Palm - A Shiny Shilling

 “Cross my palm with silver and I’ll tell your fortune. Cross my palm with gold and it will certainly come to be. Cross my palm with iron and you won’t live to see daybreak.”

Mara Amberly – Her Gypsy Promise

Blackpool is well-known for fortune tellers. For as many years as the Golden Mile has stretched between the piers, clairvoyants have worked from inside curtained cabins advertising their gift of seeing into the future. A visit to the promenade or piers would include a palm reading or a studied gaze into a crystal ball for anyone eager to find out if something important is about to happen to them. It’s part of traditional Blackpool fun.

Crossing the palm of a new baby with silver was seen as a way of wishing them wealth, good health and the best possible start it life. I watched as my baby sister had a shiny shilling put into her tiny hand by a well-meaning person, a stranger to me. I was seven and a half. Anne could keep the shilling, but I really coveted the lovely plush bunny she was given by the same person. Nothing for me. I expect she received gifts from lots of people who didn’t acknowledge me, but that’s the one I remember. I could probably go to the exact spot where it happened, in the lounge bar of the Boar’s Head on Preston Old Road, Blackpool. I was a proud big sister. I still am. This was one of those moments that stays in the memory forever, so I’ve always given something to an older sibling, not just the baby.

The Psychic’s Dilemma

I’m a psychic, true, with visions grand,
But rent’s due, and I need a hand.
Cross my palm with silver, yes, it’s true,
I’ll conjure love for you, and a new shoe!

No gold for romance, no, that’s not the deal,
Just enough for groceries, a more practical appeal.
So if your heart yearns for a love connection,
Bring silver, and I’ll give you a pre-packaged affection!

Anon.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Elephants - Jumbo Jet

 

My recent travels have taken me to Cheshire, Yorkshire and Scotland over the last five or six weeks. Most of it has been during some of the warmest summer weather and at each location  I’ve benefitted from the comfort of my long, loose-fitting, printed skirts. I’m not really one for wearing a skirt but I’ll make an exception to stay cool. I don’t like to get dressed up either, so these are perfect with a tee-shirt.  The appeal, besides the easy-wear, easy-travel fabric is the print of decorated elephants creating a circular pattern.  Yesterday I added to my collection when I couldn’t resist an elephant-print dress in a sale.  This was me not supposed to be buying for myself but life’s too short.

I like elephants. I haven’t got a problem with their trunks up or down, facing doors inwards or outwards, or any other associated superstitions. My grandmother is probably wagging her finger at me from the after-life. Birds are surely worse, aren’t they, Nanna?

Elephants crossing the promenade used to be a pleasing feature of my drive to work in the summer. In those days I lived in South Shore and worked in North Shore. My preferred route, in my Austin A40 a long time ago, was to get on to the front at Harrowside and enjoy the sea views all the way up. I tried to time it in order to reach Central Promenade when the circus elephants were being escorted out of Blackpool Tower for a walk on the beach and a dip in the sea, depending on the tide. Many times I queued as they plodded across the road, trunk to tail, enormous and magnificent, and wished I was in the first car.

Information from WWF websites: Both African and Indian elephants are classed as endangered species. Illegal activity in poaching and ivory trading goes on and for African elephants there has been a loss of natural habitat due to the expansion of the human population and land being used for agriculture. The WWF is working towards preventing both these situations from worsening. 

To end on a lighter note, I found this poem by Spike Milligan,

 

Jumbo Jet  

 I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,

     I said ‘You don’t belong in here,’ he said ‘I beg your pardon?’,
     I said ‘This place is England, what are you doing here?’,
     He said ‘Ah, then I must be lost’ and then ‘Oh dear, oh dear’.

‘I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti’s Plain’,

     ‘Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?’.
    He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing Lane,
    And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.

The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,

     So they tied him to a lamp-post and he slept against the wall.
     But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
     The lamp-post and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!

So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,

     You can be sure that Africa’s the place he’s trying to get!

Spike Milligan  (1918-2002)

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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The Best Decade - My 1960s

I like to write historical fiction. I get a lot of enjoyment from researching specific eras. There is so much to learn and I never tire of it. I’ve spent a long time, in fits and starts, on a project that begins in the early 1960s and I’d love to see it completed, though it may have to stay on the back burner until I am able to dedicate more of myself to it. I expected to be retired by now, me like many others, and I planned to treat my project like a full-time job and see if it went anywhere. Let’s wait and see if I’ve still got a functioning brain by the time I get my pension.

I’m choosing the 1960s as the best decade that I have known and I’ve chosen through personal experience and not my research. I was born in the mid-fifties into a wonderful, close family of strong minded women and hard working men. I appreciate how fortunate I am to have had the love, security and grounding of a decent up-bringing. I’ve always been mindful that not everyone is so lucky.

In the mid-sixties we moved to Blackpool. Life got even more exciting. My parents had their dream pub on the promenade and clearly loved it. South Shore beach became my playground, with my younger sister, buckets and spades and either our mother or our adored housekeeper, Auntie Kathy to look after us. We watched the whole world from our upstairs windows, holiday makers dashing off the beach as a storm came over the sea, silly hats, illuminated trams and gangs of what my dad called Beatniks. As soon as the illuminations ended, that was it, Blackpool prom died. The winter view was one of an empty, bleak wilderness, but it was fascinating watching the waves come over the sea wall and crash on to the tram lines during a fierce gale. If only I could see it all again, but thinking as an adult now, I would be worried about the rattling sash windows blowing in. The summer of 1968 is still my favourite, even though my mother embarrassed me by telling singer/songwriter/busker Don Partridge how much I adored him, as we were being introduced. He didn’t seem to mind but I certainly did. He was in the Central Pier show for the summer season and we, that is me and my mum, were front of house guests and back stage guests on separate occasions. I was enthralled to hear him sing ‘Rosie’ and ‘Blue Eyes’ live on stage and I still love those songs. We had a summer of shows and meeting people including Engelbert Humperdinck. He was headlining at the ABC theatre. I was speechless.

My poem is an old one of mine, written with love for those bygone days. It reminds me now of a late friend, Christo Heyworth. When he read the poem, he told me that the ‘grumpy deck chair man’ could have been him, though, as I said at the time, I couldn’t imagine Christo being grumpy.

 

This Was My Blackpool In ’68.

Taking a tram from North Pier to Starr Gate.

A summer of fun and staying up late.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Anne, Auntie Kath and me, all holding hands

Crossing the Prom to get on to the sands

Where the grumpy deck-chair man always stands.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

We were young ladies with panache and style,

Playing the penny arcades for a while,

Frittering our spends on the Golden Mile.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Spinning the Waltzers three times in a row.

Make it go faster, we don’t like it slow,

And then the man said, “That’s it, off you go!”

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Out to a summer show, straight after tea.

Engelbert tonight at the ABC,

A back-stage delight for my mum and me.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Got to get ready, there’s no time to lose!

My trendiest outfit is what I will choose…

A pink mini dress with bright orange shoes.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

A time of peace, love and Flower Power,

Charlie Cairoli and Blackpool Tower,

Seaside and sunshine for hour after hour.

This was my Blackpool in ’68.

Pamela Winning,   2013

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Bicycle - Riding Out With Dad

Christmas, 1967, I was given a bicycle.  Shiny and new with white tyres and the ‘Triumph 20’ logo on the pale blue metallic frame.  It was a wonderful surprise and I loved it. If only I could ride it. If only I wasn’t too timid to learn. I’d had great times with my trusty trike, up and down the promenade, and round all the tables in what we called the ‘Main Bar’, but I’d grown out of it ages ago and now I was twelve it was time for a proper ladies' bike.  No stabilisers, just my dad jogging along next to me, holding the back of my saddle to keep me steady.  All was well until I realised he’d let go, then I’d wobble, fall and cry with frustration at the ‘stupid’ bike. It would be put away until another day.

Practice makes perfect, they say, and eventually I got the hang of it. As I gained confidence, my dad and I went out on longer bike rides. He had a racing bike for serious cycling and a small-wheeled ‘sit-up-and-beg’ bicycle that he used to come out with me. We went on the roads so he could teach me the cyclist’s Highway Code. These trips included the promenade and up Harrowside bridge, which I hated because it was steep enough to hurt my legs. Sometimes that was our turning point for going home, so I would have to pedal up both sides, and remember to use the brakes gently when free-wheeling down. In nice weather we would venture a little further, on to the moss and the back roads towards St Anne’s. We did it all again years later, by car when I was learning to drive and he was brave enough to sit with me.

In my teens I went out cycling with a group of friends, usually to the villages of rural Fylde. We would take a packed lunch, find somewhere pleasant to picnic and no one would mention ‘O’ levels, essays or homework. Happy, carefree times of youth club, Girls Guides and choir, before the bombshell of moving to Cheshire was dropped.

I suppose we all have books and films that we love so much, we know them almost word for word. One of mine is ‘Goodnight, Mr Tom’ and I’m always weeping when William is trying to ride the bicycle that belonged to his late friend, Zach. Of course, he perseveres and succeeds, by which time I’m drowning in my own tears. Always.

Here is another favourite poem, one that makes me think I was around in a long gone era. Perhaps it’s inherited memory, if such a thing exists, rather than déjà vu. It’s the bicycle and the angel-cake.

Myfanwy

Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,
White o’er the play-pen the sheen of her dress,
Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery
Soap-scented fingers I long to caress.

Were you a prefect and head of your dormit’ry?
Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?
Who was your favourite? Who had a crush on you?
Which were the baths where they taught you to swim?

Smooth down the Avenue glitters the bicycle,
Black-stockinged legs under navy-blue serge,
Home and Colonial, Star, International,
Balancing bicycle leant on the verge.

Trace me your wheel-tracks, you fortunate bicycle,
Out of the shopping and into the dark,
Back down the Avenue, back to the potting shed,
Back to the house on the fringe of the park.

Golden the light on the locks of Myfanwy,
Golden the light on the book on her knee,
Finger-marked pages of Rackham’s Hans Andersen,
Time for the children to come down to tea.

Oh! Fuller’s angel-cake, Robertson’s marmalade,
Liberty lampshade, come, shine on us all,
My! What a spread for the friends of Myfanwy
Some in the alcove and some in the hall.

Then what sardines in the half-lighted passages!
Locking of fingers in long hide-and-seek.
You will protect me, my silken Myfanwy,
Ringleader, tom-boy, and chum to the weak.

                 John Betjeman

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Balladry - John, Yoko and Lorna

Who would ever really want to be a young teenager again? I look fondly back on those years, well, the good bits, and skip right past the embarrassing bits. There was joy and there was sadness, too much sadness. And far too many restrictions imposed upon me. No, I could not have a cow-bell to wear on a ribbon round my neck and I was correct to assume that going to see the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park was out of the question. I tried to reason my way round that by suggesting that I could stay with our family in Roehampton and someone would take me. No.

I spent a lot of time frowning, sulking and hating everyone. My Nanna hugged me and told me I was at an awkward age and it would pass soon enough. I wasn’t convinced but I didn’t argue with her, I never did. She was my rock. She was one of those strong, salt of the earth, Northern women of my family that I’ve mentioned before. She’d lived through two world wars, personal heartbreak, lost a child in infancy and was soon to lose another daughter. (I thought my mum was getting better at the time.)  She could still put everyone in their place with a steely glare.  I hope she knows how much I loved her. I kept her company watching the world go by from our bay window above the pub. The promenade was full of holiday makers, including groups of ‘flower people’ in bright clothes and bells round their necks. She called them ‘silly daft buggers’, the same as she’d called John Lennon and Yoko Ono when she saw their TV news interviews in bed on their honeymoon.

‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ seemed to be all we heard from the juke box downstairs.  We always knew what was playing just by the rhythm that thumped through our floor. I would go on to the landing to listen to the words of their story.  The lyrics fascinated me. John and Yoko were doing their own thing and it was ok. 

For a while, I showed my rebellious side more than anything else, but I wasn’t all bad and I could have been worse – I really know that I could have been a lot worse, if not for my Nanna and the ounce of common sense I hung on to.

As an ‘almost rebel’ I would be Lorna in my poem ‘The Ballad of a Lady Jazz Singer’, but I don’t smoke, drink or sing like Janis Joplin and the only bass player I would ever slink off with is John Lodge, an unlikely situation as we’re both happily married to other people.
 

The Ballad of a Lady Jazz Singer

Jazz tempo piano and a bluesy guitar

It’s two a.m. in the Ritzy Bar.

Lorna sips gin through a long, curly straw

As she sits and waits, one eye on the door.

He said he’d be along to see her set

But he’d promised before – never made it yet.

Perched on a bar stool, cigarette in hand,

Minutes away from her spot with the band,

She leans a bit further back in her seat

And her red stiletto taps out the beat.

She’s laughing and swaying, about to begin,

Adrenaline rush, or too much pink gin.

She’s out of her mind, but not really crazy.

Her vision is soft-focus, smoky and hazy.

Tight black dress, short, strapless and low,

Only put on for this kind of show.

She clutches the mic stand, there’s a hint of a smile

Then she bangs out a song in her Joplin-esque style.

Heat and smoke hit hard on her throat

But she stays on key and finds the right note.

Much clapping and cheering, the Ritzy’s alive

Lorna kept singing ‘til quarter to five

Then staggered out happy in the dawning new day

With her bass playing new lover leading the way.

                                                                      PMW

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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