Mermaids - Of Course They Are Real!

I was thinking about mermaids, trying to decide how to approach this blog when I realised that the answers I was looking for might just be right in front of me. All four grandchildren come for tea on Mondays, or Mad Mondays, as they are known. Here they were, my cherubs, bursting with the knowledge from the magical world of the under eights and always eager to share what they know and to be helpful.

“Who can tell me what a mermaid is?” I ask.

“It’s a fish.” Someone offers.

“No, it’s a person with the body of a fish.” Someone else elaborated.

“That’s what I meant.”

With an argument about to break out between two of them about what is actually said and what is possibly implied, I intervened, separating the one being laid-back from the one being unusually pedantic.

“Never mind, I think I know what you both mean. Does anyone know where they live?” I look round, hoping to engage the younger children but one is glued to something more exciting on the tablet and doesn’t want to waste their ‘turn time’ talking to me and the other one wants to know if tea is ready. The others said, in the sea and on the beach.

“Nanna, mermaids aren’t real, you know.”

“What? Of course they’re real. There’s a statue of one in Copenhagen. Look at this!” Pretending to be shocked I quickly searched Google for The Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour and gleefully shared the picture as if it’s proof. “There she is.”

There was a bit of sniggering about the mermaid having boobs but the main point was that they were sure mermaids are not real. I was sure that they are.

“They must be,” I urge, “because, when I was a little girl…”

Slight rolling of eyes or glazed look. Either they are not old enough yet for my ‘When I was a little girl’ stories, or they think they have heard enough already. I’m mindful that the nearly seven and nearly six year olds have done a full school day and the little ones have been to nursery so they are tired and they’ve had enough paying attention. I really should be in the kitchen, but they are having this last snippet before I go.

“When I was little girl there was a film I really loved called Miranda. It was all about a mermaid called Miranda and she was definitely real.”

I told them a little bit about Miranda, what I could remember. Looking back, I don’t know why it appealed to me, it wouldn’t be as funny now and probably wouldn’t interest today’s sophisticated children. I won’t rush to find a DVD. Nothing will convince them that mermaids are real.

I made up a tale about a 19th century prostitute who sometimes wore a mermaid’s fish-tail. I won’t share that with my grandchildren, but I wrote a poem which I’ll share with you.

The Lass at The Mermaid Inn

In an attic room at The Mermaid Inn
She brushed her long and lustrous wavy hair
Preparing to entertain men within,
Smoothed fish-net stockings over slender legs
And poured another large pink gin.

She promised Paradise for a shillin’
Her delicate strokes with soft, gentle fingers,
Enough to send her guests a-quiverin’
Tender kiss from rose-bud lips, sweet, hot, moist,
With a subtle taste of pink gin.

Again and again, they keep returnin’
She takes their shillings and gives them her best.
There’s more for an extra tanner thrown in,
Loving and lusting at The Mermaid Inn,
Homesick sailors and more pink gin.

So sometimes, just for a joke and darin’
She would wear her opalescent fish-tail,
Close fitting, tight, a rainbow shimmerin’
Begging to be peeled away so slowly,
She seductively sips pink gin.

PMW 2022

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Magic Has Never Dimmed

Anybody who knows me, knows how much I love the sea. Not sailing on it. That’s a totally different story. And not swimming in it unless it’s several thousand miles from Blackpool and calm and warm. No, my love for the sea stems from childhood day trips and holidays to the seaside. These days my contact with the sea is limited to viewing it from the prom as I take a walk, and photographing it as it rages against the sea wall.  I love it in all its forms - still and calm, glistening in the sunlight or wild in the winds that hit this coast.

Living in London, the nearest place to swim was Tottenham Lido, which was outdoor and freezing.  I rarely saw my dad in less than shirt and trousers, so it was quite an event if he took me and my brothers to the pool on a Sunday morning. I’m guessing my mum persuaded him so she could getting on with cooking lunch without us kids in and out of the kitchen. My dad never really showed much enthusiasm for the outing, emerging from the changing rooms in his knitted trunks, body white as snow, and reluctantly dropping into the freezing water to keep an eye on three excited children.  What I do remember, vividly, is the colour of the water - which I only realised later, was, of course, the colour of the floor and walls of the pool. That colour has stayed with me for sixty years. If I see it now I’m instantly transported back to those Sunday mornings, and the shock of the cold as I carefully descended the steps into the not so welcoming water.

Anyway, I digress. Occasionally, instead of the Lido, we would drive to Southend, where we had young cousins. I only remember once going into the sea there. My mum had taken us kids down on the train and we obviously weren’t meeting the cousins that day. The sea was brown and dirty, but that was no deterrent. Having donned the home sewn elasticated costume, I ran into the sea with my brothers, emerging later with the swimsuit drooping dramatically, weighed down by sand and pebbles and resembling a baby’s full nappy. I wasn’t happy and insisted on getting changed behind a huge towel as quickly as possible. 

Our main holidays were to Margate where we had another set of cousins, nearer our own age. I defy any child to have a better holiday than those weeks by the seaside. Like many a family, I’m sure, we kids scoured the horizon for miles before catching our first glimpse of the sea. It was utter magic. Before we even arrived at our destination my happiness was complete.  The cousins’ house was just up the road from the prom. I couldn’t believe how lucky they were to have the sea on their doorstep. They, however, were pretty blasé about it all.  I couldn’t get enough of the beach and the sea and the tacky gift shops but my cousin was much more interested in mucking out and riding her adopted horse. One year I went alone to stay, and to my horror, although the sea winked seductively at me in the sunshine, I was lent a bike and told to follow my cousin to the stables. Here she handed me a stinking brush and a large dustpan and instructed me to muck out the stable, while she went off on an exhilarating gallop across the fields.  Not only was I scared of the giant horse that eyed me suspiciously but I also felt very resentful of the whole situation, which wasn’t helped by the loud and constant passing of wind from a huge and smelly behind. The horse’s, not mine. 

When I saw the bikes coming out for a second day  I lay back on the bed and feigned illness. I remember a tearful phone call home and the sympathetic voice of my mum, but no offer to come and get me.  I never got my sea fix that week, and returned home vowing to take reinforcements with me next time.

Imagine my delight when, twenty years later - and quite by chance, the husband got a teaching job in Blackpool.  We moved to the seaside, albeit a good thirty minutes’ walk from the actual sea. Ten years after that we decided to move.  Our house sold and in a desperate attempt to find another we drove around the whole area, three young children bored and arguing in the back of the car, and spotted a huge house just off the prom.  For whatever reason, it had been on the market for a year and subsequently reduced drastically.  We bought it, we’re still here, thirty six years later, and I still marvel that we can see the sea from every window.  The magic has never dimmed.

The Island*

Hardly a ripple

Shallow waves lap silently at sand

Approach slowly and with a quiet stealth

A family, deckchairs, buckets, spades 

And no awareness

Of impending danger

Spades digging

Buckets filling 

Castle building

When all around

That silent sea

glints in the sunlight

Gives a little smile

And calmly meanders 

Around the group 

forming pools 

That join and fill 

And finally

Without a sound

The island is complete. 

*If you live in Blackpool you'll be aware of the way the sea comes in and fills in the dips on the beach.  Many times, over the years, I've seen groups of holidaymakers trapped by the tide.  The sea creeps in behind them and leaves them on an ever decreasing island.

Jill Reidy

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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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Shells - Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive Oh

There’s something I’ve always found relaxing about a stroll on a beach and the sound of the sea. Most of the places I visit are coastal or within reasonable striking distance.  It is a strange thing that I live on the Fylde Coast with our wonderful expanse of beaches yet never set foot on them. I can’t remember last time I was on the sands at Blackpool but probably not since my children, now adults, were small.

The beach was my playground when I was a girl. We lived on the front, just the promenade and the tram tracks to cross and I was there, usually with others. After I’d grown out of making sand-pies and digging for water, my interests turned to marine life and I would go looking for creatures. A good place to search was in the rock pools around the outside of the old open-air swimming baths. My mother was not impressed with a collection of starfish I took home in a bucket to our pub and my father was tasked with taking them back ‘before any more climb out on to the stairs’. Starfish getting stuck on the stairs isn’t what you expect to see when you call in the vault for a pint, not even in Blackpool. I was given a lecture on sea-life needing a proper, natural habitat and those poor starfish would have been suffering. I’d done a similar thing with tadpoles in a jam jar a couple of years earlier, before we moved to Blackpool, and I clearly hadn’t learnt, but that’s another story.

These days I look for interesting shells and I’m not harming anything by keeping them. A few times a year my travels take me to the South and South West coasts of Scotland, where I will search for shells and watch our dog having the time of his life in the sea. Storage jars are great for keeping my shells safe and for display purposes. The large mussel shells are a beautiful dark blue in the sunlight and the mother-of-pearl shines on the inside. A couple of trips to the Outer Hebrides gave me the opportunity to find some whiter than white cockle shells. I keep them separate, with a couple of scoops of silver sand I brought home from the Hebridean Atlantic coast.

I’d like to visit the Orkney Islands and bring shells home from there, but maybe I should pay more attention to the coastline right here on my own doorstep, at least for the time being.

 

My own poem,

 

Seashell Keepsake

 

In the corner of a mem’ry box

I found the tiny shell.

It must have meant something to me once,

But now, I cannot tell.

Who wrapped it in some silver paper

Torn from a serviette?

It might be from one of the children

So why would I forget?

I can still recall all thirty names,

That class from ’99.

Those lively, summer-born four year olds

Learning to stand in line.

Just a small, pretty, pale pink spiral

Someone once gave to me,

Now back in the box where I found it

And wrapped up carefully.

 

PMW 2018

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

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Creatures of the Deep (and apologies for going a little off topic)

When I was a child there was a programme on TV called The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Initially, I remember watching it, as much for Cousteau's sexy French accent as for anything to do with the undersea world, but as time went on I became fascinated by the creatures who led these secret slow motion lives, hiding, stalking and preying on each other in this strange, silent, watery world.

In fact I became so fascinated that I wonder if watching Jacques and his adventures was the catalyst for the fear of water I began to develop at about that time.

It started with the Brownie Swimming Gala, an annual event and one that I'd somehow managed to avoid in previous years, probably due to the fact that I was smaller than all the other Brownies and able to duck down and hide when volunteers were called for. It wasn't that I was actually afraid of water, more that I was afraid of the effects of that water if it went up my nose.  The last time I'd gone underwater without holding my nose (in fact, the last time in my life I EVER did this) I'd felt as though my head was going to explode. I'm sure it was something to do with my sinuses but the pain was so intense I was nearly physically sick when I dragged myself up out of the water. 

So, volunteering for the Brownie Swimming Gala was not on my list of 'must do' activities. What I hadn't reckoned on was Brown Owl's persistence. Was there a badge for this, I wonder? For each excuse I managed to muster Brown Owl had the answer, until eventually I was so worn down that I heard myself agreeing to take part. I went home, told my mum and dad, who did that typical parent thing of trying to persuade me that not only would it be OK but it would be a great opportunity - and then, when I continued to moan, 'whether you want to do it or not, you're committed now, so you're doing it.'  I cried for a week, then, reluctantly packed up my swimsuit and hat and headed to the Gala. 

My race was announced, I lined up with my fellow swimmers, the whistle was blown and either side of me bodies leaned forward, stretched out their arms and dived into the pool.  I held my nose, walked to the edge and jumped in. When I surfaced the divers were crawling energetically through the water - and practically at the finish line.  As the only stroke I had mastered (and I use the word loosely) was breast stroke, I set off, head down, in somewhat of a panic.  Through my skin tight swimming cap I registered the clapping and cheering as the first swimmer touched the edge.  Determinedly I ploughed on as, one by one, the other swimmers swung themselves out of the pool, to the sound of applause, and stood waiting by the side. Those final few minutes were the longest of my life. Like the loser I was I finally reached the edge and scrambled out.  There were a few sympathetic staccato claps. My shame and embarrassment knew no bounds.

This was the first of many mishaps with water: mishaps that included being violently seasick in charge of a bicycle on a rocking ferry in the middle of the Aegian Sea; being similarly ill in a tiny shared cabin between Hull and Zeebrugge; and worst of all, the near drowning of a friend of my son's as the Blackpool sea crept around the back of the four year olds and left them literally high and dry on an ever diminishing island on the beach.  By the time I realised what was happening they were too far away to hear me shouting and I ran, as if in a nightmare towards the deepening water.  Eventually, they turn round, realised the danger and, panicking, waded their way back, up to their necks in swirling sea.  As we had only recently moved to the area and hardly knew Dan's friend or his family I was desperate to play the event down.  I rushed the boys back to our house and changed them both into dry clothes, laughing with false jollity at what had occurred.  On the way to return the friend to his mother I continued to minimise the danger they had been in.  The boys trailed behind me in an assortment of mismatching clothes, and just as we reached the gate Dan piped up in a loud voice, "Are you going to tell Craig's mummy he nearly drowned?"

I'm pleased to report that nearly thirty years later the two little boys and their friendship had survived so well that the story was mentioned at both their weddings - where they were each Best Man for the other.  For once a happy ending to a deep water tale...

I think I might have had a similar expression as I swam my heart out in the Brownie Gala

I'm more than happy to stare at the sea, and even tiptoe along the water's edge - just don't expect me to venture in any further.  Sea Fever

John Masefield (from Salt-Water Ballads, 1902)

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. I must down go to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over. Thanks for reading,   Jill

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Creatures of the Deep - The Unknown

There’s something about the sea that draws me to the coast to admire the view of the horizon. It’s a view I’ve grown up with, being fortunate to have seafront windows overlooking Blackpool promenade for most of my childhood. My travels, whether home or abroad, have involved me searching the nearest coastline where possible and wanting to reach the furthest point, Land’s End, John O’Groats. It may be a bit odd, then, that I find the sea scary.

 

 

My earliest fear of the sea happened in Morecambe, probably the late 1950s before I started school. Uncle Roy, who used to swim in the sea every day and had a physique to prove it, lifted me on to his shoulders and waded through the waves. He held my feet really tight and I felt safe up there, but the roar of the tide terrified me and as I became distressed, he took me back to play on the beach with my dad. For a long time I wouldn’t walk on the sea-side of any promenade. The experience instilled in me a great respect for the power of the sea. Any thoughts of the creatures within came later.

When I was nine or ten I wrote a horror story called The Unknown. I had been reading ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ by Jules Verne and was fascinated by the creatures of the deep. We were living in Blackpool now and I had my first sea-view bedroom window. I imagined all kinds of ocean-dwelling monsters.  In The Unknown, a massive, green, scaly dragon-cum-dinosaur emerged from the waves, eager to climb over the sea wall and terrorise South Shore, especially me. It was so good, I gave myself nightmares.

There were worse nightmares to come. Around that time I started to watch ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’. It was a family thing. We’d gather round the television with the treat of a picnic tea in the lounge to see what challenge was in store for the Seaview, a nuclear submarine.  I wasn’t following the plot or the story. I was waiting for the scary bit, the first glimpse of an underwater monster that was causing all the trouble. It was usually a giant octopus that was wrapped round the deep sea vessel, or something with lots of sharp, pointed scales and more teeth than any other creature, had fastened itself to the propeller. It began to fill me with more fear than the Daleks, but luckily, I had Commander Lee Crane (David Hedison) to protect me. In my dreams.

I enjoy the Sealife Centre as long as I don’t have to touch anything or get close up, but I can’t bear the recent images of newly discovered deep sea creatures. They look like something from a low budget science fiction movie or even my own sea monster from The Unknown.

I’ll continue to watch the horizon, the shimmering golden ripples of the sunset’s reflection on a calm sea, or the tempestuous waves crashing in a storm. I’ll try not to think too much about what lies beneath.

 

The Octopus by Ogden Nash

 

Tell me, O Octopus I begs

Is those things arms or is they legs?

I marvel at thee, Octopus;

If I were thou, I’d call me Us.

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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