Imprint - It's only words

When I was considering what to include in this blog on the theme of imprint, several things crossed my mind.

The scars left on my face by falling off my bicycle head first and skidding onto a tarmac carpark as it tore into my skin. (After 60 years I still have one scar beneath my right nostril and a piece of stone in my lower lip.)

No, not gruesome memories like that one. Words often leave a more profound impact. 

While I was recovering in hospital with concussion following the afore-mentioned accident, my dance partner (then a girl called Lynn Jones) came to visit with her parents. Without any sympathy for my situation, my scabby face and broken teeth, she pointed at me and declared "That's what you get for telling lies!"

I was terribly upset by this and when I told my dad he reassured me that I need never see her again. He arranged for a visit to Blackpool Tower during the British Junior Dance Festival. There we met a friend of his, former Ballroom World Champion Eric Lashbrook. He took me twice around the floor and told my dad he would be in touch. 

A few weeks later he arranged a 'try out' for me with a boy partner and within months we were successfully admitted to the British Juvenile Team for a trip to compete in Switzerland. But for Lynn's dreadful words, none of my dancing success would ever have happened.

In my teens, my elderly Auntie Effie (short for Ethel) took herself off on a solo trip to Paris, very brave for a woman of 70-plus. She had a career as head corsetter in a local department store and had married late in life. Her husband had recently died. 

She once told me that people place on you half the value you place on yourself. That left an imprint too. Never undervalue your own worth.

My poem today is based on factual personal experience and the lasting imprint of the power of words. My motto is: Always think before you speak.

Imprint

That was the day
the day I decided I’d had enough
the day I chose to leave

I put the children in the car
he took them out again
pushed them back into the house

I tried to get them back
he blocked me
he slammed the door on my arm

He grabbed me
he lifted me up
he threw me at the copper beech

The neighbour was concerned
he called the police
an officer drove me to hospital

He said “think about it overnight
a man’s reputation
is at stake”

The bruise shaped like the door lock
would fade in time
I would be fine

But those misogynistic words
will always remain
a permanent imprint in my mind

Adele V Robinson

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Old School

I attended Elmslie Girls’ Independent Grammar School here in Blackpool, founded by two sisters named Brodie and sited on Whitegate Drive in a substantial double-fronted detached house. The school grounds were filled with Elm trees (hence the school’s name) and also abundant with crocuses every spring, from which came the splendid purple and gold of the school uniform.

Attending an all girl’s school had its ups and downs. The atmosphere was great. Sports were very competitive and many students excelled in music, sciences and the arts. I hazard a guess that this was probably due to a lack of distractions by boys but it was also due to a great sense of camaraderie and identity.

I had started at Elmslie Girl’s Grammar School as a naturally very bright, scholarship holder with an acquired Liverpool accent that was more of a strain for my headmistress than my already blossoming career in International ballroom dance. It had been made clear to me, before I was offered a place at the school, that if the standard of my school work should deteriorate due to dancing, then the dancing would stop. Mum and Dad were surprised that I even considered agreeing to Miss Oldham’s terms, but it made me all the more determined to succeed at both.

In the late 1960s and early 70s, my study of English Literature was peppered with novels, short stories, poetry and plays. Each academic year I was entertained by at least two Shakespeare plays, a novel by Charles Dickens and poetry by the Romantics.

In 1970 I was reading aloud in English: A passage from Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, when suddenly the voice of Eliza Doolittle was transformed into a cockney twang. Immediately I was playing Audrey Hepburn, the most beautiful and glamorous actress that I had ever seen. Lerner and Lowes pastiche of Shaw’s remarkable play was transformational for me. 

Pygmalion was a turning point. A working class girl in a public school, intelligent but awkward, playing the role written for me by others. Suddenly I knew how to live in both worlds. I became a living pastiche. I let the school and the world of dance transform me into from ugly duckling into a swan and I soared.

Our school uniform was distinctive. A deep purple blazer, trimmed with gold braid and a brimmed, purple felt hat with a taffeta band adorned with a fabulous enamelled badge bearing the Red Rose of Lancashire and the crossed keys of St Peter, topped with the bishop’s mitre. I really wish that I still had by hat badge. If anyone has a spare please feel free to contact me.

On the downside, we Elmslie girls were affectionately called, The Purple Virgins. Needless to say that I have no comment to make on that score. I know what I know and I promise ladies my lips are sealed. We have a code of honour. We have a school song with a Latin motto. Attending Elmslie was a little like being a student at Hogwarts. We had our secret passageways, spooky staircase and archaic sick bay too.

I am proud to have been an Elmslie girl and loved wearing my purple regalia. It carried a certain kudos and on through my lifetime it has opened a few select doors. I am still in touch with many school friends and as 2018 would have been the school’s centenary, hundreds of former purple virgins gathered in Blackpool in the spirit of friendship and reunion about which we sang in the school song so many years ago. Eat your heart out J K Rowling.

Omne Bonum Dei Donum

Omne bonum, dei donum
Is the motto of our school
All good gifts they come from heaven
To be grateful is our rule.

Midst the splendour of the elm trees,
In a shady place and cool,
Towering up above the branches,
Stand our much loved Elmslie School.

Omne bonum dei donum
Omne bonum dei donum.

Joys and sorrows both are known there,
Battles are both lost and won.
Fearlessly we all press onwards,
Happy when the task is done.

When our schooldays are behind us
And fresh duties we pursue,
Memories then will crowd upon us
And old friendships we’ll renew.

Omne bonum dei donum
Omne bonum dei donum.

"It matters much more what a girl is than what she does, and if you have learnt to work hard, play hard, keep faith, forget self, help others, you will have begun to be, in the highest sense of the word, a useful member of society. I would remind you of the famous words, "To labour and to love is the sum of living".

Miss Elizabeth Brodie
July 1928

Thanks for reading, Adele V Robinson

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Fruit Tree

When I moved into my previous house in Thornton Cleveleys it was the garden that sold me on the deal. It was an really ugly house, the kitchen was drab and cheerless, the bathroom cold and unwelcoming, but the back garden was huge. Despite a couple of discarded mattresses, overgrown by grass and weeds, there was a mighty sycamore at the far end and closer to the house, a fruiting cherry tree and a neglected apple tree.

I had to prune it back quite hard and attach sticky strips to the trunk to deter ants but by the next spring it was showing signs of recovery. The cherry blossomed and bore some sweet fruit. The apple tree did not. Naturally I was disappointed. I had planted raspberry canes the previous year and would pick a handful to eat with breakfast every summer morning. The apple tree was a dilemma.

The following spring I took my mum and my daughter to Southport flower show. I bought some vanilla lily bulbs and while walking round the marquees, came across seated group involved in a question and answer session with two celebrity gardeners. We took our seats and after a while I put up my hand and asked how they would suggest I could fix my tree. They in return asked whether there were other apple trees in the surrounding gardens. I responded that, yes, one garden had a tree. The solution, they announced is to cut a branch from that tree when it is in bloom and brush the flowers in my own tree with the pollen. I am pleased to announce that it worked and soon apples appeared. Simple solution.

Sadly the following year, we were hit by The Beast from the East and the cherry tree took the brunt of the cold winds and started to die. The apple tree thrived, however much of the fruit had brown speckles and were not appetising. I would take them off and had soon built up a pile at the foot of my perimeter hedge. During the cold winter season, this became a food store for hedgehogs and blackbirds who feasted on the fruit and the worms that the apples attracted. It is said that everything happens for a reason.

When I was much younger, my parents were tenants of a 16th century coaching inn. Next door was an abandoned cottage with an orchard behind. As village children with little entertainment to be had, we loved to play in the old building. We collected discarded tins of paint and made attempts to make it cheerful. The colours of paint made the interior quite a spectacle.

One day, around a dozen of us were messing about in the cottage when we heard a child's voice screaming. Running outside we discovered a little boy of around four had climbed an apple tree and was being viciously attacked hundreds of wasps. It seems that he kicked the nest. I told one of my friends to run and get the child's father, then ran to the telephone box and dialled 999 for an ambulance. He was going into shock by the time help arrived but after treatment and a brief spell in hospital, he recovered. It is a vivid memory for me and very frightening!

Now to get back to my old apple tree. Eventually I began to hang bird feeders from it and attached a birdhouse that I found in my dad's shed after he died in 1998 to the sycamore. That year we had our first brood of baby bluetits and on Christmas Day while eating lunch, the lawn dusted with snow,  a magnificent great spotted woodpecker came to eat from the feeder. It was a red letter day for the apple tree and as an avid bird lover, for me too. Over the years it attracted jays, wood pigeons, countless robins and just once, a pair of waxwings. It became a happy little tree.

The poem was written a good few years ago but I think that it captures the right moment.

A Winter's Tail

On a bright and bluish Boxing Day
when the house is quiet
the kids away
I am ironing alone
in the peace
facing the window
wide and clear
and I gaze to the garden
through frosted grass
while the tears stream down
for the love that I lost
for the joy that passed
Then I stop
and I peer at a flash of light
the green and yellow
a bird in flight
with a soft black cap
and a bold black chest
my acrobats are back to their nest
dashing and dancing
from limb to limb
of the apple tree with its mouldy trim
swinging from strings to a coconut
to taste sweet suet and butternut
such delight to my wondering eyes did appear
and brought me a smile from ear to ear.

Thank you for reading. Adele

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Compass

The geographic North Pole is the northern point of Earth's axis of rotation. The North Pole is found in the Arctic Ocean, on constantly shifting pieces of sea ice. The North Pole is not part of any nation, although Russia placed a titanium flag on the seabed in 2007.

From the North Pole, all directions are south. Its latitude is 90 degrees north, and all lines of longitude meet there (as well as at the South Pole, on the opposite end of Earth). Polaris, the current North Star, sits almost motionless in the sky above the pole, making it an excellent fixed point to use in celestial navigation in the Northern Hemisphere.

Because Earth rotates on a tilted axis as it revolves around the sun, sunlight is experienced in extremes at the poles. In fact, the North Pole experiences only one sunrise (at the March equinox) and one sunset (at the September equinox) every year. From the North Pole, the sun is always above the horizon in the summer and below the horizon in the winter. This means the region experiences up to 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter.

Birds are frequent visitors to the North Pole. The Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea), which has the longest annual migration of any species on the planet, spends its spring and summer in the Arctic, though rarely as far north as the North Pole. It then flies 30,000 kilometers (18,641 miles) south, to the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic tern makes an Arctic-Antarctic round-trip migration every year.

Like the Arctic tern, all other birds spotted near the North Pole are migratory. They include the small snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) and gull-like fulmars and kittiwakes.

Antarctica is the only continent with no permanent human habitation. There are, however, permanent human settlements, where scientists and support staff live for part of the year on a rotating basis.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet dominates the region. It is the largest single piece of ice on Earth. This ice sheet even extends beyond the continent when snow and ice are at their most extreme.

The ice surface dramatically grows in size from about three million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) at the end of summer to about 19 million square kilometers (7.3 million square miles) by winter. Ice sheet growth mainly occurs at the coastal ice shelves, primarily the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ronne Ice Shelf. Ice shelves are floating sheets of ice that are connected to the continent. Glacial ice moves from the continent’s interior to these lower-elevation ice shelves at rates of 10 to 1,000 meters (33 to 32,808 feet) per year.

Antarctica has a number of mountain summits, including the Transantarctic Mountains, which divide the continent into eastern and western regions. A few of these summits reach altitudes of more than 4,500 meters (14,764 feet). The elevation of the Antarctic Ice Sheet itself is about 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) and reaches 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) above sea level near the center of the continent.

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, 

 Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, 

 Silence the pianos and with muffled drum 

 Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead 

 Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, 

 Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, 

 Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 

 He was my North, my South, my East and West, 

 My working week and my Sunday rest, 

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; 

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. 

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; 

 Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; 

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; 

For nothing now can ever come to any good. 

                                                                      W H Auden

Thank you for reading, Adele

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Missing you

Grief is a funny thing. The psychologist tells us that it happens to each of us in stages ranging from denial, (not just a river in Eqypt) to anger and eventually to acceptance. For me grief has often been an unexpected reaction to events and most often not the death of someone close.

 

I am the youngest of four by 6 years and grew up in a bustling pub, surrounded by family, staff customers and friends. I trained as a dance teacher and leaving home at 17 to work in the South was a real wrench.  I had been away from home many times but living away was so strange. Living in a house was even stranger even though I was working over 60 hours a week, the silence at night and the detachment from the hub of my family life made me very homesick. It was my first encounter with what I now acknowledge as grief.

 

My Dad died at 83, a grand age for a man who smoked 40 a day until he was 62.  His first heart attack stopped the habit in its tracks and he completely changed his lifestyle to avoid an early departure. We didn’t grieve really, although we all miss him; we celebrated the joy of his life. Strangely, my second encounter with grief came after my divorce. It came with a sense of guilt, anger at my failure to master a skill and even more surprisingly, a sense of loss.

 

I have to stop myself here.  I just hate it when the natural order of things is disturbed.  I hate it when things go missing. I grieve the loss of the RSC black and white chevron umbrella that I bought at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford in 2009 and left somewhere in Blackpool two years later. Oh and beautiful gloves.  I really hate losing beautiful gloves, but that is a story for another day. Today is Mothering Sunday, the day when BT tell us that more telephone calls are made than on any other special day. My Mum at 95 has had her share of phone calls, gifts, flowers and days out. This morning I drove my eldest to Preston station as he embarks on a new career. He handed me a card as he got out of the car, towering above me, (all 5’11” of three meals a day for 26 years). A hug, a smile…

When you are gone

It is a natural state. You must leave the nest,

your flight long overdue.

And yet my restless nights are filled

with anguished thoughts of “Now what will I do?” 

Last of my fledglings,

preened and packed for adulthood,

a box of nursery paintings and your toy collections,

plastic-cased and left behind.

I dread the echoes in a vacuumed life.

My folly was to think I wouldn’t mind. 

How will I cope with solitude?

Why would I bother cooking just for me?

I need the constant rumbling of machines,

the drone of game play and the late night sound of your TV.

All the years I had believed that I was here for you.

I realise now that you fulfilled the need in me. 

Symbiosis: each reliant on the other.

Had I known I’d feel like this today,

I may never have become a mother.

 

Adele V Robinson

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Beetroot

I was born in Blackpool, the youngest by nearly seven years, into a household of three adults and three siblings.  My maternal Grandmother Phyllis, by then in her seventies, was a stabilising influence at home when both my parents worked long, anti-social hours.

By the time I was four they had taken on a large pub in St Helen’s, a heaven-sent move for us children with space for all of us to grow and play, but a massive millstone for my mother, her health failing rapidly after the move. So we relocated again, this time to a newly built pub in Maghull, near the Aintree Racecourse.

My father missed having a garden, making the most of a greenhouse on the flat roof at the back, a few pots and hanging baskets.  I always knew that he wouldn’t settle.  His green fingers craved the earth.  We put down no roots and in 1969 we headed back towards Blackpool, to The Eagle and Child at Weeton: my First Encounter of the Countryside Kind. 

My youngest brother resisted.  He hated being in a village. “Wait until you see the place,” he protested, “blink and you’ll miss it!” I was in heaven. Acres of wild, unkempt gardens, massive trees and a gaggle of geese, nesting among nettles three feet high.  For an imaginative girl, it was Paradise Found with seven weeks of school holidays stretching ahead. 

That summer my father taught me about growing, shaping and loving the land.  He dug me in and grew my roots.  The early unsettled start filled me with wander-lust and I love change and travel, but when I need to be here, in one place, it is the ground that holds me steady.  I love growing things and am blessed with a large garden.  Soon after I moved in, I met a neighbour who helped to fill the void left after Dad died. 

Ian gives me gardening tips. I buy seed that he grows to small plants in his greenhouse and we share them.  “He know his onions”, as they say and over the years I have challenged him with new legumes, butternut squash, pak choi, yellow courgettes.  We have shared successes and failures.  Recently he was very ill and confided that our interest in growing stuff has kept him going. He has helped me stay rooted, even though there have been many times that I wanted to pack up and run away.

 

 

Beetroot

They make pink-speckled, healthy cake

Grated in, replacing refined sugar.

Potent anti-oxidants, eliminate free radicals.

I like them roasted, paired with squash,

Comfort as the days grow shorter.

I haven’t grown them in my own beds,

Ian brings them from his plot.

Digs into frost hardened sod

With his solitary arm,

Spade shaft against his shoulder.

Mulches in the cow muck pellets

And covers over seed. 

Every harvest he appears at my front door,

Face and hands scrubbed pink,

New shirt, hair brushed in place.

He smiles, “’ere y’ar lass”, holding out a plastic bag

Full of dark red, woody, fragrant orbs,

Freshly lifted from the swollen ground.

I take him round my garden,

Show my progress, share tea and chat,

Then I watch him hobble home,

Resigned to disappointment,

To await another harvest

And a consolation slice of beetroot cake. 

Thanks for reading. Adele V Robinson

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