Here Comes the Weekend

 As a child I remember looking forwards to the weekends, but thinking back now, they weren’t the best times. Age eleven, I was miserable in my secondary school and Friday teatimes were wonderful. No school for two whole days. Saturday morning and I would will my parents to forget about my piano lesson. If it wasn’t mentioned, it didn’t exist. It didn’t work. The fated hour would be nearly upon me and I would be transported by my dad’s car to the home of the horrible man, subject of nightmares. I would sit rigid and hit the keys hard in a display of my anger. I hated every moment and each week I promised myself I would speak out and it would be my last. I never did. Sundays were bath, hair wash, Sunday School then the rest of the day would be family time. We would either be visiting or having visitors. It was always good and remained so until after tea. That was when the worry started. The sinking feeling of dreading school tomorrow, remembering the piece of unfinished homework, the maths I hadn't understood, the poem I forgot to learn by heart, the items for cookery I didn't ask for. I don't know why I looked forward to weekends at all.

In adult life, weekends offered a mix of welcome rest time after a hard week at work and being out and about socialising. A day out or sometimes a whole weekend away would be a good way to relax and enjoy something or somewhere different.

Becoming parents changed the way we planned weekends. Activities for the children were a priority even if it was just a play on the park and an ice cream. Junior football became my pet hate. I love the game, I always have, but some awful parents I encountered made my blood boil. It would upset me to witness five and six year old little lads having fun running with the ball, being seriously shouted at because they haven’t yet developed the skills some parents expected them to be born with. I would dread the times I had to take our little lad on my own. I would stand watching, keeping to myself.

Since retirement, the days are much the same and weekends disappear almost completely. We know it is Saturday when there’s a home match on and we’re in our places at Bloomfield Road. My husband is once again on the touchline at grassroots level, taking our football playing middle grandson to his matches. We’re starting to plan a few short breaks away with our caravan, but we tend to go midweek when places are quieter, so I suppose that becomes a kind of ‘weekend’ for us.

I remember Mackintosh’s Weekend, a boxed collection of mixed chocolates and posh sweets. They would be my mum’s and rarely shared. It’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the theme for this blog, so I had to mention it.

No poem today. Instead I share an excerpt of lyrics from ‘Here Comes the Weekend’, a Moody Blues song written by John Lodge,

Somewhere in the night
There’s a heart that beats so fast
I can feel the heat
Of the fire in your eyes,
Burning like a naked flame,
Waiting for the ice to break,
Counting down the days,
Waiting for the weekend.
Lonely is the night.
Silence is a friend to walk with,
With no one else to talk to.
Somewhere in the heat
There’s a heart that beats so fast
I can hear your voice,
Talk to me tonight.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Gardens - Sanctuary Sometimes

How lovely it is to relax in the peace of a garden with a cup of tea and a good book. This desire doesn’t happen much in my easy-care outside space. It is pleasant enough, on a warm afternoon, to sit out by the flower beds and planters, admire the emerging seedlings, the fruits of my labour and settle for a quiet read. I have to choose my moment. We live in a busy neighbourhood, popular with families and there’s always someone having noisy work done. One day recently, hoping for a calm half hour, maybe longer, before children play out after school, I sat out there on our new garden bench. Within minutes, an electric lawnmower was started up close by. Not my lucky day. We have to live and let live, of course – or move to somewhere remote, north of the border – so headphones might become my new best friend for these occasional summer moments.

There is a walled garden in the grounds of the lodges where we like to stay in Dumfries & Galloway. We always go for a stroll and take an interest in what’s going on as we look round. We’ve watched it develop over many years and it is nice to follow the seasonal changes. On a sunny lunchtime last November, we enjoyed a picnic in a sheltered spot. Get the timing just right and there will be red kites circling above, coming to their feeding and conservation station nearby.

It was a warm summer day when we decided to go to Threaves Gardens in Castle Douglas. Dogs are not allowed, so we’d been denied this excursion for years. This time, it was just the two of us. Our beloved springer had gone over the rainbow bridge to doggy heaven and we were visiting new places. The gardens are beautiful and much bigger than we expected. We were as far from the shelter of the entrance gift shop and cafe as we could possibly be when the blue sky turned cloudy, quickly becoming dark, then a heavy downpour caught us, and others. We can’t rush so we just got wet. Another visit on a dry day would be good, to see what we had to miss out.

A poem from A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson, a favourite poetry book from my childhood,

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames—
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people’s trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

                        Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Walls - Bricks and Ice Cream

Watching ‘Countryfile’ on Sunday evening, I was spellbound by the on-going discovery work at Vindolanda, a Roman fortress near Hexham in the north-east of England and close to Hadrian’s Wall. If my memory serves me right, Hadrian’s Wall stretches from the Solway Firth on the west coast for eighty-four miles to Wallsend on the east coast and for all the times I’ve travelled to Scotland, I’ve yet to see a stone of it. I should make the effort. Many times I must have been in touching distance. Perhaps a detour to Hexham is needed?

Last week, we were on the ‘Nine of Us Went to Butlin’s and Survived’ tour. Some of us are still shattered. Some are mentally planning a return and others are in awe at the magical time we shared making memories. Two grandchildren, aged 7 and 6 were watching others on the climbing wall and were keen to have a go. The others were too young, but could cheer loudly from the side lines. I watched, heart in mouth, then, as they gained confidence after two or three attempts, I began to relax and film them. The one I expected to climb up like a rat up a drain turned out to be more timid, though he did well. His cousin, watched, figured it out for herself and got on with it. Girl power! Neither of them reached the top, but they smashed it for themselves and as they basked in their achievement, I was able to breathe normally again. Of course, they were harnessed, helmets on and fastened to safety lines, but nannas do worry.

Almost thirty years ago, we had an extension built to give us a workable sized kitchen, an improvement to the tiny space we had. Somehow, I made New Year’s Day roast dinner for fifteen people in there. Physically I’m a bit bigger now and I doubt if I’d be able to turn round in it. We’ll never know. Watching each step of the new kitchen come to life was exciting. The walls took shape, the windows – one in the wrong place, but I could rearrange the interior plans – everything was massive and amazing. It ceased to be fun when it was time to link into the house. Being October, it was chilly when the outside wall was taken down and no amount of covering and protecting saved everywhere else from the debris involved. This was the stressful stage that had me almost climbing the nice, new walls.

‘Wall’s’. I could recognise the ice cream sign long before I’d learnt to read. Williamson Park in Lancaster was my stomping ground when I was four. I would roll or run down the grassy hill below the Ashton Memorial to be caught in my dad’s arms and swung round. A little bit further along the path was a wooden kiosk selling ice cream and drinks. I would have a cornet, Dad would always have a wafer. Sometimes he let me have a small bottle of Lucozade, but usually it was ice cream with the promise of a drink of blackcurrant and lemonade from behind the bar when we got home. Oh, the daft things that reside in my memory. We had a pub near the railway station, my aunt and uncle had one in the town, soon to be joined by my grandparents who had retired from their pub in Sale. Sweet times.

I found this poem about Hadrian’s Wall,

The Great Wall of England
A poem for kids by Jon Bratton and Paul Perro

When the Romans conquered Britain
Thousands of years ago.
They built towns in England and Wales,
They didn't want Scotland though.

The Scotsmen and the Romans
Did not get on at all.
To stop the Scots from stealing sheep
The Romans built a wall.

It stretched from Solway Firth in the west
To the Newcastle in the east.
To build it they used many stones,
Millions, at least.

The Emperor who was in charge,
(Hadrian was his name)
Did lots of things during his reign
But the wall gave him lasting fame.

It took fifteen years to build it,
Things took longer back then.
Hundreds of horses pulled the carts
There were thousands of working men.

They built forts and towers as well
They built them very tall,
So the Romans could see the Scots
Who tried to sneak up to the wall.

The Romans stayed in Britain for
Hundreds of years, altogether.
I wonder why they stayed so long?
It couldn't have been the weather.

That the wall was built to last
Would be a fair thing to say.
It was built thousands of years ago
And is still standing today.

Indeed, from all around the World
People come to see it.
There's always a tourist around
You can almost guarantee it!

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Knitting - In, Round, Through, Off

 

 Filling the bird feeders is my first job of the morning. Three fat-ball holders and two seed holders hanging on branches of the surrounding fir trees provide a feast and it only takes a minute for the birds to descend and squabble over perching rights.  I watch from the window, sipping strong tea and half leaning on the radiator.  Sunshine and a cloudless blue sky promises a beautiful autumn morning.  Earlier, I had seen the cows by the gate at the end of the meadow. They had wandered back up the hill now. I’m happy to stand for a while and drink it all in, never tiring of what I see and enjoying the changing each season brings.

I’m not at home. This is Dumfries and Galloway. My perfect place for some much needed rest and relaxation, and my birthday in a couple of days.  I am trying to make myself unwind, determined to make the most of this longer than usual stay, but I’m aware that just below the surface of my calm exterior, stress is bubbling.  There’s always family stuff and I’m not quite well but not bad enough to be ill.  I need to chill, so I’m thankful to have my knitting to occupy me later on and help me to relax.

Knitting has been and continues to be a lifetime occupation.  I might be repeating myself here if I’ve previously mentioned about being taught to knit by my mother and grandmother.  It was when my mother was expecting my baby sister.  Of course, the gender wasn’t known before birth in those days.  Both ladies were constantly knitting and I was taking an interest.  , One of them started me off with a few stitches on their spare needles and talked me through it in simple terms of ‘in, round, through, off’ until I got the hang of it.  I tried hard, dropped stitches, added stitches from somewhere and made a mess, probably more than once, but with their saintly patience and my determination, I’ve learnt a wealth of knitting and crochet skills that I’m constantly putting into practice.  From baby clothes to Aran sweaters, plain knits to complicated, I’ve done it all.  It is Christmas jumper time again, which is what I’m working on at the moment, for my grandchildren.  By the way, the photograph is from last year, in case you’re thinking I’m super-fast at churning them out.

 I found this poem,  Mrs Moon by Roger McGough,

Mrs Moon

Sitting up in the sky

Little old lady

Rock-a-bye

With a ball of fading light

And silvery needles

Knitting the night.

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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