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LUCY’S FINAL COLUMN
Endlo…1
We’ve been together now for 44 years. No, not me and himself, I mean me and the good old Derby Telegraph, side by side from single parenthood to grandmother-hood. And what a lot we’ve packed in during that time.
So I’ll get straight to the point. I’m off, finished, kaput, over the hill, worn out, and if I’m not exactly suffering from writer’s block, I feel I’m past my sell-by date. They say that journalism is one of the few jobs where no two days are the same, and I’ve been privileged to be part of that profession since leaving school.
And what a journey it has been. From chasing ambulances and fire engines and sitting in council chambers and draughty courtrooms as a news reporter, through the 20 years I spent as women’s editor and feature writer, to more years than I can count as a columnist, it has been a roller-coaster ride. During that ride, I’ve been run ragged by at least nine editors – some of them, including the current incumbent, I’ve know since they were trainee reporters – countless news and sub-editors, and wallowed in the friendship and camaraderie of hundreds of colleagues.
The profession has taken me to places, and to meet people, most folk could only dream about, coming across the lowest forms of pond life on the crime scene, to following in the wake of visiting Royals, and interviewing stars of stage and screens large and small, and sports fields. But the greatest satisfaction has always been in the local stories of human interest, of triumph over adversity, of drawing attention to the plight of others which often led to positive action from the powers-that-be.
As goes with the territory of writing a column, I’ve made a few enemies along the way, back in the days when I was more hard-hitting, taking to task governments, city fathers, supercilious celebrities, anybody of high opinions and low morals who got up my nose. And through it all, I retired only twice!
But there has always been one constant – you, my loyal readers, and heck, I’m going to miss you.
You who have sustained me through the often rickety path of the life I have shared with you, in unabashed and totally honest detail, throughout the thirty-odd years of a weekly column. Along with the joy of life – grandchildren spring to mind - you’ve seen me through operations for varicose veins, wisdom teeth, and cataracts. They were the soft, sometimes jovial, options. But how can I ever forget the outpouring of support and love which came, via letters, cards, prayers, phone, and the supermarket queue, when son Matthew died at Christmas 1995. Similarly, four years later, when I was in a horrendous car accident in Mallorca, followed a week later by the dreaded diagnosis : breast cancer.
Oh, I had the love and strength of a wonderful, close family. But in both instances, you, dear readers, were my guardian angels and counsellors. Thank you all for that backbone and friendship you gave.
But the time is right to go. No aspiring woman-who-lunches, domestic goddess, should be working at pushing seventy. We’ll be celebrating that birthday, and the third retirement, with a family and friends bash at Littleover Lodge Hotel, with Elvis tribute star Aaron singing all those significant songs. It will be a great "do", in the capable hands of our front of house friend Antonello Pitzettu and organiser Wendy Bagshawe.
If I summon up the courage to make a speech, long-suffering husband John, son Simon, daughter-in-law Claire, grandchildren Jacob and Grace, and friend Rose Kennedy – all who’ve been often unwilling subjects of this column - will be mentioned in dispatches. So, too, will you out there. Even in retirement, you will be, in the words of Elvis and Aaron, always on my mind.
So, Lucy has left the building…. thankyou and goodnight.
Friday 6 March 2009
Thursday 26 February 2009
Grannies
Lucy’s column for Feb 24
Granlo…1
Indulge me a bit while I talk about grannies in general, and those close to me in particular.
I was fortunate enough to have three grandmas. My father, who died when I was six, was outlived by a few years by his mother. Memories are a bit vague but those I have are positive – a tiny woman, as broad as she was long, dressed permanently in black, with wispy silver hair worn in a bun, and which, let loose at bed-time, made her look a bit witch-like and scary.
I didn’t like her cottage home at the top of Matlock. It was as dark and gloomy as she always appeared in my childhood imagination. I must have loved her because I loved everybody, but it bordered on the cupboard variety. It was there she indulged me with tea-time treats of bread and sugar, bread and condensed milk, bread and brown sauce. It was years later that I realised she must have been one feisty woman in her younger days.
She’d met my grandfather in India in the 1890s, where she worked as a nanny, and he was an Army regular. They had three sons, and only a year after my dad, the youngest, was born, he was killed by a cricket ball to the head during a game. She had to sail home alone, with her three little boys, to what? Poverty and permanent widowhood. Little wonder that she always looked as if life had dealt her a bitter blow.
When my mother re-married, she brought not just a wonderful step-father into my life, but a new set of grandparents who, compared with us, were middle-class in that they owned their own home, had a biscuit barrel on the sideboard, sipped a noonday glass of sherry, and were always laughing. Step-granny could still touch her toes, do handstands, and nip up Bank Road, Matlock, like a good un until she was pushing 80.
But out-and-out favourite was maternal grandmother Pursglove, little Nell as she was known, who lived at Two Dales. She, too, always looked worried, and never appeared to sit down. When she wasn’t baking or cooking for a constant flow of visitors – she had six children and 18 grandchildren, all who gathered there regularly – she would walk the two miles, twice a day, in all weathers, to let out and fasten up her hens, housed in a field atop the steep Sydnop Hill.
As kids we could always go to the homes of these grandmothers and be kissed, cuddled, criticised, read to, moaned at, played with, on the receiving end of individual attention our mothers sometimes didn’t have the time to give. From grandmas, we learned to knit, sew, bake, recite poetry, values and morals, and shared secrets and dreams. A generation on, my own mother proved such a granny. She gave up her retirement to look after my two sons while this (then) single mother worked to earn a crust, and had tremendous influence on six grandsons and two granddaughters.
When we get together, we may laugh at their foibles and funny ways, but we are all aware of the influence grandparents have on our lives. Which is why hearts nation-wide go out to the Edinburgh couple whose grandchildren are in the throes of being snatched away from their care, and into adoption, as the authorities consider them too old – 59 and 46, come on – to raise them.
In a couple of weeks, this grandma becomes a septuagenarian, with my cousins, some travelling from far-flung parts, joining other family members and dear friends and colleagues for a creaky knees-up at the Littleover Lodge Restaurant. Overseeing this shindig are receptionist and party organiser-in-chief Wendy Bagshaw, and catering director Antonello Pitzettu. The family-minded Italians have a proverb : "If nothing is going well, call your grandmother." We may not be able to call them, but grandmothers everywhere will be toasted.
end
Granlo…1
Indulge me a bit while I talk about grannies in general, and those close to me in particular.
I was fortunate enough to have three grandmas. My father, who died when I was six, was outlived by a few years by his mother. Memories are a bit vague but those I have are positive – a tiny woman, as broad as she was long, dressed permanently in black, with wispy silver hair worn in a bun, and which, let loose at bed-time, made her look a bit witch-like and scary.
I didn’t like her cottage home at the top of Matlock. It was as dark and gloomy as she always appeared in my childhood imagination. I must have loved her because I loved everybody, but it bordered on the cupboard variety. It was there she indulged me with tea-time treats of bread and sugar, bread and condensed milk, bread and brown sauce. It was years later that I realised she must have been one feisty woman in her younger days.
She’d met my grandfather in India in the 1890s, where she worked as a nanny, and he was an Army regular. They had three sons, and only a year after my dad, the youngest, was born, he was killed by a cricket ball to the head during a game. She had to sail home alone, with her three little boys, to what? Poverty and permanent widowhood. Little wonder that she always looked as if life had dealt her a bitter blow.
When my mother re-married, she brought not just a wonderful step-father into my life, but a new set of grandparents who, compared with us, were middle-class in that they owned their own home, had a biscuit barrel on the sideboard, sipped a noonday glass of sherry, and were always laughing. Step-granny could still touch her toes, do handstands, and nip up Bank Road, Matlock, like a good un until she was pushing 80.
But out-and-out favourite was maternal grandmother Pursglove, little Nell as she was known, who lived at Two Dales. She, too, always looked worried, and never appeared to sit down. When she wasn’t baking or cooking for a constant flow of visitors – she had six children and 18 grandchildren, all who gathered there regularly – she would walk the two miles, twice a day, in all weathers, to let out and fasten up her hens, housed in a field atop the steep Sydnop Hill.
As kids we could always go to the homes of these grandmothers and be kissed, cuddled, criticised, read to, moaned at, played with, on the receiving end of individual attention our mothers sometimes didn’t have the time to give. From grandmas, we learned to knit, sew, bake, recite poetry, values and morals, and shared secrets and dreams. A generation on, my own mother proved such a granny. She gave up her retirement to look after my two sons while this (then) single mother worked to earn a crust, and had tremendous influence on six grandsons and two granddaughters.
When we get together, we may laugh at their foibles and funny ways, but we are all aware of the influence grandparents have on our lives. Which is why hearts nation-wide go out to the Edinburgh couple whose grandchildren are in the throes of being snatched away from their care, and into adoption, as the authorities consider them too old – 59 and 46, come on – to raise them.
In a couple of weeks, this grandma becomes a septuagenarian, with my cousins, some travelling from far-flung parts, joining other family members and dear friends and colleagues for a creaky knees-up at the Littleover Lodge Restaurant. Overseeing this shindig are receptionist and party organiser-in-chief Wendy Bagshaw, and catering director Antonello Pitzettu. The family-minded Italians have a proverb : "If nothing is going well, call your grandmother." We may not be able to call them, but grandmothers everywhere will be toasted.
end
Thursday 19 February 2009
Fridge Fascists
Lucy’s column for Feb 17th
They’ve riffled through our rubbish. They’ve leered into our kids’ lunch-boxes. And nagged us into eating our five-a-day portions of knobbly greens, tasteless tomatoes, bent bananas, and wilting watercress.
There are also moves afoot for busy-body council employees to turn up on our doorsteps and demand to know how many en-suites, utility rooms, extensions, and hen coops we’ve got, in order to re-value the amount of council tax we pay.
So it was only a matter of time before this Government turned us over to the food police, who are going to have the authority to knock on our doors, stick their heads in our pantries, fridges and freezers, to advise us on what to eat. And what to throw away.
So far, six councils have been given the authority to set up these calorie-counting and kitchen-bin snooping teams – each "inspector" being paid £8. 80 an hour of taxpayers’ hard-earned money for the privilege – to tell us how to use up left-overs, guide us on portion sizes, and hear this, guide us through the veritable minefield of sell-by, use-by, and best-before dates. As if we’re too thick to read the packet and end up poisoning ourselves.
How intrusive, petty, picky and pathetic is that? And what an insult to our intelligence.
We’ve already had one, very minor, run-in with the bin boffins. It so happened that, after cutting what is probably the longest garden hedge in our village – which is all very green, and organic, and natural, and saving the rain forests or whatever, with not a fence post or brick wall to interfere with nature, the environment, or the demise of the humble sparrow – himself, after piling the privet in the brown bin, picked up the scrappy bits in a carrier bag. And he, inadvertently, with no malice or aforethought, popped it on the top. Come bin-day, the chaps refused to empty the contents, and left an official note on the offending receptacle, pointing out the error of our ways. When it isn’t beyond the whit of man to just take out the miserable little bag and leave it at the side.
Friends have reported other such puerile mindedness on the part of local authority officialdom. Yet our streets continue to be littered with cans, cartons, fag packets and fast-food boxes and not one of us can remember ever seeing a street cleaner.
Those same friends are outraged at this latest edict which, believe you me, will be coming to a council near you soon. And himself is incandescent at the thought of the clip-board and pencil stub brigade darkening his very doorstep, with mutterings of : "Over my dead body." Which could well be the case, should they see the state of our freezer, which contains home-made pies of indeterminable date, and, indeed content, leading to such imponderables as whether to make gravy or custard. Not to mention cartons of what could be my imaginative soup, or last autumn’s fruit coulis, pear belle Helene, mushed-up apple windfalls.
But, you see, that’s where I think I’ll score. They can come and ferret in my freezer, poke in my pantry, delve in my dustbin, whenever they like, and I’ll tell you what: apart from a few potato peelings, soggy tea bags and satsuma skins, they’ll find nothing which couldn’t have been re-cycled by way of mincing, blending, frying, shoved in a pastry case, or just popped into a redundant ice-cream carton for a credit-crunch day. And what is beyond all that goes out for the birds, the foxes, and the neighbourhood cats.
So bring ‘em in, with their anoraks, logos, grubby notebooks, and they may learn something from somebody who’s got the food processor, the t-shirt, and knows how to blend the leftover leeks.
end
They’ve riffled through our rubbish. They’ve leered into our kids’ lunch-boxes. And nagged us into eating our five-a-day portions of knobbly greens, tasteless tomatoes, bent bananas, and wilting watercress.
There are also moves afoot for busy-body council employees to turn up on our doorsteps and demand to know how many en-suites, utility rooms, extensions, and hen coops we’ve got, in order to re-value the amount of council tax we pay.
So it was only a matter of time before this Government turned us over to the food police, who are going to have the authority to knock on our doors, stick their heads in our pantries, fridges and freezers, to advise us on what to eat. And what to throw away.
So far, six councils have been given the authority to set up these calorie-counting and kitchen-bin snooping teams – each "inspector" being paid £8. 80 an hour of taxpayers’ hard-earned money for the privilege – to tell us how to use up left-overs, guide us on portion sizes, and hear this, guide us through the veritable minefield of sell-by, use-by, and best-before dates. As if we’re too thick to read the packet and end up poisoning ourselves.
How intrusive, petty, picky and pathetic is that? And what an insult to our intelligence.
We’ve already had one, very minor, run-in with the bin boffins. It so happened that, after cutting what is probably the longest garden hedge in our village – which is all very green, and organic, and natural, and saving the rain forests or whatever, with not a fence post or brick wall to interfere with nature, the environment, or the demise of the humble sparrow – himself, after piling the privet in the brown bin, picked up the scrappy bits in a carrier bag. And he, inadvertently, with no malice or aforethought, popped it on the top. Come bin-day, the chaps refused to empty the contents, and left an official note on the offending receptacle, pointing out the error of our ways. When it isn’t beyond the whit of man to just take out the miserable little bag and leave it at the side.
Friends have reported other such puerile mindedness on the part of local authority officialdom. Yet our streets continue to be littered with cans, cartons, fag packets and fast-food boxes and not one of us can remember ever seeing a street cleaner.
Those same friends are outraged at this latest edict which, believe you me, will be coming to a council near you soon. And himself is incandescent at the thought of the clip-board and pencil stub brigade darkening his very doorstep, with mutterings of : "Over my dead body." Which could well be the case, should they see the state of our freezer, which contains home-made pies of indeterminable date, and, indeed content, leading to such imponderables as whether to make gravy or custard. Not to mention cartons of what could be my imaginative soup, or last autumn’s fruit coulis, pear belle Helene, mushed-up apple windfalls.
But, you see, that’s where I think I’ll score. They can come and ferret in my freezer, poke in my pantry, delve in my dustbin, whenever they like, and I’ll tell you what: apart from a few potato peelings, soggy tea bags and satsuma skins, they’ll find nothing which couldn’t have been re-cycled by way of mincing, blending, frying, shoved in a pastry case, or just popped into a redundant ice-cream carton for a credit-crunch day. And what is beyond all that goes out for the birds, the foxes, and the neighbourhood cats.
So bring ‘em in, with their anoraks, logos, grubby notebooks, and they may learn something from somebody who’s got the food processor, the t-shirt, and knows how to blend the leftover leeks.
end
Tuesday 10 February 2009
Bridesmaid
Lucy’s column for February 10.
Princelo…1
As a child – and twice a bridesmaid - I always longed to be a bride, which is why I usually managed to snaffle the bit of net curtain from various dressing-up boxes in games of "let’s pretend….". In fact, my sole ambitions in life were housewifery, motherhood, with a short career behind a Post Office counter, stamping bits of paper with an inky rubber seal.
Marrying a prince never entered my head. Mind you, I was hardly princess material, being landed with the sort of chubby legs and dimpled elbows only a mother could love. No, my escort down the aisle was always a soldier called Joe. Being a bit of a saddo, he was my imaginary friend, and I can picture him now – short, faceless, jaunty cap, and not even a stripe to his name.
Looking back, princes were the stuff of fairytale Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, because there weren’t many reality princes of the realm to dream about in those days – just a King and a few old dukes. I admit to fancying a bit of the lifestyle of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, because they wore nice kilts and cardies, had curls, and got to ride ponies every day. Oddly enough, neither of those two went on to marry princes. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t.
Because as we are all too well aware in these enlightened times, it doesn’t always work – think Princess Diana and king-in-waiting Charles, not to mention Camilla, who still has to have her bolt-hole home, and is rather backwards at coming forwards when it comes to cutting ribbons and touring factories.
Which is why I silently cheered recently when it was announced that South African Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry had split, and if reports are to be believed, it was her decision. Thank heaven, I thought, for her logical legal brain which, to her credit, saw the writing on the wall. Who on earth would choose that life? And why I secretly groan when the woman dubbed Waity Katie continues to sit on the sidelines, awaiting the Royal proposal. For what?
Can’t she, and the Middleton family – and they do reckon her mother is the epitome of pushy – see beyond the posh frocks, jewels, servants, forelock-tugging, and, like the Queen Mother before her, never having to pull a pair of curtains ever again in her life? She hasn’t even approached the cathedral steps yet, but already she’s stalking stags, insisting on being called Catherine, and living the life of a recluse as Prince William decides to pop the question.
As one who won’t even nip to the local Co-op without a bit of lippy in case some critical neighbour cops me looking like a dog’s dinner, how can somebody so young and intelligent put herself forward for the scrutiny which will follow her for ever? She has only to look to the adored Diana to realise that life within that particularly gilded cage can be sad, humiliating, lacking support, and wide open to criticism from both that frosty Firm and a picky public.
No doubt bagging a prince is the ultimate in social climbing. But as Chelsy has sussed before it’s too late, along with never having to utter : "I haven’t a rag to my back….." ever again, beckons the constant grind of cutting ribbons, planting trees, touring factories, conjuring up face-aching smiles, producing heirs and spares, entertaining bores and being bored by so-called entertainers, and knowing your place – usually below the salt. Not even the lure of the Crown Jewels could make up for that lack of fun and freedom.
Chelsy has found the courage to vacate the Royal boudoir. Ms Middleton could be about to make her bed. Just trust the stuff girly dreams are made of isn’t too lumpy.
end
Princelo…1
As a child – and twice a bridesmaid - I always longed to be a bride, which is why I usually managed to snaffle the bit of net curtain from various dressing-up boxes in games of "let’s pretend….". In fact, my sole ambitions in life were housewifery, motherhood, with a short career behind a Post Office counter, stamping bits of paper with an inky rubber seal.
Marrying a prince never entered my head. Mind you, I was hardly princess material, being landed with the sort of chubby legs and dimpled elbows only a mother could love. No, my escort down the aisle was always a soldier called Joe. Being a bit of a saddo, he was my imaginary friend, and I can picture him now – short, faceless, jaunty cap, and not even a stripe to his name.
Looking back, princes were the stuff of fairytale Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, because there weren’t many reality princes of the realm to dream about in those days – just a King and a few old dukes. I admit to fancying a bit of the lifestyle of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, because they wore nice kilts and cardies, had curls, and got to ride ponies every day. Oddly enough, neither of those two went on to marry princes. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t.
Because as we are all too well aware in these enlightened times, it doesn’t always work – think Princess Diana and king-in-waiting Charles, not to mention Camilla, who still has to have her bolt-hole home, and is rather backwards at coming forwards when it comes to cutting ribbons and touring factories.
Which is why I silently cheered recently when it was announced that South African Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry had split, and if reports are to be believed, it was her decision. Thank heaven, I thought, for her logical legal brain which, to her credit, saw the writing on the wall. Who on earth would choose that life? And why I secretly groan when the woman dubbed Waity Katie continues to sit on the sidelines, awaiting the Royal proposal. For what?
Can’t she, and the Middleton family – and they do reckon her mother is the epitome of pushy – see beyond the posh frocks, jewels, servants, forelock-tugging, and, like the Queen Mother before her, never having to pull a pair of curtains ever again in her life? She hasn’t even approached the cathedral steps yet, but already she’s stalking stags, insisting on being called Catherine, and living the life of a recluse as Prince William decides to pop the question.
As one who won’t even nip to the local Co-op without a bit of lippy in case some critical neighbour cops me looking like a dog’s dinner, how can somebody so young and intelligent put herself forward for the scrutiny which will follow her for ever? She has only to look to the adored Diana to realise that life within that particularly gilded cage can be sad, humiliating, lacking support, and wide open to criticism from both that frosty Firm and a picky public.
No doubt bagging a prince is the ultimate in social climbing. But as Chelsy has sussed before it’s too late, along with never having to utter : "I haven’t a rag to my back….." ever again, beckons the constant grind of cutting ribbons, planting trees, touring factories, conjuring up face-aching smiles, producing heirs and spares, entertaining bores and being bored by so-called entertainers, and knowing your place – usually below the salt. Not even the lure of the Crown Jewels could make up for that lack of fun and freedom.
Chelsy has found the courage to vacate the Royal boudoir. Ms Middleton could be about to make her bed. Just trust the stuff girly dreams are made of isn’t too lumpy.
end
Tuesday 3 February 2009
Card Games
Lucy’s column for February 3.
Cardlo…1
Time was when folk would while away the wintry hours playing indoor games.
As a kid, it was snakes and ladders, snap, tiddly-winks and Ludo, with, perhaps, the odd game of dommies with granddad, just to make you feel a little bit grown up. And many a kitchen door had, hidden under the coats and work overalls, a dart board. But that was strictly for the big boys.
In those pre-telly days, I grew up in such a household – though the dart board is perhaps a figment of my imagination because I was raised in an all-girls household, and throwing a nifty arrow was the stuff uncles and boy cousins were made of. But cards? Tell me about it.
Or, indeed, let me remind you. Because my over-riding memory of my mother’s nights out was the humble whist-drive. Living, as we did, within spitting distance of my granny, and three of my aunts, the highlights of the week were the, at least, three of those nights they spent in each other’s company, going, if not for gold, then the wartime and immediately post-war equivalent – be it a packet of tea, a pound of sugar in a blue bag, a much-coveted five-bob (25p in today’s money), or the ultimate in luxury, a tin of salmon.
They shuffled from church hall to village hall, public house to dance hall, in their quest for a bit of light relief from the struggles of rationing and tedium of boredom, battling for Britain, and attempts to make ends meet. It was their social whirl, their outlet, their chance to catch up on all things family, gossipy, and find out what the neighbours were up to. But it wasn’t all beer and skittles. More a cup of tea and a Spam sandwich at the interval if they were lucky. Then came the inquest. And it’s here that mum Lavinia, and sisters Ada, Lucy and Mary had me riveted. How, I would ask myself, could they doll up, dress up, make up, and troll along for a pleasant couple of hours, pencils as sharp as their competitive brains – and end up having the mightiest of rows?
It was usually about who partnered whom, who dropped what card at the wrong time, and regular references to "trumping", which is a card-sharp term and nothing to do with wind. All that for, often enough, a packet of dried peas or a few parsnips from somebody’s allotment.
This didn’t begin and end at the inter-village gambling dens. Family weekends were often spent at each other’s houses. Playing Solo, which, I believe, is even more intense than whist. It’s there that they played for points, not even pennies, but the ensuing family feuds were the stuff world war three was made of, and many’s the time sisters and brothers-in-law barely spoke for days – or until the next whist drive, and a partner was needed…..
It was the onset of Bingo which disrupted the Pursglove sisters’ little tantrums and triumphs on the card front, though as a family, we continued to wreak havoc round the table at Orgill Towers come Christmas or some such get-together. Turn full circle, and with the credit crunch, we’re back playing cards again. Thanks to Ken and Mave Monk in Mallorca, who introduced us to the game, we’ve taken up Kaluki. Sister Natalie and brother-in-law Pete are in on the act, together with friends Julie and Rob Skivington.
Son Simon won’t entertain it, undoubtedly a throw-back to the card wars he witnessed as an impressionable child. But then, he’ll spend a small fortune on a Rams season ticket, and still be miserable for an entire weekend.
Could there be a whist drive revival? As entertainment, it can be cheap. And, if you choose the right partner, even cheerful.
end
Cardlo…1
Time was when folk would while away the wintry hours playing indoor games.
As a kid, it was snakes and ladders, snap, tiddly-winks and Ludo, with, perhaps, the odd game of dommies with granddad, just to make you feel a little bit grown up. And many a kitchen door had, hidden under the coats and work overalls, a dart board. But that was strictly for the big boys.
In those pre-telly days, I grew up in such a household – though the dart board is perhaps a figment of my imagination because I was raised in an all-girls household, and throwing a nifty arrow was the stuff uncles and boy cousins were made of. But cards? Tell me about it.
Or, indeed, let me remind you. Because my over-riding memory of my mother’s nights out was the humble whist-drive. Living, as we did, within spitting distance of my granny, and three of my aunts, the highlights of the week were the, at least, three of those nights they spent in each other’s company, going, if not for gold, then the wartime and immediately post-war equivalent – be it a packet of tea, a pound of sugar in a blue bag, a much-coveted five-bob (25p in today’s money), or the ultimate in luxury, a tin of salmon.
They shuffled from church hall to village hall, public house to dance hall, in their quest for a bit of light relief from the struggles of rationing and tedium of boredom, battling for Britain, and attempts to make ends meet. It was their social whirl, their outlet, their chance to catch up on all things family, gossipy, and find out what the neighbours were up to. But it wasn’t all beer and skittles. More a cup of tea and a Spam sandwich at the interval if they were lucky. Then came the inquest. And it’s here that mum Lavinia, and sisters Ada, Lucy and Mary had me riveted. How, I would ask myself, could they doll up, dress up, make up, and troll along for a pleasant couple of hours, pencils as sharp as their competitive brains – and end up having the mightiest of rows?
It was usually about who partnered whom, who dropped what card at the wrong time, and regular references to "trumping", which is a card-sharp term and nothing to do with wind. All that for, often enough, a packet of dried peas or a few parsnips from somebody’s allotment.
This didn’t begin and end at the inter-village gambling dens. Family weekends were often spent at each other’s houses. Playing Solo, which, I believe, is even more intense than whist. It’s there that they played for points, not even pennies, but the ensuing family feuds were the stuff world war three was made of, and many’s the time sisters and brothers-in-law barely spoke for days – or until the next whist drive, and a partner was needed…..
It was the onset of Bingo which disrupted the Pursglove sisters’ little tantrums and triumphs on the card front, though as a family, we continued to wreak havoc round the table at Orgill Towers come Christmas or some such get-together. Turn full circle, and with the credit crunch, we’re back playing cards again. Thanks to Ken and Mave Monk in Mallorca, who introduced us to the game, we’ve taken up Kaluki. Sister Natalie and brother-in-law Pete are in on the act, together with friends Julie and Rob Skivington.
Son Simon won’t entertain it, undoubtedly a throw-back to the card wars he witnessed as an impressionable child. But then, he’ll spend a small fortune on a Rams season ticket, and still be miserable for an entire weekend.
Could there be a whist drive revival? As entertainment, it can be cheap. And, if you choose the right partner, even cheerful.
end
Tuesday 27 January 2009
Birdwatching
On Christmas Eve 1995, just a few days after my son Matthew had died, a robin landed in our garden, in the face of our (then) three cats, and numerous visiting felines, a potential war zone which hadn’t done much to encourage feathered friends over the years.
We called it Matt, as a tribute to a bird-loving son, and of course, in our grief, we acknowledged this as a sign that he’d come back to say he was free and happy – well, mothers are excused such potty notions at such times. Anyway, its arrival prompted the old man to dash off to the nearest garden centre for a bird table, rather than it feed off the floor with all those killer cats around waiting to pounce.
He visited daily, and I became quite besotted with the little creature for a couple of weeks. And then disaster struck. I was looking after grandson Jacob, then around six months old, and he was sleeping on the sofa when the phone rang. It was my niece, Cindy, calling with a buck-me-up chat. Suddenly, the cat flap rattled, and in darted the recently departed Annie, with, you’ve guessed it, the robin in her mouth.
I shrieked : "Annie’s got Matthew!", dropped the phone, Jacob woke up howling, Cindy was trembling at the other end of the line thinking either the baby had fallen off the sofa or Auntie Lou had witnessed a vision, and I was in hysterics on the stairs, trying to prise the bird from the jaws of hell – to no avail. The purpose of this little tale is to say that ever since then, we’ve never tempted birds into our garden, though we once saw a fox with a blackbird in its mouth, but that was the bird’s fault. It should have been in bed instead of nicking the night-time fox food.
But times change. Annie croaked a few weeks ago and took her 19-year-old creaking bones to that pilchard palace in the sky, and our garden has become, for the first time in nearly 40 years, a cat-free zone. It appears those wily old birds know this. Because they’ve come a’flocking. And, from the warmth and comfort of that wifely know-your-place – between the kitchen sink and the cooker – I’ve become a bit of a twitcher.
Okay, our back yard isn’t exactly on the migratory path between the Russian Steppes and the Sahara Desert, but I’m a very dedicated voyeur, and for all the world could be sitting in a remote hide, anorak, camera and binoculars in place, watching out for lesser-spotted whatevers. The fact that I don’t know a pied wagtail from a snow bunting is beside the point. The first two robins pecking at the proffered pastry are the stuff soppy old saddos like me are made of.
They’ve been followed by a bevvy of blackbirds, a virtual regiment of sparrows, a pair of thrushes, one Jenny wren, a couple of fat wood pigeons, and a noisy, belligerent scary magpie which I always salute, shout a loony : "Good morning, general" – just to be on the safe side – before nipping out in my nightie to chase him off.
I spend precious time when I could be doing something useful like cleaning the light switches or rustling up an imaginative soup, dreaming up nourishing, suet-and-dripping filled dishes for what are, on observation, a load of wimps and bullies of the bird world. In the current climate of ice and frost, who’s the dolt out there at 7 am, defrosting various bird baths and watering holes so that they can at least have a bath and a drink?
Their various characteristics are a constant source of amusement, concern, entertainment. Who needs murderous cats? And it certainly beats daytime telly.
end
We called it Matt, as a tribute to a bird-loving son, and of course, in our grief, we acknowledged this as a sign that he’d come back to say he was free and happy – well, mothers are excused such potty notions at such times. Anyway, its arrival prompted the old man to dash off to the nearest garden centre for a bird table, rather than it feed off the floor with all those killer cats around waiting to pounce.
He visited daily, and I became quite besotted with the little creature for a couple of weeks. And then disaster struck. I was looking after grandson Jacob, then around six months old, and he was sleeping on the sofa when the phone rang. It was my niece, Cindy, calling with a buck-me-up chat. Suddenly, the cat flap rattled, and in darted the recently departed Annie, with, you’ve guessed it, the robin in her mouth.
I shrieked : "Annie’s got Matthew!", dropped the phone, Jacob woke up howling, Cindy was trembling at the other end of the line thinking either the baby had fallen off the sofa or Auntie Lou had witnessed a vision, and I was in hysterics on the stairs, trying to prise the bird from the jaws of hell – to no avail. The purpose of this little tale is to say that ever since then, we’ve never tempted birds into our garden, though we once saw a fox with a blackbird in its mouth, but that was the bird’s fault. It should have been in bed instead of nicking the night-time fox food.
But times change. Annie croaked a few weeks ago and took her 19-year-old creaking bones to that pilchard palace in the sky, and our garden has become, for the first time in nearly 40 years, a cat-free zone. It appears those wily old birds know this. Because they’ve come a’flocking. And, from the warmth and comfort of that wifely know-your-place – between the kitchen sink and the cooker – I’ve become a bit of a twitcher.
Okay, our back yard isn’t exactly on the migratory path between the Russian Steppes and the Sahara Desert, but I’m a very dedicated voyeur, and for all the world could be sitting in a remote hide, anorak, camera and binoculars in place, watching out for lesser-spotted whatevers. The fact that I don’t know a pied wagtail from a snow bunting is beside the point. The first two robins pecking at the proffered pastry are the stuff soppy old saddos like me are made of.
They’ve been followed by a bevvy of blackbirds, a virtual regiment of sparrows, a pair of thrushes, one Jenny wren, a couple of fat wood pigeons, and a noisy, belligerent scary magpie which I always salute, shout a loony : "Good morning, general" – just to be on the safe side – before nipping out in my nightie to chase him off.
I spend precious time when I could be doing something useful like cleaning the light switches or rustling up an imaginative soup, dreaming up nourishing, suet-and-dripping filled dishes for what are, on observation, a load of wimps and bullies of the bird world. In the current climate of ice and frost, who’s the dolt out there at 7 am, defrosting various bird baths and watering holes so that they can at least have a bath and a drink?
Their various characteristics are a constant source of amusement, concern, entertainment. Who needs murderous cats? And it certainly beats daytime telly.
end
Friday 23 January 2009
Census
Well, that’s it then.
After years of telling family and friends that I am descended from French aristrocracy, the recently released on-line 1911 Census returns have brought me down to earth with an almighty crash.
It was the name, you see, Orgill, sounds exotic doesn’t it? There is an Orgeuil Castle in Jersey and the village of Orgill in the Lake District.
Now the myth has been well and truly exploded and I have been found out, thanks to this damned Census. Don’t ever go there; you will undoubtedly discover things from your family past, you would rather not know.
So, rather than having a claim to the French throne, I’ve found out I come from very humble beginnings in the back streets of Derby and Sheffield. I know now, for the first time in 65 years, that maternal granny got married twice, the second time to a "malleable iron machine moulder!" Uncle Charlie was a fetler, uncle Jim was a "picker-outer" on a rivet machine and uncle Tommy worked on a screwing machine. I do remember now, during my visits to the Sheffield family, that my uncles always seemed to be at home. That’s because they were union agitators, always bring their mates out on strike.
I take consolation in the fact that good old uncle Sam was a hero. He was a Lance Corporal in the Northumberland Fusiliers, was killed in 1915, and is commemmorated at the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial. Even my dear, late mum got it wrong. She always told me, proudly, that she was born in the same year that Queen Victoria died. It turns out that she was a year out.
All this really got me thinking about my funny family, so I delved in my dad’s side,and it didn’t get much better with the paternal search. Granddad Albert was an iron moulder in Loughborough, and granny Annie Eliza was "in service."
With the passage of time, one always retains a rosy-coloured opinion and memory of family members, which turn out to be completely misguided.
For instance, I was led to believe that uncle Arthur on my dad’s side was somewhat of a genius. Indeed, he made split cane fishing rods and even violins.
Column………….2
But he was also potty. When the rest of the family upset him, he would sit at the top of the stairs for hours playing his home-made violin. He never had a proper job. Apparently he obtained work at Bemrose the printers. After the first day, he returned home, said he wasn’t being told what to do, and never went to work again. And he kept his meagre Christmas decoration up all year round.
He spent the rest of his life looking after granny, who, herself, sat for hours in a rocking chair, occasionally sneaking a crafty nip from the whisky bottle secreted under an adjacent chest of drawers. The whole of the Orgill family, granddad, grandma, Doris, Anne, Arthur, Lilly May and dad Albert, lived in a tine terrace in Parliament Street, Derby, next door to St. Luke’s Church. They attended church at least twice on Sundays, and were members of the choir or church sidesmen.
They literally did have a very long table cloth, so that the table legs were not showing (yes, it really did happen), and my aunts would prepare the vegetables for Sunday lunch on a Saturday, so they did not have to work on the Sabbath.
All these reminiscences from a couple of clicks on the computer – you have to pay for it, by the way. So I’ve spent £25, only to find out that I am not who I think I am, can no longer preen about like Louis XV or whomever.
But, I’m sure I come from good, humble, yeoman stock, and I still proud of the lot of them.
After years of telling family and friends that I am descended from French aristrocracy, the recently released on-line 1911 Census returns have brought me down to earth with an almighty crash.
It was the name, you see, Orgill, sounds exotic doesn’t it? There is an Orgeuil Castle in Jersey and the village of Orgill in the Lake District.
Now the myth has been well and truly exploded and I have been found out, thanks to this damned Census. Don’t ever go there; you will undoubtedly discover things from your family past, you would rather not know.
So, rather than having a claim to the French throne, I’ve found out I come from very humble beginnings in the back streets of Derby and Sheffield. I know now, for the first time in 65 years, that maternal granny got married twice, the second time to a "malleable iron machine moulder!" Uncle Charlie was a fetler, uncle Jim was a "picker-outer" on a rivet machine and uncle Tommy worked on a screwing machine. I do remember now, during my visits to the Sheffield family, that my uncles always seemed to be at home. That’s because they were union agitators, always bring their mates out on strike.
I take consolation in the fact that good old uncle Sam was a hero. He was a Lance Corporal in the Northumberland Fusiliers, was killed in 1915, and is commemmorated at the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial. Even my dear, late mum got it wrong. She always told me, proudly, that she was born in the same year that Queen Victoria died. It turns out that she was a year out.
All this really got me thinking about my funny family, so I delved in my dad’s side,and it didn’t get much better with the paternal search. Granddad Albert was an iron moulder in Loughborough, and granny Annie Eliza was "in service."
With the passage of time, one always retains a rosy-coloured opinion and memory of family members, which turn out to be completely misguided.
For instance, I was led to believe that uncle Arthur on my dad’s side was somewhat of a genius. Indeed, he made split cane fishing rods and even violins.
Column………….2
But he was also potty. When the rest of the family upset him, he would sit at the top of the stairs for hours playing his home-made violin. He never had a proper job. Apparently he obtained work at Bemrose the printers. After the first day, he returned home, said he wasn’t being told what to do, and never went to work again. And he kept his meagre Christmas decoration up all year round.
He spent the rest of his life looking after granny, who, herself, sat for hours in a rocking chair, occasionally sneaking a crafty nip from the whisky bottle secreted under an adjacent chest of drawers. The whole of the Orgill family, granddad, grandma, Doris, Anne, Arthur, Lilly May and dad Albert, lived in a tine terrace in Parliament Street, Derby, next door to St. Luke’s Church. They attended church at least twice on Sundays, and were members of the choir or church sidesmen.
They literally did have a very long table cloth, so that the table legs were not showing (yes, it really did happen), and my aunts would prepare the vegetables for Sunday lunch on a Saturday, so they did not have to work on the Sabbath.
All these reminiscences from a couple of clicks on the computer – you have to pay for it, by the way. So I’ve spent £25, only to find out that I am not who I think I am, can no longer preen about like Louis XV or whomever.
But, I’m sure I come from good, humble, yeoman stock, and I still proud of the lot of them.
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