Misty - Play Misty for Me

There’s something mesmerising about watching Ailsa Craig emerging from the mist. The island isn’t moving at all, but the constantly changing cloud gives the illusion of her creeping forwards. Trips to this bit of Scotland always include a visit to Ballentrae and further along, Girvan. I could stay on this stretch of the Ayrshire coast all day, in all weathers. In fog, in misty rain, in low cloud, I’m comforted to know Ailsa Craig is there, exactly where she belongs.  Eventually I’ll witness how she looks in the perfect sunset of a clear day. I don’t mind waiting, fortunately.

Music has always figured in my life. I grew up with the beat of a juke box resonating from the pub downstairs, the radio, or wireless as it used to be when we listened to the Light Programme, and my mum’s records. We would set them up together, six or eight, I can’t remember exactly, but they sat at the top, held in place until it was time to drop on to the turntable. I knew all these 45s. Before I could read I could recognise each record and decide which order we would play them from Billy Fury, Anthony Newley, Cliff Richard and many more. Tommy Steele’s Little White Bull would be put back on for Singing Time on the flip side. A favourite was Misty, Johnny Mathis.

Years pass. My mum passed, too. I have my own place, my own records and with some reluctance, I learnt to play piano in my childhood and in a strange way, an hour or two playing Chopin or Mozart can bring comfort. There’s a film out called ‘Play Misty for Me’ with Clint Eastwood. I loved it and wished my mum could have seen it, for the song and to see how well Rowdy Yates was doing.

Many more years pass. We’re into CDs – not moved into MP3s or whatever – anyway, the radio is always on keeping music in the air. There’s a box of records in the attic. I still have my mum’s 45s. Some are older than me, or pretty close, and Misty will be in there. Cherished.

Look at me
I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree
And I feel like I’m clinging to a cloud
I can’t understand,
I get misty, just holding your hand.

Walk my way,
And a thousand violins begin to play
Or it might be the sound of your hello
That music I hear,
I get misty the moment you’re near.

You can say that you’re leading me on
But it’s just what I want you to do,
Don’t you notice how hopelessly I’m lost
That’s why I’m following you.

On my own,
Would I wander through this wonderland alone
Never knowing my right foot from my left,
My hat from my glove,
I’m too misty, and too much in love.

Lyrics by Johnny Burke
Music by Errol Garner

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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Roses - Memories

An afternoon in August. I wanted to sit outside in the shaded side of the garden with something good on my Kindle, a nice cup of tea and complain half-heartedly about the heat wave sapping my energy. Alas, it’s not that sort of an afternoon. Today feels more like October. I stood in the kitchen admiring the flowers on the window sill then looking outside, watching the rain bouncing in the puddles and weighing down the foliage in the overgrown garden. Drenched buddleia heads bending to the ground, the bees and butterflies I was watching earlier have flown for cover. Peeping out from behind a sapling which is a gift from nature, as we didn’t plant it, I can see one orange rose bud on the bush which is usually abundant at this time of year. Well, it would be if it wasn’t light-starved by a massive, dark berberis that has taken over the entire border and is so fierce with long, stabby prickles that we can’t trim it. It’s time to rethink the garden and make it child-friendly and easy maintenance.  And allow more sunlight to the rose bush, which isn’t orange but tangerine when the flowers open.

The rose bush was a gift from a close friend and former colleague when I changed jobs and she’d chosen it for the colour as we both follow Blackpool Football Club. When the conditions are good, it thrives perfectly with many beautiful flowers and has done for the best part of ten years, until this berberis went berserk and overshadowed it. The berberis has to go.

When I was a child, I remember my mother had a pressed rose in the pages of a fat encyclopaedia.  It was too heavy for me so she would hold it and turn the pages and let me look at the rose. It had been red, but now it was brown and dark pink, squashed flat with the papery petal edges breaking away. The thorns had dropped off the stalk, which was more brown than green and the two leaves had stuck together. My father had given it to her, long before they were married and I kept it for many years after she passed away.

Red roses are so romantic. Before we were married, my husband took me out to dinner and had arranged for a bouquet of red roses to be placed on the table for me. Twelve perfect dark red roses, so beautiful. I felt like a princess. I saved one and pressed it in one of my historical art books. I might still have it, if it hasn’t turned to dust after all these years. And if it has gone, I have the wonderful memory as I do for my mother’s rose.

 

 

When the rose is faded,
Memory may still dwell on
Her beauty shadowed,
And the sweet smell gone.

That vanishing loveliness,
That burdening breath,
No bond of life hath then,
Nor grief of death.

'Tis the immortal thought
Whose passion still
Makes the changing
The unchangeable.

Oh, thus thy beauty,
Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow, shines
And burns, with thee.

              Walter de la Mare

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

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My Mum calls them "Gamps" ...... ;-)

I've always loved the old style umbrella's, but then I'm a vintage kind of gal. I like parasols too and think it's a shame they died out fashion wise. I would much rather be pale and interesting than burnt. I think deep down, despite the day to day clothing of t-shirt, jeans and trainers, I am a Goth at heart. If you watch NCIS on the TV you will be familiar with the character of Abby. I love her style and she uses a lovely black lace parasol when it's sunny or when she attends a funeral. Due to the nature of the programme of course, she attends a fair few. Another thing I love ... NCIS.

Away from the small screen, my favourite way to relax is to sit in a dimly lit room (by candle or fire light) and listen to the rain on the window. Even better at my Mum's house, as she has a small conservatory style room on the back (which she calls "The Potting Shed"). The sound of the rain as it hits the roof is awesome! I love it!! The harder the downpour, the better. But then, I would say that wouldn't I? I am inside on a horrible day, nice and dry. I don't think I would feel the same if I was out in it!


Umbrella

Head bowed, shoulders hunched
collar upturned, grasped tight.
He moves through the town centre
searching
for shelter.
This is not his town ...
he is a newcomer
looking for a new start.
But, with no money
and nowhere to stay,
he walks the streets,
the good places already taken
by the natives.
He readjusts his rucksack
on his shoulder - 
the contents getting heavier
with the addition of rainwater;
those silver stair-rods
changing colour
depending on the neon behind,
glittering on his tired, weary eyes
as they watch ...
monitor for intruders.
Not just from the tutting shopkeepers
shooing him away from their doorways
denying him a temporary oasis,
or the pickpockets
who will take anything you've got ...
but the sting of steeley spokes
from a swarm of multi-coloured domes
bob, bob, bobbing
in time with the beat and thrum,
the ever onward drum,
of drops on the canopies
and hurried feet
carrying their owners home
or at least
away from the wet.
If only he had the luxury
of an umbrella ...
It would be some shelter at least;
instead, sodden toes
in sodden socks and shoes
trudge forward
carrying a wet man
in wet clothes
and the weight of a water filled world
upon his shoulders.


Thanks for reading. ;-) x

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Come Rain or Shine

Choose one of the options below:

a) If you are reading this post at 7am - Shaun and I are probably three hours into a six hour drive to Latitude Festival.

b) If you are reading this post at 11am - Shaun and I are probably queuing excitedly on a Southwold country road waiting to park our car in a field.

c) If you are reading this post at 2pm - Shaun  and I are probably getting bands of fabric clamped to our wrists (which will come to signify such a happy time that we'll refuse to cut them off).

d) If you are reading this post at 3pm - Shaun and I have probably put up the tent (hopefully without incident or argument)and are now milling around the campsite village and buying ridiculous hats from the Oxfam Tent.

e) If you are reading this after 5pm - Shaun and I will probably be exploring the arena, scouting out vegan food and filling our evening with inspiring, random and wonderful acts.

Hopefully the weather will be nice, but regardless of whether we are met by rain or shine, I'll be wearing my wellies (any excuse will suffice).

At Latitude 2012, our arrival coincided with a day of torrential rain, and by the time we awoke on Friday morning - our feet sitting in a puddle of rainwater - the decision to bring a smaller tent seemed less ingenious and more stupid. There was another 'wet foot' crisis in 2011, when I stepped into a puddle only to discover my wellies had a hole. With cold and wet feet, and Jo Shapcott due to start in under thirty minutes, Shaun left me in the Poetry Tent and went off in search of new socks. He returned twenty minutes later - finding non-wool socks had been more difficult than he had anticipated - and presented me with a pair of £7 yellow and black striped socks. We look back on these moments now, where things didn't go quite as planned, and we laugh...

There is always the hope that things will go perfectly - but when they don't, and you look back, it is usually the less than perfect memories that you remember and which make you smile. So, here is to a Latitude that doesn't go quite as perfectly as my mind has imagined.

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