Picnic - Special Memories

This is it, that perfect summer picnic weather is here, and what are we doing? Complaining about the heat and how draining it is to feel constantly clammy. Yes, I’m guilty of moaning, too, but I’m trying to be positive and enjoy the sunshine that we spend more than half the year waiting for. Soon, the schools will break up and there will be a promised trip to the zoo for a certain grandson’s birthday treat and that will include a picnic.

I have fond memories of glorious Sunday afternoons as a child, on picnics with my family and their friends. We were all in the licenced trade and pubs closed on Sundays between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in those days. Most of us lived around the Morecambe and Lancaster area. Heysham was a popular place for us, or Crook ‘o Lune, Littledale, Glasson Dock. We would all meet up, men comparing cars while women set the food out. Sandwiches galore, potted meat, chicken paste, tinned salmon or cheese. Cake, biscuits and what we still call picky bits. Everyone brought something to share, and Nanna’s tablecloth would be used for the food. We sat on tartan car rugs, spread out round the tablecloth. Flasks of tea were poured into cups that were also lids. 

I had a bottle of diluted squash or cordial. Living in a pub, you’d expect me to have the choice of any soft drink, but that isn’t how it worked. I was rarely allowed anything fizzy, just the occasional blackcurrant and lemonade in a Babycham glass, with a cherry. I couldn’t have carried that in the car, not that it would last very long. At this point in my life, younger than seven, I was the only child and I’m sure everyone loved me. I’d share my time and affection between grandparents, and relatives. Aunty Beryl allowed me to explore her gold charm bracelet for hours on end – it would take so long to get round all the tiny charms. I would have books with me, colouring things and probably a couple of dolls. I was well-behaved. I don’t remember ever getting told off. Believe me, I would remember if I’d been in trouble. I was brought up with boundaries, and my mother had a look I wouldn’t want to see.

I don’t remember being bored, either. We lived in different times, but very happy ones. Just one thing, though; the horrible smell of tea or coffee in a flask was enough to put me off. A flask of hot water and sachets of ‘2in1’ Nescafe, these days.

Sometimes, I make a buffet on a summer’s day when the grandchildren are here. They call it ‘picnic tea’ which is an excellent description. They gather whatever they want to eat and take it to wherever they’d like to eat it, inside or outside and keep coming back for more. Children tucking into good food. It’s all this nanna needs.

My Haiku poem of long-gone days,

We knew how to spend
A lovely, sunny Sunday
All together, then.

With food a-plenty,
A family gathering,
Sitting on car rugs.

Salmon sandwiches,
Potted meat or chicken paste?
Sausage roll, pork pie?

Let’s see, who would like
An ice-cream at Glasson Dock?
And a look at boats?

The gang is all here,
Fun and laughter fills the air.
Making memories.

PMW 2026

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Spontaneity

 

Spontaneity is not my strong point. I’m more Ms Stayput and keep cautious. I leave impulsiveness to those with the confidence to either know what they’re doing, or not care about the outcome because we only live once. That’s fine. I’m a happy soul with my plans noted on my calendar, allowing for plenty of rest time between events. By events, I really mean appointments and regular weekly or monthly meetings. I have a visit to the dentist coming up and as the surgery is in town, it might be tempting to pop to M & S or the Hound’s Hill for a bit of Christmas shopping. That could be classed as spontaneity for me, I suppose.

 The weekend before last, we had a few days away in our caravan, planned, of course. We met up with family for some relaxing time together, which it was. Disappointingly, the pub within walking distance no longer serves food, so we all managed with our own supplies and looked for somewhere further afield for the next day. A lovely hotel in nearby Lockerbie provided the answer, with its fabulous restaurant open to non-residents. This was probably the last time we’ll get out in the caravan this year. The chilly autumn nights and dark tea-times have no appeal to me, regardless of how beautiful the view across a loch might be from the caravan window. Never say never, though, someone might have an impulse to squeeze one more trip in. It won’t be me. We’ll be cosy in our favourite lodge in Dumfries & Galloway soon and I am happy to wait for that.

 During this week, there was a moment when a decision was made that could, from my point of view, be a spontaneous thing. Christmas Day has always been at home and over the years the family has expanded, which is wonderful. The family is my world, but Christmas can be hard work for me, so, giving everyone plenty of notice, we told everyone that we’re not hosting Christmas Day this year, but we will arrange a family buffet between Christmas and New Year. We hadn’t made plans for ourselves until The Corner Flag popped up on Blackpool FC Hotel festivities. Spontaneity stepped in. Sorted.

 I found this poem by Bryan Wallace on Poem Hunter and thought it apt for me, 

Diary with a little pencil stuck in spine-
Each day planned with metronomic precision.
Nothing left to chance at all - can't take the risk.
Plan each day and leave nothing at all to chance.
Run our lives like a well-oiled machine.
Think to the future - pension plans and
Rainy day saving funds - we best be prepared.
Each think carefully planned - no nasty surprises -
It is the best way - we are told.

But what if we leave life to chance, to allow
Room for at least a little bit of spontaneity?
To allow space to have a little fun
When un-expected opportunity should arise?
To enjoy the chance encounters with the people
That we meet as we travel along life's highway.
To take the opportunity to kick the stray football
Back tot he kids playing in the park.
To enjoy the random things which happen -
When we allow ourselves to live in the moment
And not at some point in the future -
Planning for some disaster that most probably
Will never happen!

 Bryan Wallace 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Sweets on Grandma's Sideboard

Sideboard - it’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Hardly used these days.  Apparently, the definition of a sideboard is 'a flat-topped piece of furniture with cupboards and drawers, used for storing crockery, glasses, and table linen.'  Do people still have sideboards?  Or are they just cupboards with drawers these days? I wouldn’t know. I’m not well up with the world of modern furniture, and never have been.  

When I grew up in the fifties, sideboards were quite the thing.  I don’t think my parents or grandparents knew the true purpose of a sideboard.  We weren’t posh enough to have table linen - apart from the odd tablecloth, usually handed down from some Great Aunt, who had probably spent hours, under poor light, religiously embroidering the four corners, only for us kids to wipe our messy hands and faces across the delicate handiwork.  Most days we used raffia mats to protect the table. They were loosely woven and caught every last piece of spilt food. Squashed peas, grains of rice, custard, all nestled in the gaps - there was probably a whole meal in there somewhere. And, if not, some festering virus.

If I remember rightly, the sideboard in our house was a bit of a dumping ground. It did have a drawer with a miscellaneous collection of cutlery, and two more with random items such as sellotape, old birthday cards and pens that didn’t work.  But the top of the sideboard was the place where everything was abandoned.  Half eaten bars of chocolate, library books, crayons, odd dominoes, and any number of used cups and plates.  I don’t ever remember having a buffet spread out on the top, which, of course was the original purpose of the sideboard.  In those days a buffet was something you had at a wedding or a funeral and never in your own home. The nearest we came to it was a Jacob’s Join, but even that went straight to the table.

Christmas was the time the sideboard came into its own.  Each year we alternated between sets of grandparents, and I can remember the thrill at the first sight of the sideboard, laden with the sort of food any child of the ‘50s found magical: bowls of peanuts, tangerines and grapes, sweets in shiny wrappers, Liquorish Allsorts, Ritz crackers and, of course, the inevitable tin of Quality Street - which made secret eating a bit of a challenge: for most of my childhood the lid on the Quality Street was far too big for my little hands to open. 

Occasionally, I would go to stay with my maternal grandma, something I loved for three main  reasons: firstly, I got spoilt rotten; secondly she used to take me to jumble sales; thirdly she lived by a railway line, and I loved to lie in bed, listening to the trains rumbling by. Getting spoilt rotten was categorised by one thing in my young eyes.  The bowl of toffees that usually lived on the sideboard - and lasted for weeks - was ceremoniously placed in my lap as I sat and watched TV.  At the time, my pocket money was one old penny every other day - for sweets after school (four blackjacks/fruit salads or a sherbet dab if anybody’s interested), so to have a full bowl of toffees at my disposal was like a dream come true to my greedy little mind. Grandma went out to the kitchen to wash up and granddad disappeared into his shed.  I was left alone with the sweets.  I didn’t give a thought to making them last.  One after the other, I gobbled them down, leaving just a bowl full of wrappers.  In a panic, I put the bowl back on the sideboard, sat back down, and, as the door opened, pretended to be asleep.

My last encounter with a sideboard was about thirty five years ago, when we hadn’t long moved into our new house.  This house was twice the size of the old house with large rooms and high ceilings.  Our furniture looked lost.  One day I was doing the rounds of second hand furniture shops when I spotted the perfect piece.  It was huge, with a giant mirror, three drawers, two doors and lots of fancy wood carving.  I loved it.  I can’t remember now how much it was but I do remember wondering whether we could stretch to it.  Before telling the husband I decided to rope in an antique dealer friend to tell me whether it was worth it - or if I was being ripped off.  Martin arrived and promptly took me to one side to hiss that this was the bargain of the century, worth twice the price and to snap it up.  I bought the sideboard, Martin transported it in his van for me, we presented a united front to the husband who stood in the doorway looking bemused (his default expression whenever anything new appears at the door) and we installed it in its last resting place. 

So you see, from that day on, I’ve been a grown up with a sideboard.  It’s been a buffet area for thirty years of Christmas dinners, laden with mince pies, crackers and cheese, Christmas pudding and trifle.  It’s been a makeshift baby changing station when the grandchildren were tiny.  It’s been a display shelf for family photos, and now, finally, I’ve come of age and it’s become a dumping ground for dead candles, the plastic novelties out of crackers, old till receipts and children’s pictures that I can’t bear to throw away.  I daren’t even open the drawers, although I do know, in there somewhere amongst the playing cards, Mastermind and Monopoly, is a beautifully embroidered table cloth passed down from Great Aunt somebody, just crying out to be used.

Grandma’s sideboard by Jill Reidy

Amongst the bowls of fruit 

and photos of children 

Frozen in time

Is a small dish

Full to the brim 

Shiny Golden wrappers

reflecting orange light 

From the two barred fire

They wink at me, those toffees

Grandma bustles in

Picks up the bowl

Places it in my lap

and bustles out again

I hear her humming in the kitchen

As I take each toffee

Unwrap its golden casing 

And pop it in my mouth

Greedily chew and swallow

The humming stops

Silently I reach across 

And replace the bowl

There's a kind of sadness now

About those wrappers

The insides don’t glow

As the outsides did

I feel a little queasy

The door opens

I close my eyes and pretend to sleep

Thanks for reading........Jill 

 

 

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Resolve - New Horizons

Happy New Year to one and all, let’s see what unfolds in 2018.

When I was younger, much younger and naïve, I looked upon New Year as a new start with everything from the old year forgiven, forgotten and packed away. We wished everyone the best, and still do, always hoping for better times.  Back in the day New Year’s Eve marked the end of a couple of weeks of parties in our pubs. Sometimes my friends and I helped out at a private hotel ran by a family we knew, then joined in with the party until the early hours, looking forward to new beginnings. Fond memories still mentioned forty-odd years later. If only that ‘off with the old, on with the new’ actually worked.

This New Year’s Eve was quiet but pleasant, seeing in the New Year with our daughter, son-in-law to be and our youngest grandson, aged three months. His big brother was in bed. We watched Jools Holland’s Hootenanny and enjoyed a midnight buffet in their warm and cosy lounge then walked back to our house.

Nothing changed with the midnight bells and fireworks. I’m still carrying the illness that has overwhelmed me since before Christmas.  Sore eyes add to my malaise.  My worries and anxieties haven’t miraculously melted away and I’m no closer towards making decisions for the future. What shall I do about work? Do we move or do we stay? I could do with the magic wand I believed existed in my youth. Meanwhile, I wait for recovery and inner strength to help me resolve my issues.

I need a Moody Blues moment.

New Horizons

Well I’ve had dreams enough for one

     And I’ve got love enough for three
     I have my hopes to comfort me

I got my new horizons out to sea. 

But I’m never going to lose your precious gift

It will always be that way

‘Cos I know I’m going to find my own peace of mind

Someday. 

Where is this place that we have found?

Nobody knows where we are bound

I long to hear, I need to see

‘Cos I’ve shed tears too many for me. 

On the wind soaring free

Spread your wings

I’m beginning to see

Out of mind, far from view

Beyond the reach of a nightmare come true. 

Justin Hayward, (from Seventh Sojourn, 1972) 

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

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