Branching Out - The Ties That Bind Us

The other day, I found myself having a gentle fight with a buddleia. It is actually three buddleia bushes intertwined and in spite of my best efforts to keep them under control, they are branching out as they wish. The tallest has the deepest purple blooms I’ve ever seen on a buddleia, next to it is a white one which flowers later with huge, fat blooms loved by bees and butterflies. Originally planted in front of them is a pink one, supposed to be miniature but isn’t. They are all beautiful and though it pains me to remove lower branches, I have to make sure my well-established and cherished ‘Totally Tangerine’ geum has enough space and sunshine. Seemingly from nowhere, something else appeared, which is hard to believe because I’m always checking the garden and usually know off the top of my head how many buds are waiting in the wings on the nasturtiums and how many sweet pea stalks have gripped the trellis. This ‘something else’ took me back to my first school days when the walk included a lane where the hedgerow was filled with large, white flowers. It’s something I’ve always remembered, and here it was growing in my own garden, lucky me. It was like ivy on a vine and I loved the nostalgia – until I looked it up and discovered what it really was. Bindweed. It had to go, hence the careful fight with the buddleia where it had wound itself along a few branches. Not many, thankfully, and no damage done, but I believe it is hard to get rid of completely and I’ll have to keep watch. It isn’t just the bindweed keeping me busy.

 I’m also branching out on my family tree following an email from a distant relative. We’ve been in contact before but never met and don’t share a bloodline, but we are linked together by the marriage of our respective great grandparents which puts us on the same branch in our ancestry and we can help each other out with information. Stepping out of my direct bloodline has sent me on a fascinating journey – one of those that starts on Ancestry.co.uk at about nine o’clock p.m. for an hour, but carries on beyond midnight. It’s never ending.

My poem,

Branches of my family tree

Stretching out of my bloodline,

Yet belonging to what is me,

What I consider mine.

I’m gripped by who has gone before,

How they lived and why they died

And how they make me yearn for more,

Despite the many tears I’ve cried

For people I have never known.

Those who lived before my birth,

My kindred spirits having flown

Beyond the confines of this earth,

I will embrace you in Heaven.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, keep safe, Pam x

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The Magic of Miniature

I’m not quite sure where or when my fascination with all things miniature began. 

I wonder whether it was the love of my grandma’s button tin, lining up the buttons in various combinations as pupils in a classroom, bossing the poor buttons about - a much easier job than actual teaching, as I discovered some forty years later. 

Or was it the visit to the model village, one Sunday when I was about eight? My dad worked twelve hour days, six days a week, so family trips out were a rarity, as they were for many children growing up in the fifties.  One Sunday we were all bundled into the car and driven, for what seemed like hours (I’ve just checked - it’s still there - and it was only 30 miles away), to a model village in Beaconsfield. There was great excitement as we marched around the paths like giants, gazed at the cricketers, forever destined to remain mid bowl, mid bat or halfway to a catch; and cocked our ears to listen to the church bells with a wedding in full swing, tiny bride and groom clinging to each other with fixed smiles for the photographer, bridesmaids clutching their chipped and faded bouquets. 

My brothers became bored and soon started to mess about, but I was absolutely mesmerised. Not only did I love seeing all these tiny scenes, but I actually wanted to shrink down and be in them. I wanted to tiptoe across that little bridge, pick up the miniature fishing rod and dangle it in the river to catch a tiny pot fish. I wanted to be in that school playground with the skipping rope that didn’t turn, holding hands with the children in a circle that never moved. I wanted to climb into the fire engine and switch on the flashing red light, have a nosy in the police station, run across the tiny fields and stroke the sheep.  With hindsight, I realise this was an idealised view of England and its green and pleasant land, especially when people were still living on bomb sites, rebuilding houses after the war, and residing in prefabs. Maybe this was its appeal?

I remember that day as if it were yesterday. It didn’t finish with the Model Village but continued with a visit to a silk farm in the afternoon. What a feast of a trip that was, all the more memorable for being so rare. I’m sure the last thing my dad wanted to do on his one day off was view a model village, sit in the car with a picnic and go on to a silk farm, but I did tell him, several times over the years, how much that trip had meant to me. 

I have always been an avid reader and at about this time I was reading ‘The Borrowers,’ a series of books about a family of tiny people who lived behind the skirting boards of a big house. They ‘borrowed’ things they found around the house to make clothes and furniture. Again, I was mesmerised by this magical idea and longed to find such a family in my own house. I remember dreaming that I’d shrunk and could get through the tiny door and into their miniature rooms, sit at their tables with tops fashioned out of buttons, on chairs made of matchsticks.  I don’t know what it was but I was truly hooked. 

Not long afterwards, my granddad made me a doll’s house, complete with carpets, wallpaper and even lights that switched on and off.  I spent hours redesigning the rooms, moving the furniture about and positioning the family at the piano, on an armchair or in bed. And during that time I was completely and utterly lost in that tiny world.  I kept the dolls house for years, and, when my children were old enough to appreciate it, out it came.  I had high hopes of a repeat of my fascination but it wasn’t to be. Both sons and a daughter were madly into football. Small houses were of no interest, and even I had to admit it did look rather battered and dated.  

I often took the children to the Model Village in Blackpool but I soon realised that it was more for my benefit than theirs. They were much more interested in getting an ice cream than looking at the tiny scenes, and, eventually, I had to admit defeat. 

In one final attempt to convince somebody else to appreciate the magic of miniature I bought a second-hand dolls house a few years ago for the grandchildren. At great expense I fitted it out with furniture and a little family. I intended to redecorate and lay new carpets, but like many of my projects (and even our own house) it never happened. The family could live in squalor, I hadn’t got the time nor the energy for DIY. I positioned the house in the middle of the room, everything arranged beautifully. The grandchildren came in, asked what it was, and gave the family a perfunctory shuffle around before asking if they could watch Peppa Pig on granddad's computer.

 

Now, I revel alone in my magical miniature world. I couldn't get rid of the dolls' house, it still sits in the corner of the room, and every so often I peer in, wondering what the little wooden family is up to.  I'm sure I heard the sound of a tiny piano the other night...

At Home with the Woods by Jill Reidy

In the middle of the night

As everybody sleeps 

Mrs Wood climbs out of bed 

And down the stairs she creeps

It’s time for more adventures 

Outside the wooden house

She pokes her head around the door 

As quiet as a mouse

Slippers on, she tiptoes out 

Her eyes and ears alert

A wrapper here, a hankie there 

Enough to make a skirt

She fills her little bag with bits 

Scattered on the floor 

Some raisins, grated cheese and crumbs 

A meal for five for sure

She hears a snore, a bed spring creaks

It’s nearly end of night

Time to take her haul back home 

Before the room gets light 

The humans rise, descend the stairs

Those mice are back, says he

I didn’t sweep the crumbs up

Now there’s nothing here to see.

Thanks for reading......Jill

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Miniature - Small and Perfectly Formed

I’ve been fascinated by my friend’s collection of dolls houses since I first saw them a few years ago. They take up the longest wall in one of her upstairs rooms. I think there are six of them, various sizes, set out on a deep shelf with drawers beneath. The drawers hold all the tiny bits and pieces not in use and items to make things or decorate with. Some of the houses have beautifully made gardens. There is a kitchen garden with vegetables growing perfectly. The inside of the houses are set out and decorated according to the time of year. It was summer one year when I was calling in to water plants and keep an eye on things while my friend was on holiday. The miniature street looked warm and sunny with open windows and a picnic on one of the lawns. I’ve seen it all decked out for Christmas, complete with tiny coloured lights and the whole thing looking splendid. It is a fabulous hobby and I used to fancy getting an Edwardian townhouse and setting it up in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ style, or making an old-fashioned pub with a nod to my background.

The area I was keeping free for such a project became the ideal place to house the gerbils. We had two in an open fish tank filled with wood chippings, fluffy animal stuff like cotton wool and usually an empty loo roll or kitchen roll to play with. They liked running through them as if they were tunnels. When fed up with them, they ripped them into strips and added them to their nest. My children were still at primary school. The cats had gone to cat heaven, as had a couple of hamsters and we hadn’t yet introduced a family dog.

By the time the gerbils expired, so had some of my eyesight and twiddling with miniature furniture and tiny household items was beyond me. I was and still am interested in my friend’s hobby and I find pieces to gift her. One of the many Christmas trees is a present from me and we found some cakes and bakery things in a specialist shop while on one of our jaunts.

A special gift from my friend to me is something I will always treasure. She turned an ordinary shoebox into a miniature living room for me, putting in my favourite things, even a photo of my husband and I hanging on the wall. I was speechless at the time and I still love it as much as I did then. It is me. I think the knitting has fallen off the chair a few times over the years, but it’s fine, and the DVDs, CDs and books, she knows me so well.

Jane Eyre. Good choice. It would be that or Wuthering Heights, or Rebecca, but I’m glad she chose a Bronte for me. I’ve loved all of their books and I’ve been fortunate to enjoy many visits to Haworth Parsonage. One visit was in the summer of 2005. It was 150 years since Charlotte’s death and a special exhibition displayed some of her clothing and personal belongings. At only 4’6” tall and slim, she was very petite. Her outfits were almost miniature versions of her sisters’ attire. Her boots and bonnets, like those of a child’s. Luckily for me, the hand-written miniature books, at least some of them, were on show.

When the Brontes were children, their father, Rev. Patrick Bronte, gave them a box of wooden toy soldiers. Each child chose their own soldier, gave them names and made them into characters for what became the stories of Glasstown. The children branched out, Charlotte and Branwell wrote about Angria, and Emily and Anne wrote about Gondal. They wrote their stories in tiny script using fine nibs and magnifying glasses then made them into little books for the toy soldiers to hold. Not all have survived, but I’m glad for what has been saved.

I need another visit, when we can.

My poem,

Perched on the chilly window seat
She looked down, watching the mourners
Moving slowly with the coffin,
Listening to the solemn drum beat
For the second time that morning.
Squinting through the grey, wint'ry mist
Beyond the gravestones to the church
Her whispered prayer clouded the glass
And she drew a 'C' in her breath,
Just as Branwell beckoned her down
To write Angria's next chapter
For their soldier's miniature book.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, stay safe, Pam x

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Jets - Comet or Jumbo?

It was a very grown-up thing to be doing, again I was reminded. Perhaps my mother expected me to ‘kick off’, to use modern parlance, though I never had done before and any slight attempt on my part to be anything less than perfectly behaved would have met with her cross face and a warning tap. I hated that face. Something strange happened with her mouth and her eyes, transforming my otherwise glamorous, attractive mother into an old-looking scary witch. Of course, it’s not a look I was overly familiar with. I was born flawless and had impeccable, lady-like manners by the age of two, apparently.  So, here was my sensible, six-year-old self waiting patiently in the departure lounge of Ringway Airport – Manchester International these days – clutching my chosen toy from the airport shop, a Comet aeroplane, the same sort of jet that we would be flying on. Soon we would be embarking on the real thing. Air travel, and I was grown-up enough.

I was going on holiday to Jersey with my parents and uncle, my father’s brother. I sat by the window with my toy Comet resting on its stand, placed on the pull-down table in front of me. We were airborne before I knew it. The mosaic I could see through the window was actually the ground so far below me and I was fascinated but what thrilled me more than anything was the miniature salt and pepper shakers we were given with our in-flight snack.

Many years later, I found my first Atlantic crossing filled me with apprehension. I hadn’t been up close to a Jumbo Jet before and I couldn’t imagine something so huge would make it off the ground. It did, but I found the physical force of take-off a little worrying. Trust me to be making this trip when the popular aeroplane disaster movies were fresh in my mind. I was travelling alone to stay with family in the U.S.A. and would be met at the airport.  It was a relief to arrive unscathed.

     After our honeymoon in Jersey, we made return trips and it became a favourite place of ours before we had our children. We returned for a family holiday which was their first trip in a plane and a grown-up thing to be doing. I had come full circle.

I think I might need a refresher course in ‘lady-like’. If my mother is watching over me she might agree, as long as she’s not doing that cross face.

 

 

 

 

Here’s Simon Armitage, our new Poet Laureate,

 

Thank You For Waiting 

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by Simon Armitage

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

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