All Colours, Especially Purple

My View as I Write this Post 

When I volunteered to do some more guest writing for the Dead Good Blog and received the list of topics, the first title that came up was ‘colour.’ I ticked it, confident that I could write about a subject that dominates my world. It was only when Steve responded that I realised it had to be done by the following day - and I had a pretty busy 24 hours ahead of me.  Luckily, my guest spot was quickly moved to Sunday, so here I am, back again.

My love of colour goes back a long way. I don’t know what sparked it, as our house, when I was little, was mainly magnolia with a splash of white, a neutral background to all the colourful goings on, perhaps.  I do remember one episode of redecorating that, with hindsight, was certainly rather odd. With three young children tearing about the house the magnolia in the front room began to get extremely grubby around the light switch and below, where sticky fingers would rest whilst the door was opened.  Dad (or was it mum? I think they were both involved in the end) decided to brush over the marks with some leftover paint, which unfortunately didn’t bear much resemblance to the original colour.  It started with a small area around the light switch.  Whoever was painting stood back and looked at the completed work.  And decided it wasn’t completed after all. It needed to cover the grubby fingerprints below.  Painting was continued, with frequent pauses to survey the handiwork.  After an hour or so it was decided that the job was done.
 

There was a large ovalish area, measuring approximately a metre from top to bottom. It became known as The Egg, and it soon fitted in beautifully with all the other slightly bizarre repairs in the house.  None of us really noticed it after a couple of days, and we were only reminded of it when visitors did a double take and silently mouthed, ‘What - ?’ as they entered the room. 

When Dave and I got our own first house in the 1970s we decided magnolia was the devil, and instantly set about decorating each room in the darkest colours we could find: deep brown, rich red, green, orange and purple. In our defence they were the ‘in’ colours at the time, but I don’t think the in-laws saw it that way.  My mother in law had already practically had a nervous breakdown when I’d requested bright red and royal blue bedding as wedding presents.  She might have been more impressed if she’d known then that we’d still be sleeping in them forty four years later. 

I’d like to say I’ve grown up a bit since then, and now enjoy a restful, magnolia house.  Somehow this hasn’t happened and we’re still wallowing in purple, yellow and bright red rooms.  In fact, when our children were little we always referred to the ‘Red Room’ and the ‘Blue Room,’ not ‘The Lounge,’ and the ‘Dining Room,’ like normal people. My clothes are arranged in the wardrobe in colour order, my shoes go from black to purple to blue to red, and my socks genuinely bring me joy when I open the drawer. Pretty sad when I think about it.

I can’t leave this post without mentioning  the colourful, ever changing palette upon my head - an ongoing experiment with style and colour for the past 53 years.  I was lucky to have a mum who was pretty liberal about these things, well ahead of her time, and didn’t think it odd when I appeared one morning, at the age of thirteen with a full head of grey hair. To be honest it was an experiment that had gone slightly wrong, but, undaunted, off I went to my rather staid Grammar School, only to be singled out in assembly and sent home to ‘sort it out.’ 

By the time I’d had a few more colours (always a reckless experiment) I think the school had given up on me, and apart from the odd, sarcastic comment most of the teachers inwardly sighed and turned a blind eye. Since then I’ve probably sported every colour of the rainbow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Like the time I didn’t leave the bleach on long enough and ended up with bright orange hair (well before it was in fashion). I looked like Dick Emery in drag. My daughter (aged seven) sobbed and begged me to wear a hat when I picked her up from school the next day.  If I remember rightly, I found a hairdresser who had the skills to at least dumb down the brightness, although I still wore the hat as requested. 

Purple by Jill Reidy

It was the purple ink 

Siphoned carefully 

Into a new, expensive pen

I watched as it filled

The light cutting through the colour 

Wiped the nib on a rag 

Replaced the casing

Screwed back on the lid 

Felt it heavy in my hand 

It signified something

I wasn’t sure what

The end

Or the Beginning 

Whatever

Purple was the colour

My colour 

From now on

Thanks for reading,   Jill 

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Teddies and Other Animals

Mojo mark 1

When I was teaching I bought myself a cheap, soft toy monkey who was destined to be a dunce for the rest of his life.  The six year old children in my class decided he should be called Mojo (to go with the polar bear called Polo who already lived in the corner of the room) and set about trying to teach him the basics.  The idea was that Mojo sat on my lap, looking happy but gormless, whilst I fired a series of questions to the children gathered around me.

“4 add 1?”

“2 add 3?”

“Can you sound out ‘pet’?”

“What does ‘dog’ start with?”

And so on.

Mojo was supposed to try and answer before the children, by whispering in my ear.  Needless to say, the children were desperate to beat Mojo, whose answers were invariably ridiculous.  The result was the children had a lot of fun, learned their sounds, added up their numbers, and Mojo remained oblivious to his own ineptitude, smiling inanely from my lap and receiving a lot of sympathetic comments along the way.  He always held a special place in my heart.

I took early retirement from teaching the same year my grandson was born, and somehow (I wish I could remember how) Mojo became Rio’s favourite soft toy.  Except he wasn’t just a toy, he was much more that that.   He was a supreme comforter and as time went on, became part of the family.  Rio moved around a lot in his first few years, between his mum, his dad and us, his grandparents, and wherever Rio went, Mojo was being dragged along too.  There was no chance of sleep without Mojo for Rio to rest his weary head on.  We all had a lot invested in that monkey.

I can honestly say, one of the worst weekends of my life followed the loss of Mojo one Thursday morning when Rio was seven.  I received a distraught phone call from my daughter.  Rio had been going to his dad’s that night so whilst he was at nursery, Laurey had taken Mojo, in a bag with some clothes, to the house and, finding his dad out, had left the bag in the side entrance.  Somehow, within a few hours, Mojo, the clothes and the bag had disappeared.  If you have never had a child with a comforter – in whatever form - that goes everywhere with that child then you have no idea of the distress caused by the loss of such an item.  Not only was Rio distraught, we all were.  It was like a death, and we reacted accordingly.  The worst part was seeing Rio trying to put on a brave face.  Laurey and I held it all together while we reassured him we were doing everything possible to find Mojo, but when Rio left the room the pair of us dissolved in tears.  When Rio returned he buried his head in his mum’s lap and sobbed.  I genuinely believe he was grief stricken.

I come from a long line of capable women who think that, not only is there a solution to every problem, but that we are the ones who have that solution.  I went into problem solving mode and eventually came up with an answer we hoped would make Rio happy again.  We had researched enough to know that we couldn’t replace Mojo with a newer model.  He had become extinct a few years previously.  I spent a day, searching desperately online for a similar monkey to no avail.  The only answer was to get another monkey and adapt it to look as much like Mojo as possible.  As a competent needlewoman I was confident I could do the job, but as a grandma I knew that Rio would not be fooled.  Only recently he had cried inconsolably and then stood by the washing line as Mojo dripped dry after a much needed wash.  He’d explained that the smell of Mojo was a big part of his appeal and I’d already agreed never to wash him again. 

The original Mojo, on his travels

The new Mojo, pre-op

The new Mojo, post-op

The following day, the new monkey arrived by special delivery and at vast expense.  He had long arms and legs, a bright smile and no ears, whereas Mojo had been short limbed with only the hint of a smile and ears like Dumbo.  I had quite a job on my hands.  What worried me more than the physical transformation of Mojo was the problem of explaining away the newness, the lack of worn fabric on his head and of course, the smell.  I set to work, chopping off limbs, adding ears and altering facial features.  By the time I'd finished Mojo had been reborn.  We were just left with the problem of explaining away the obvious differences.  And this is where Mrs Peacock and the Monkey Orphanage came to the rescue.....

The letter from the Monkey Orphanage

I'm not sure whether Rio, as a bright seven year old, was totally fooled by the orphanage story but Ido remember him telling me, years afterwards, that he'd gone home that day, hidden under his bed with Mojo and cried tears of joy.  As a family we never talk about the loss of Rio's favourite monkey, it was such a traumatic event, but as I look at Mojo now and see how worn he is once again I'm sure Rio would say the 'adoption' has been a great success. 

Long live teddies and other animals, but please keep your eye on them at all times.

The day the monkey disappeared by Jill Reidy

I like to think

The day that Mojo disappeared

He’d decided he was big enough

And clever enough

To set off on his own

That he didn’t need his daddy any more

(For that’s how Rio saw himself)

And he was going on one of life’s big adventures

He took the bag

Peered around the bin

And when the coast was clear

He made a dash

Nimbly climbing the nearest lamp post

And hanging there till the bin men had finished emptying bins

The shoppers had finished shopping 

And the children had gone in for their tea

Then, swiftly, he swung from post to post

Along streets where the dark seeped in

Until he reached some open spaces

Not quite the jungle

But maybe a local park

Where he met up with the other missing toys

Who had fled their owners

For a life of freedom

That’s what I like to think

Thanks for reading     Jill

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