me the opportunity to find some whiter than white cockle shells. I keep them separate, with a couple of scoops of silver sand I brought home from the Hebridean Atlantic coast.

I’d like to visit the Orkney Islands and bring shells home from there, but maybe I should pay more attention to the coastline right here on my own doorstep, at least for the time being.

 

My own poem,

 

Seashell Keepsake

 

In the corner of a mem’ry box

I found the tiny shell.

It must have meant something to me once,

But now, I cannot tell.

Who wrapped it in some silver paper

Torn from a serviette?

It might be from one of the children

So why would I forget?

I can still recall all thirty names,

That class from ’99.

Those lively, summer-born four year olds

Learning to stand in line.

Just a small, pretty, pale pink spiral

Someone once gave to me,

Now back in the box where I found it

And wrapped up carefully.

 

PMW 2018

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

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Dusk - Wales at Sun-down

We enjoyed fabulous family holidays in Pembrokeshire when the children were small. I’ve mentioned before that we were fortunate to have the use of a static caravan on a private site near Saundersfoot, thanks to the generosity of family members. Every August we loaded up the car, secured luggage on the roof rack, and set off on the lengthy journey. It took most of the day. We aimed for a picnic lunch at Bala, a break at Aberaeron, then onward in time to catch the Co-op at Narberth for some groceries. If we missed it, there was the Spar shop in Saundersfoot where we could buy essentials, but first it would be a chippy tea either in the café or on the harbour. It was a bit quicker on the motorway, but it took us miles away and where’s the fun in that? There’s a ‘harem scarem’ road through the southern parts of Snowdonia with a sheer drop down one side and warnings of falling rock that we wouldn’t want to miss for the world. It would be dusk by the time we arrived, more often than not.  It was lovely to unpack and settle in, listen to the sounds of the sea and look forward to the days ahead. The children, excited as they were, couldn’t wait to sleep in the narrow beds in their tiny caravan bedroom.

Safe beaches, clear water to paddle in and lots of time to play. Folly Farm, the Dinosaur Park and all the castles we could find.  Every day was an adventure and it was good to re-visit favourite places, especially some literary interest.  Laugharne, on the River Taf estuary in Carmarthenshire is the home and resting place of Dylan Thomas. I could imagine him looking out from the windows of the Boat House, watching the night tide slowly fill the river and seeing beyond the castle to the flicker of faint lights in the houses of the town as the darkness came. Under Milk Wood. I can hear his voice. Well, Richard Burton then, but it’s Dylan’s rich vocabulary.

 After a busy, fun-filled day it was perfect to relax with an ‘after tea’ ice-cream on Saundersfoot harbour as the sun disappeared into the hills behind us. With the heat of the day gone and the air feeling fresh it was comfortable to wander around the seafront, or go on the beach and dip our toes at the water’s edge. We might walk along to the far end of the harbour where the local fishermen were casting their lines over the height of the sea wall hoping for a plentiful evening catch.

Quiet evenings, relaxing on the patio, watching the birds fly home, looking for the bats that live in the woods and planning the day ahead, then contented sleeping children.

 

Photos from my own collection.

 

I love the humour in Under Milk Wood.

 

Rev. Eli Jenkins  -  Sun-down

 

Every morning when I wake,

Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,

O please to keep Thy lovely eye

On all poor creatures born to die.

 

And every evening at sun-down

I ask a blessing on the town,

For whether we last the night or no

I’m sure is always touch and go.

 

We are not wholly bad or good

Who live our lives under Milk Wood,

And Thou, I know, wilt be the first

To see our best side, not our worst.

 

O let us see another day!

Bless us this holy night, I pray,

And to the sun we all will bow

And say goodbye – but just for now!

 

Dylan Thomas, from Under Milk Wood

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Beach - South Shore

I was nine years old when my family moved to Blackpool. Dad took a pub on South Promenade and my playground was the stretch of beach from the north side of South Pier to the small, ornamental windmill that used to grace the promenade opposite Waterloo Road. I could easily find ‘home’ between those landmarks, though I didn’t venture out alone at that age. I haven’t been there for a long time, but it’s a place where I always feel spiritually ‘at one’ with my departed loved ones. My father exercised our dog there, at least twice a day, early morning and late at night. When I was older I’d go with him sometimes.  My mother often took me out for a treat when my younger sister was in bed. We would go to feed pennies into the fruit machines in The Beachcomber amusements on the pier, maybe play bingo for a bit, then walk along the beach to Central Pier and back again, if the tide was out. My grandmother spent hours in the bay window of our living room just watching the world go by on the prom and the beach. I’ve only got to stand there to feel the love and the closeness of the family and be thankful for an abundance of happy memories, gathered in a short time.

Throughout those childhood summers my sister and I would be taken to play on the sands by our mum, or Nanna when she was visiting, but more often by Auntie Kathy who looked after us. With buckets and spades, towels and sometimes a picnic in a hold-all, we would spend ages trying to cross four lanes of traffic then the tram tracks. The smell of hot-dogs mingled with candy-floss and fried onions. Our bare feet would be roasting on the hot tarmac and we’d be dodging the assortment of spills that messed the pavements. Auntie Kathy always had her sandals on and only took them off when she gave in to our persistent mithering to go paddling. She kept us away from the donkey ride areas, we laughed at her calling ice-lollies ‘lolly-ices’ whenever we had one and she taught me how to pull the heads and tails of shrimps as I ate a couple of ounces worth from the seafood stall. We loved her. She helped us to make sand-pies and castles then sat back to smoke a Park Drive while she watched us get water for the moat. It was much the same with our mum and Nanna and we survived those long, hot summer days of hours on the beach with no sun lotion. We tanned and didn’t burn. Things were different in the mid-60s.

On the gorgeous Pembrokeshire beaches with my children some thirty or so years later, it was jelly-shoes, tee-shirts, sun hats and lotion for arms and legs.

Wherever I go, I’m drawn to the coast and I’ve strolled on some fabulous beaches at home and abroad, but, so far, nowhere can match the stunning silver sand of the west coast of South Uist. It was my first breath-taking view of the Hebrides. There were many more spectacular coastal views, like my photograph of a beach on the Isle of Eriskay where I collected ‘whiter than white’ shells and a thimble full of shimmering sand.
 

My chosen poem was created by one of my favourite poets, Dr John Cooper Clarke, and members of the public who contributed their thoughts of the coast.

 

Nation's Ode To The Coast

Dr John Cooper Clarke

A big fat sky and a thousand shrieks

The tide arrives and the timber creaks

A world away from the working week

Où est la vie nautique?

That’s where the sea comes in…

Dishevelled shells and shovelled sands,

Architecture all unplanned

A spade ‘n’ bucket wonderland

A golden space, a Frisbee and

The kids and dogs can run and run

And not run in to anyone

Way out! Real gone!

That’s where the sea comes in…

Impervious to human speech, idle time and tidal reach

Some memories you can’t impeach

That’s where the sea comes in

A nice cuppa splosh and a round of toast

A cursory glance at the morning post

A pointless walk along the coast

That’s what floats my boat the most

That’s where the sea comes in…

Now, voyager - once resigned

Go forth to seek and find

The hazy days you left behind

Right there in the back of your mind

Where lucid dreams begin

With rolling dunes and rattling shale

The shoreline then a swollen sail

Picked out by a shimmering halo

That’s where the sea comes in…

 

Could this be luck by chance?

Eternity in a second glance

A universe beyond romance

That’s where the sea comes in…

Yeah, that’s where the sea comes in…

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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