Fragrance - In Memoriam

The mornings, a time for toast and cereal, checking homework is in satchel, P E kit if required then sending children off to school. Next would be allocating jobs to the household staff and bar staff, rotating the tasks as fairly as possible and getting stuck in herself where she was needed.

My mum, hair scraped back from her naked face, comfy flat shoes, navy slacks, fine-knit pale blue jumper with the sleeves pushed up. I remember her being busy, hands on, making sandwiches to sell at lunch time and how quickly she could butter the bread; two loaves worth of grated cheese and onion, a favourite of the regular customers.  Our pubs were ale houses, before breweries franchised into eating establishments and takings became target based. Any snacks or lunch-time sandwiches provided by my parents was separate to pub takings and the income it fetched was their own.

Later, after tea and into the early evening, my mother would transform herself into the smart, glamorous, attractive woman she was. She styled her brown hair into soft curls lifted off her face and shaped neatly over her ears. Lipstick, a hint of mascara, a dress and high heeled shoes, finished off with a subtle application of Estee Lauder Youth Dew or Chanel No5. This is how I like to remember her, looking lovely, accompanying my father downstairs in the pub, leaving a waft of her favourite fragrance behind.

She died young. For years I kept an almost empty bottle of her Estee Lauder for the comfort her fragrance gave me. Eventually, what was left completely evaporated and the bottle was discarded. I still have a box of talcum powder, not that I can smell it, if it should have any scent left at all, after all these years.

My sense of smell vanished after chemo and radiotherapy. All the fabulous fragrances are lost on me now. Perfume, lilies, home-made baking, the aroma is all left to memory and imagination. I still wear my Christian Dior which I used to love, and why not? I might be wafting memories around those who care.

I found this poem,

Fragrance

The fragrance of
Love and care

The fragrance that
Repair

The fragrance which
Always reminds of welfare

The fragrance with
The power of flare

The fragrance of mother
Is the fragrance of prayer.  

 

By Gemini Girl on All Poetry

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Cliché

Although with us all the time, it's just particularly noticeable at New Year, rife in fact if you go looking for it, the cliché - ridden to exhaustion (just like Santa's reindeer) across the columns of myriad newspaper supplements, life-style magazines and online blogs, panting as it pours forth its well-worn platitudes:  'Out with the old, in with the new!', 'No time like the present', 'Make like starting over', 'New Year, New You!' and so forth. Brain disconnected from mouth, you can hardly see its lips move. Pitiful. Time to resolve to put the cliché out to pasture, methinks; (ho ho ho).

As I commented on another blog, I wonder at what point a fine phrase becomes a catch-phrase? By the time that happens, it's already sliding inexorably into overuse and cliché - and yet it started out as a pretty smart and original thing to say before becoming this victim of its own ubiquity. And what makes some fine phrases so wise and resonant that they get elevated to the status of proverbs rather than being bagged and tagged as clichés? It's fascinating the way language works. It's an ever-evolving medium and as the takt of communication speeds up, so the cycle from coining a phrase to mass-circulation to worn-out token becomes ever shorter. Simples; (ho ho ho again).

Anything can become clichéd, a word, a phrase, a metaphor, an idea. It doesn't even have to be language (written or spoken). It can be musical - think Eurovision and those awful song-by-numbers concoctions, or formulaic pop tunes built on tired (sic) and tested riffs. It can also be visual - a lot of the constructs of the original Surrealists like Magritte have become standard fare nowadays (see below); or a fashion accessory such as a beauty-spot, thick, long lashes or bright red lips.


Cliches can be visual 2

Not that I'm dismissing cliché entirely. It serves function as a kind of short-hand in the exchange of ideas and opinions, but over-reliance can lead to a laziness of mind. Originality is a scarce commodity, appreciation of it therefore a curse as well as a blessing. "Imitative anarchy" (as Saul Bellow once described it) both flatters and debases and yet, on balance, "better to accept the inevitability of imitation and then to imitate good things" (from 'Mr. Sammler's Planet'). The moral, if there is one: choose your clichés with care.

Surely our bounden duty as wordsmiths is to challenge trite and lazy expression. Adele has already cleverly concocted a poem out of clichés this week, so I'm swerving, an oblique strategy which seeks to subvert a bunch of over-used lines and by misusing and juxtaposing them in unexpected ways, breath fresh life into flagging phrases. It's a bit of a rushed job (and might be subject to change when I've a chance to reflect) but I hope it works in its own weird way. I've not written a lipstick poem before and briefly toyed with the idea of handwriting it in lipstick and then scanning it in, but as I have neither lipstick nor time, here it is in standard format:

Not No. 7 (avoidance of cliché)
As they mill at the Feast of the Makeover,
anyone feeling like a fish out of lipstick
can splash out to cash in with Ruby Woo
by surely you-know-who...
(or other brands are viable too
like Hellbent, Cherry Lush,
Secret Escort and Slick),
in a wriggling carmine-rash fashion frenzy
of glossed-over puckered-up smackerel.

They giggle as they tinker,
suckers for that 'new look you'.
They dab and smear, they pout like trout,
they're hooked, line and sinker;
but collar-kissable darlings, to be fair,
gasping for air
with not much between the gills,
these mercurial beauties,
to get quite so giddy over bright red lippy.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Church - Raikes Parade Methodist Church

It was a sad day in 2003 when Raikes Parade Methodist Church held a final Methodist service and the doors were locked for the last time.  The church was no longer financially solvent.  Repair work was vital to hire out the church hall, but no money to pay for it, and no hire fees coming in – Catch 22. The congregation had diminished significantly in the preceding years.  It was nothing out of the ordinary. Members passed away and families moved on.  Reaching out into the local community seemed to have very little effect.  Most of the existing congregation lived away from the town centre, including myself.

We were married there and soon became part of the church family.  My husband was treasurer, Junior Mission for All (JMA) administrator and active member of the Men’s Fellowship.  I was crèche ‘auntie’ and Sunday School teacher for the infants. Sometimes there were no other children, just ours, so we would sit quietly in church doing some colouring and joining in with the prayers and singing.

When he was in the Cubs, our son was taking part in a St George and the Dragon drama at Sacred Heart Church after the St George’s Day parade in town. We squeezed on to a pew in the busy church with our young daughter, still on reins at that time, between us. We watched our son in the drama then I got crayons and paper out of my bag to keep little daughter occupied during the service. She was used to this. At the time for prayer, she decided to turn around, kneeling to face the people behind us who were talking quietly.

“Shush! Its hands together and eyes closed!” She said with air of authority beyond her age of two and half.

I thought I might die of embarrassment and apologised to the people behind at the earliest opportunity. Luckily they were very good humoured and said she had made their day.

It is fair to say that I was given a sound, Christian upbringing.  Previous generations were a mixture of Protestant and Catholic. As an older child I tried to get out of going to Sunday School more often than not, but by that time I was in charge of taking my little sister on the bus and back. No escape, but I could put my secret lipstick on.

I’m glad that Raikes Parade Church, is still a place of worship and hasn’t been demolished or converted beyond recognition. I have happy memories and although the congregation went separate ways into different churches, or in our case, not, we keep in touch. I only have to hear ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’ or ‘Give Me Oil In My Lamp’ to be transported back with a smile.

 

Hymn by John Betjeman
 

The Church’s Restoration

In eighteen-eighty-three

Has left for contemplation

Not what there used to be.

How well the ancient woodwork

Looks round the Rect’ry hall,

Memorial of the good work

Of him who plann’d it all.

 

     He who took down the pew-ends
     And sold them anywhere

But kindly spared a few ends

Work’d up into a chair.

O worthy persecution

Of dust! O hue divine!

O cheerful substitution,

Thou varnished pitch-pine!

 

Church furnishing! Church furnishing!

Sing art and crafty praise!

He gave the brass for burnishing

He gave the thick red baize,

He gave the new addition,

Pull’d down the dull old aisle,

To pave the sweet transition

He gave th’ encaustic tile.

 

Of marble brown and veined

He did the pulpit make;

He order’d windows stained

Light red and crimson lake.

Sing on, with hymns uproarious,

Ye humble and aloof,

Look up! And oh how glorious

He has restored the roof!

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

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Childhood Secrets - Dreadful Child

It took ages to pluck up the courage to tell my mother that I was being picked on and bullied by my supposed ‘best friend’. The tears came before I got any words together. I was only nine, perhaps ten and I can still feel the misery, anxiety and fear that filled my life because of her. My mother calmed me, soothed me and told me the best way of dealing with the situation was to stand up to this girl and her army of followers who were turned against me. I can’t remember her words but I remember feeling my worries melting away and my confidence building back up. I put her plan of action to immediate effect and it worked. My mother had wisdom and understanding.

Unfortunately, her understanding didn’t stretch as far as ‘the lipstick incident’ when I was twelve, well, twelve and a half. In the summer season of 1968 our main residence was a pub and hotel on Central Promenade. On Sunday mornings I would be in charge of my younger sister as we got the bus to our other pub at South Shore then a short walk to Rawcliffe Street where we went to Sunday School. Girls my age had started to wear lipstick for church. I wasn’t allowed to but I’d discovered that Rimmel cosmetics in Woolworths was affordable and used my pocket money to buy some. I kept it hidden, only taking it out with me on these Sunday trips. Safely on the bus I would put it on then on the way back I would wipe it off. I don’t know how I managed to forget to clean it off one day. It didn’t end well. My mother’s eyes were blazing as she sent me to wash my face. I didn’t think the colour was much brighter than anyone else’s, not really.

Then, around the same age, there was ‘the bra incident’. I expected the worst, but my mother was kind. School P.E. lessons had become my nightmare.  A vest wearing, bra-less nightmare. So I smuggled one of my mother’s bras to school and put it on when I got there. It wasn’t ridiculously massive. I’d had a practice at home. The folded sides were held with safety pins and the cups tucked in making a neat shape. This neat, feminine shape was noticed at home when I’d forgotten to remove my made-to-measure bra. I can feel my blushing to this day as my mother tugged a loose shoulder strap with a “What in Heavens is this?” I held my breath. This was far worse than lipstick wearing and I expected a slap – that was normal punishment if you crossed my mother. Anyway, all I got was sent to take it off and to stop being so silly. Auntie Kathy, who looked after my sister and I, was given the task of going shopping for a couple of Berlei Teenform bras. I was overjoyed.

And there was the ‘A Taste of Honey incident’. The film was on television in our lounge and my mother was watching it in between popping down to the bar. I’d already been sent to bed once but I was spellbound. I didn’t hear my mother come back up but there she was, shoo-ing me to my room with “This isn’t a film for you”. I can’t imagine why. I only wanted to know what happened to Jo. The baby bit and her friendship with Geoffrey went right over my young head. I crept back and watched it by peeping round the door frame behind her. I was really chancing it. My mother was certainly not one to be messed with. Yes, she caught me and dealt punishment, but she didn’t kill my love for Shelagh Delaney’s brilliant work. Dora Bryan was amazing and perfectly cast.

My chosen poem takes me back to ‘the chocolates incident’. It wasn’t Moonlight that got the better of me, but a bag of Thornton’s. It was a smallish bag starting off with maybe eight huge chocolates. It was a gift to my mother and I found it, unopened, in the sideboard drawer.  I kept nipping back for ‘just one more’ until I realised there was only one left and I’d better leave it. I didn’t own up straight away either. Dreadful child.

I was going through some school stuff belonging to my grown up children when I came across the reams of printed out My Space conversation. I think it was My Space. It was something before the days of Facebook, anyway. This conversation was evidence of one of our children being bullied online and school had been given a copy. The power of the written word is far stronger than the spoken word in this sort of thing and re-reading it upset me as much as it did more than ten years ago when it happened. It was dealt with by school, not to my full satisfaction, but between us we put a stop to it. A new generation, a new way of bullying.

 

CHOCS
Into the half-pound box of Moonlight
My small hand crept.
There was an electrifying rustle.
There was a dark and glamorous scent.
Into my open, moist mouth
The first Montelimar went.
 
Down in the crinkly second layer,
Five finger-piglets snuffled
Among the Hazelnut Whirl,
The Caramel Square,
The Black Cherry and Almond Truffle.
 
Bliss.

I chomped. I gorged.
I stuffed my face,
Till only Coffee Cream
Was left for the owner of the box-
Tough luck, Anne Pope-
Oh, and half an Orange Supreme.

 

Carol Ann Duffy

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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