This Bird Has Flown - Bless You, Billy

 

A recent episode of the new All Creatures Great and Small took me back to my childhood. The story included a blue budgerigar, left at the vet’s surgery for minor treatment, to be collected later by the owner, a blind lady. Spoiler alert – skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens. Sadly, the budgie chooses this excursion to fall off his ornithological perch, expired. Rather than give the lady bad news, the vet decides to replace her pet with another and is sure she won’t know the new budgie is a green one. The small detail of the blue one never singing and the green one being very chirpy was overlooked, otherwise all was well in the end.

One day when I was a young child, I came home from school to find a new addition to the family. In the sitting room, in a cage hooked on to one of those bird-stands, a pretty, pale blue budgerigar was tutting to its reflection in its own vanity mirror, head going side to side. I was in awe, it was so sweet and I loved it straight away. We named him Billy. My dad took charge of his care but showed me how to top up Billy’s seeds, give him fresh water and wedge a piece of cuttlefish shell between the bars of the cage to rub his beak on. I was thrilled to have another pet. We had a dog that liked his own company and a cat that was always pregnant or nursing kittens, so it was better to leave her alone. I could stand and talk to Billy, tell him about school and how I was doing. I was shocked to go to the cage after school one day and find a green budgie. My dad told me Billy had matured. He said all budgies started off blue and turned green into adulthood. Of course, I believed him I had no reason not to. Many years later the truth came out. Bless him for saving my tears. I have read that some types of budgies do change colour as their feathers are replaced, but this tends to be a shade darker, or a mix.

Lovely Billy, blue or green, long gone but remembered with fondness and All Creatures Great and Small gave me a happy memory.

Maya Angelou's Caged Bird

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yellow - Daffodils

Yellow is the colour of sunshine, something there is so little of in these bleak, January days. Thinking of yellow and sunshine brings back treasured memories of my childhood and Nanna Hetty’s spotless, shiny kitchen in her bungalow at Heald Green. Perhaps the cupboards were yellow, or the Formica topped table, I’ll never remember, but the coffee pot with the pointed handle definitely was. I don’t think for one moment it was a Clarice Cliff, but whenever I see one it reminds me of Nanna’s sunny kitchen, her delicious fruit cake and the perfect scrambled eggs she made for me.

I hope that sunshine isn’t too far away. It’s almost impossible to imagine when it’s so cold, there’s scarce daylight from a dark grey sky and everlasting rain. Dreich. And, there is still the Covid pandemic hanging over us all.

Being surrounded by such doom and gloom at the moment, my recent choice of television viewing, BBC 4’s The Victorian Slum could be considered questionable. To give a brief outline, modern day families have taken up the challenge of living in the slum building exactly as the Victorian slum dwellers did, cramped in one room, two if it could be afforded and with the most basic of facilities. The lucky ones who found daily unskilled work could earn a meagre amount of money, every penny needed for rent and food. In the beginning, it is 1860, moving along a decade with each episode, exploring changes and differences and the hardship each family faces. Social history is very much my thing, so I’m glued to it and at the same time, thankful that I’m living now and not then. The only cheerful looking things were the artificial flowers that the children were making to sell. Within the slum is a doss house, somewhere to sleep, nothing more, for a penny or fourpence a night. The next step down is the workhouse.

One thing leads to another so with my head full of slum life in the 1860s I did some Google research on workhouses in the U.K. at that time. I was instantly transported to Bristol workhouse to be horrified at how people were treated so cruelly yet fascinated at what I was reading. The uniform for unmarried, pregnant women was a red tunic style dress. Prostitutes wore yellow. I smiled eager to share this snippet of information.

Don’t bother to tell me that’s how it was in all workhouses, not just Bristol.

Dad’s favourite colour was yellow. His mother was my Nanna Hetty, so maybe the colour yellow had significance. It was at Easter time when he suddenly passed away. Daffodils in full bloom filled each side of the front path that curved from the drive to the door. They became symbolic. Each year, I plant daffodils in remembrance of him, making sure there are some rich yellow ones. Some Tete-a-Tete are already in bud.

My poem,

Bristol Workhouse, 1860

I smoothed the cotton as I sat, and thought
Who wore this dress before me?
What became of her? Good fortune or death?
What happened to set her free?

Others were watching me, nudging, judging,
Nodding and whispering low.
My nervous hands gathered the threadbare skirt
As I glanced along the row.

Young women, not much older than children,
Some were dressed in washed-out red
With swollen bellies straining at the seams.
Those, the sinful un-wedded.

And me, I needed to feed my children
And pay the over-due rent.
There was no other way I could recoup
Money I shouldn’t have spent.

So I stood in the doorway, shoulders bare,
Brassing it out, being bold.
Closing my mind to demands of the men
While I shivered with the cold.

There’s no love lost in the Bristol Workhouse.
Pleading eyes, tear-stained faces
Cut no ice with those in authority
Looking down on the disgraced.

Downfall has brought me to sit here in a
Faded yellow dress of shame.
Of all the men who happily paid me,
No one even knew my name.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and keep well, Pam x

 

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Lost - Something Dark

It was tough watching ‘Philomena’. I’d seen the trailers on TV and it looked like a good film. Judi Dench always gives a first class performance and I like Steve Coogan’s straight acting style.  With the exception of his cringe-worthy character Alan Partridge, I like Steve Coogan in anything.  Life must have passed me by for a while, or maybe I’d been under a large stone, but I was completely ignorant of Martin Sixsmith’s book ‘The Lost Child of Philomena Lee’, a true story of an unmarried pregnant girl forced into the care of nuns in an Irish convent and her baby taken away and adopted in America.  I sat in the cinema stifling sobs as one horrid deception followed another and I felt sickened by the behaviour of supposedly caring, Christian people.  It’s a well-written and superbly acted film.  The content disturbed me immensely and still does.  I can’t bring myself to read the book. Philomena Lee is one of many to suffer for bringing ‘shame’ on her intolerant family.  Where is the love? Where is the support?  So many lives broken, family connections lost because a daughter ‘sinned’ and was denied her child.  No forgiveness, either, then?

 

The TV programme ‘Long Lost Families’ shares many similar stories.  Babies born to single women who are influenced or pressured by their family to give up their child for adoption, then spend decades grieving for their ‘lost’ child.  And the child, now an adult, searching for the birth mother, the missing piece of life’s jigsaw.  I watch the happy reconciliations and new beginnings take shape on ‘Long Lost Families’, often through a veil of tears and I hope that adoptive parents, if still alive, are supportive and included.  There’s a feel-good factor in the positive result of a happy ending which is what ‘Long Lost Families’ concentrates on.  I feel for those who are waiting to be found, those whose searches for answers reach a dead end and those who struggle with authorities as they try to find information about who they are.

 

Imagine spending the first eighteen years of your life in the care system.  Everything about you is contained in your files and documents compiled by Social Services, or other responsible authority.  Then, at age eighteen, when you leave the care system and you are legally entitled to take possession of your files, they are lost.

 

This is what happened to Lemn Sissay.  His files were eventually found and given to him only two years ago. He turned fifty this year. Lost files for thirty-odd years?

 

Last Wednesday I went to see Lemn reading his autobiographical play, ‘Something Dark’ at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal.  I’m familiar with his poetry and his life story so I wasn’t in for the shock that ‘Philomena’ gave me.  However, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I anticipated feeling sorrow and kept tissues to hand.  I’m smiling at the thought of it now. Generally speaking, people go to the theatre to experience an entertaining evening and have a nice time.  There was I, prepared for heart-break, but no, this was Lemn Sissay, full of positive vibes, humour, a massive smile and I just listened intently to the wit and intelligence he pours into his story.  There was lots of direct interaction with his audience and at the end he spent time doing Q & A.

 

Lemn Sissay, MBE, an inspiration to all.  Lost hopes, lost dreams, never.

 

And not a single tear from me.

 

 

 

She Read As She Cradled

You part of me

Every day your history
Every tomorrow your destiny
Every growth your mystery
Every mother wants a baby
Like you

Every laugh your personality
Every look your clarity
Every word your stability
Every mother wants a baby
Like you

Every hiccup a comedy
Every fall a catastrophe
Every worry my worry
Every step you’re beside me
Every sight you’re pure beauty
Every mother wants a baby
Like you

Every tear wiped carefully
Every word spoke lovingly
Every meal fed silently
every cloth washed caringly
Every song sung sweetly

Every day I whisper quietly
Every mother wants a baby
Like you

© Lemn Sissay

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

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