Moustaches

 

“A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt.”

This saying dates back to Victorian times. The origin is unknown but has been cited to various authors, Rudyard Kipling, Rose Wilder Lane and Jean-Paul Sartre, who is thought to have added “and it is like Good without Evil”.

I remember my dad saying it a lot, when he grew a moustache in his later years. It was just ordinary, nothing stylish. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. He had new glasses at the same time and his whole appearance changed from the happy looking man with a kind face I adored, into someone I felt like I needed to be very wary of. He looked like a cross between the horrid piano teacher I used to have and the equally horrid landlord of a flat I used to rent. Fortunately, my father didn’t stink of stale cigars and his moustache wasn’t stained dirty yellow with nicotine like my piano teacher. Dad disliked the landlord as much as I did and I would tease him about being a copycat. It was a relief when that moustache was shaved off, though the glasses remained.

Each to their own, of course, but isn’t a high maintenance styled moustache over the top and time consuming? Personally, I like a beard attached, but I’m only seeing the results, not looking after it.

The music I favoured in the ‘60s and ‘70s, was progressive rock and symphonic rock. Band members with long hair and often moustaches and beards. I found this poem that took me back to those young, impressionable times. And the music is the same and always there, with a few new bands collected along the way. The poem is by American poet, Gershon Wolf.

Freaky and Weird

We grew our hair down to our shoulders
Hirsute, we were, moustaches and beards,
Turned up our noses at those who were older
‘Cos we were so hip, so freaky, so weird.

Revved up our stereos, going stone-deaf,
Dropped pill after pill, of common sense bereft,
Wore psychedelic threads to match our psychedelic brains.
We thought ourselves ‘free’, but we were really in chains.

Don’t ask me if the Sixties were ‘wonderful years!’
- Just leave me alone with my cigars and my beer.

                                                                    Gershon Wolf

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Double Dactyl - Higgledy Piggledy Acceptability

Double Dactyl poetry. I hope whoever dreamt this discipline up had lots of fun. According to Wikipedia, the inventors were Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal in 1951. I’ve written lots of poems in various forms and in freestyle, but never encountered Double Dactyl until now. I’ve made an effort and enjoyed playing with words, as I always do. I haven’t completely adhered to the strict rules, but some rules lend themselves to be broken. After some non-starters and others not for sharing, I give you my best three.

Floppetty moppetty
Boris de Vaudeville
Thought he could win
With his clown grin

Scary, like The Joker
Hedonistically
Singing and dancing
Off with his head. Next!

Make of this what you will. If you know me, you’ll understand. I don’t intend to offend, by the way.


Dibdabdoo scribbdabdoo
Emily Bronte
When did you get him,
That special one?

Perhaps your brother’s traits
Identifiable
I gave him my heart
Many years ago.

Of course it’s about Heathcliff. My first introduction was the black and white ‘Wuthering Heights’ film with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon when I was eleven, or twelve and long before I read the book. Future English Literature classes took me into studying the book, which is a firm favourite of mine and goes way beyond the end of that 1939 film.

Pippitty flippitty
James Callaghan
Thought it was funny
Not easy to count

In pounds, shillings and pence
Decimalisation,
That was the answer,
Totting up money.

I will always be thankful for decimalisation. In 1963, I cried my eyes out while a horrid teacher yelled at me for getting all my ‘money sums’ wrong. Shillings and pence, pounds, shillings and pence, was just a mass of confusion to my seven and a half year old brain. Someone raging at me wasn’t going to magically make me get my sums right. Family friends came to visit one weekend, probably to see the new baby, my sister. Their daughter was a little older than me and we went off to play. I asked her if she could do money sums and felt delighted when she happily showed me. She taught me very well. Everything clicked into place. I was grateful to her and didn’t fear my teacher anymore. I volunteer in the same school. I often go into the very classroom where I spent miserable times. I’m glad things are different for today’s children. All the teachers are lovely, none of them are scary. Perhaps I should ask the children about that. In later years, I worked in an office where everything revolved around money and payments, including wages. By now we were using ‘new money’, decimalisation had taken place a couple of years earlier in 1971. Thank goodness. I couldn’t have done that job in £sd.

Have fun writing Double Dactyls.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Adolescence - That Difficult Age

 A definition –

‘Adolescence is the phase of life between childhood and adulthood, from ages 10 to 19. It is a unique stage of human development and an important time for laying the foundations of good health. Adolescents experience rapid physical, cognitive and psychosocial growth.’

We all go through it, some better than others, but I think it’s a fair assumption that none of us would like to go through it again. The itchy personal areas sprouting body hair, blushing, sweating, feeling awkward and embarrassed, suffering acne, the onset of menstruation and, if that wasn’t enough, there was the ridicule of peers. We change and grow at the right time for our body clocks, so a twelve year old male or female might already have a mature body and be a fascination to their less developed friends, those later developers came under similar scrutiny. I suppose I was one of the many Miss Averages, but that didn’t mean it was an easy time. I had added problems. My mother always made sure I had a supply of sanitary towels. When she became terminally ill and no longer able to see to me herself, our helper, Auntie Kathy, was tasked with such things and I could bounce all manner of questions off her. My mother passed away when I was thirteen and a half. Auntie Kathy, who wasn’t a real auntie but a member of staff, was my rock. I had my grandmother, too, who was more special than words can say, but she lived away. When my father remarried within months, Auntie Kathy was no longer needed as our housekeeper and left us, but continued to be my saviour for many years. I was a frequent visitor to her home. Sometimes I needed a shoulder to cry on, sometimes a good laugh. She was good at both. All this going on and adolescence, too. Oh, and at school there was a small team of horrid girls who stole sanitary protection by bullying others to hand things over, or steal from their school bags, teasing anyone who didn’t have anything because they hadn’t ‘started’ yet. Children can be cruel.

There was a boy in my high school class who looked the same in the fifth year as he had in the first year, though maybe a bit taller. About ten years after our school days we met by chance at the Derby Baths, of all places. He was in the forces, Army or RAF, doing very well and looking like a blond Adonis, what my dad would have called ‘a fine figure of a man’. He had grown up. I wouldn’t have known him, but he recognised me.

When it came to growing up, adolescence and puberty, I wanted to be the best parent I could possibly be to my children. I’ve always been open and approachable about anything. I attended meetings at school about Personal & Social Education so I would know exactly what was going to be discussed in their lessons and how various questions might be answered. Armed with information and confident to be on the right level I was ready. Our son, having reached a silent or grunty, living in his room stage, coming out to get fed, was fine. Our daughter, starting periods refused to have a conversation with me about it. I respected her wishes and privacy. I made sure she had what she needed and wrote her a letter explaining what I wanted to say. It was ripped up and put in her bin. I felt so hurt at the time. I wasn’t wanted, not allowed to even do this for her. Hormones, from both of us, firing in different directions.

My chosen poem, from Philip Larkin, it just had to be...

This be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin 1922 - 1985

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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