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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.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Christmas presents
Peculiar presents have raised their weird and wonderful heads several times over the nigh-on forty years I’ve been writing a column for the Derby Telegraph.
Who can ever forget being on the receiving end of a chip pan, on Valentine’s Day, no less? No, neither can I, and his head came close to bearing a lifetime’s scars. Then there was the elegantly wrapped and massive parcel which housed a washing up bowl, dust-pan and hand-brush, but of course, it was all in jest, the thought that counts, because the brand name was Lucy. It’s times like that when you wish your mother had named you Ruby - a thought which will no doubt fall on stony ground.
And I won’t go into detail about the state-of-the-art steam floor mop. Suffice to say my hiss was louder than anything that wretched thing emitted in its short, damp, leaking life.
It goes without saying that when he comes bearing gifts, I approach the unwrapping with unease and trepidation. But it has to be said he come good this Christmas, even though the prezzie was encased in birthday paper. I’d suggested an handbag. And that’s what I got – a stylish and snazzy bit of kit, and just the right size, shape, with plenty of internal pockets, adjustable shoulder-strap, and not a nasty, cardi-catching, garish brass buckle in sight. It was, more or less, exactly the detail I’d written on the note as he headed to town, targeting Brindley’s, in Babington Lane – just the one-stop shop - for his annual, oh-so-exhausting, seasonal sortie. But not quite.
It’s a brown bag. I’d asked for black. But heck, with all those 50-per-cent-off sales, it’s been quite a doddle changing the wardrobe to match the bag.
It was, after all, probably the best Christmas we’ve had, spent in a luxury cottage in the Lake District with our little family, a few flocks of sheep, four horses, cattle lowing in a lowly cattle shed, and a farm cat called Pebbles which adopted us for the week, and had to be turfed off the four-poster several times a day.
The place, all log fires and oak beams, had been festively festooned by the owners, complete with twinkling Christmas tree. Son and daughter-in-law Simon and Claire took over the kitchen, the cleaning, the cooking, and the driving, so all we had to do was wander the lanes in the cold and frosty air, indulge Jacob and Grace with grand-parental fun and games, and languish, under a big, star-filled sky, in an enormous outdoor hot-tub. Indeed, the most strenuous contribution I made was mashing the left-over veg for Boxing Day’s bubble-and-squeak. (Memo: omit the runner beans in future – they’re more fork-bending than mash-able).
Back at Orgill Towers, to a pile of presents too big to cart with us, he came into his own. Niece and nephew-in-law Cindy and Steve Alcock’s parcel contained a mushroom growing kit. It kept himself quiet until well into the New Year as he fiddled with spawned mushroom compost, casing peat, growing tray, and misting spray – not included, but hey, let’s jettison this EeZee-Orange Degreaser container with the squirty top, wash it out, fill it with water, and hey presto……stick the soggy mass down the cellar.
The step-by-step instructions, which he is following diligently, promise three mushroom "harvests" within two to three weeks of each other. Well-meaning friends who’ve been there, done that, devoured the mushroom soup, reckon they all come at once, and since, as they say, life is too short to stuff a mushroom, I’m at a loss to know what to do with the glut come reaping time.
Cindy and Steve claim they chose the gift because we’re the only people they know with a cellar. That, coupled with an uncle with a penchant for peculiar presents…..
Who can ever forget being on the receiving end of a chip pan, on Valentine’s Day, no less? No, neither can I, and his head came close to bearing a lifetime’s scars. Then there was the elegantly wrapped and massive parcel which housed a washing up bowl, dust-pan and hand-brush, but of course, it was all in jest, the thought that counts, because the brand name was Lucy. It’s times like that when you wish your mother had named you Ruby - a thought which will no doubt fall on stony ground.
And I won’t go into detail about the state-of-the-art steam floor mop. Suffice to say my hiss was louder than anything that wretched thing emitted in its short, damp, leaking life.
It goes without saying that when he comes bearing gifts, I approach the unwrapping with unease and trepidation. But it has to be said he come good this Christmas, even though the prezzie was encased in birthday paper. I’d suggested an handbag. And that’s what I got – a stylish and snazzy bit of kit, and just the right size, shape, with plenty of internal pockets, adjustable shoulder-strap, and not a nasty, cardi-catching, garish brass buckle in sight. It was, more or less, exactly the detail I’d written on the note as he headed to town, targeting Brindley’s, in Babington Lane – just the one-stop shop - for his annual, oh-so-exhausting, seasonal sortie. But not quite.
It’s a brown bag. I’d asked for black. But heck, with all those 50-per-cent-off sales, it’s been quite a doddle changing the wardrobe to match the bag.
It was, after all, probably the best Christmas we’ve had, spent in a luxury cottage in the Lake District with our little family, a few flocks of sheep, four horses, cattle lowing in a lowly cattle shed, and a farm cat called Pebbles which adopted us for the week, and had to be turfed off the four-poster several times a day.
The place, all log fires and oak beams, had been festively festooned by the owners, complete with twinkling Christmas tree. Son and daughter-in-law Simon and Claire took over the kitchen, the cleaning, the cooking, and the driving, so all we had to do was wander the lanes in the cold and frosty air, indulge Jacob and Grace with grand-parental fun and games, and languish, under a big, star-filled sky, in an enormous outdoor hot-tub. Indeed, the most strenuous contribution I made was mashing the left-over veg for Boxing Day’s bubble-and-squeak. (Memo: omit the runner beans in future – they’re more fork-bending than mash-able).
Back at Orgill Towers, to a pile of presents too big to cart with us, he came into his own. Niece and nephew-in-law Cindy and Steve Alcock’s parcel contained a mushroom growing kit. It kept himself quiet until well into the New Year as he fiddled with spawned mushroom compost, casing peat, growing tray, and misting spray – not included, but hey, let’s jettison this EeZee-Orange Degreaser container with the squirty top, wash it out, fill it with water, and hey presto……stick the soggy mass down the cellar.
The step-by-step instructions, which he is following diligently, promise three mushroom "harvests" within two to three weeks of each other. Well-meaning friends who’ve been there, done that, devoured the mushroom soup, reckon they all come at once, and since, as they say, life is too short to stuff a mushroom, I’m at a loss to know what to do with the glut come reaping time.
Cindy and Steve claim they chose the gift because we’re the only people they know with a cellar. That, coupled with an uncle with a penchant for peculiar presents…..
Christmas presents
Lucy’s column for Jan 13th
Preslo…1
Peculiar presents have raised their weird and wonderful heads several times over the nigh-on forty years I’ve been writing a column for the Derby Telegraph.
Who can ever forget being on the receiving end of a chip pan, on Valentine’s Day, no less? No, neither can I, and his head came close to bearing a lifetime’s scars. Then there was the elegantly wrapped and massive parcel which housed a washing up bowl, dust-pan and hand-brush, but of course, it was all in jest, the thought that counts, because the brand name was Lucy. It’s times like that when you wish your mother had named you Ruby - a thought which will no doubt fall on stony ground.
And I won’t go into detail about the state-of-the-art steam floor mop. Suffice to say my hiss was louder than anything that wretched thing emitted in its short, damp, leaking life.
It goes without saying that when he comes bearing gifts, I approach the unwrapping with unease and trepidation. But it has to be said he come good this Christmas, even though the prezzie was encased in birthday paper. I’d suggested an handbag. And that’s what I got – a stylish and snazzy bit of kit, and just the right size, shape, with plenty of internal pockets, adjustable shoulder-strap, and not a nasty, cardi-catching, garish brass buckle in sight. It was, more or less, exactly the detail I’d written on the note as he headed to town, targeting Brindley’s, in Babington Lane – just the one-stop shop - for his annual, oh-so-exhausting, seasonal sortie. But not quite.
It’s a brown bag. I’d asked for black. But heck, with all those 50-per-cent-off sales, it’s been quite a doddle changing the wardrobe to match the bag.
It was, after all, probably the best Christmas we’ve had, spent in a luxury cottage in the Lake District with our little family, a few flocks of sheep, four horses, cattle lowing in a lowly cattle shed, and a farm cat called Pebbles which adopted us for the week, and had to be turfed off the four-poster several times a day.
The place, all log fires and oak beams, had been festively festooned by the owners, complete with twinkling Christmas tree. Son and daughter-in-law Simon and Claire took over the kitchen, the cleaning, the cooking, and the driving, so all we had to do was wander the lanes in the cold and frosty air, indulge Jacob and Grace with grand-parental fun and games, and languish, under a big, star-filled sky, in an enormous outdoor hot-tub. Indeed, the most strenuous contribution I made was mashing the left-over veg for Boxing Day’s bubble-and-squeak. (Memo: omit the runner beans in future – they’re more fork-bending than mash-able).
Back at Orgill Towers, to a pile of presents too big to cart with us, he came into his own. Niece and nephew-in-law Cindy and Steve Alcock’s parcel contained a mushroom growing kit. It kept himself quiet until well into the New Year as he fiddled with spawned mushroom compost, casing peat, growing tray, and misting spray – not included, but hey, let’s jettison this EeZee-Orange Degreaser container with the squirty top, wash it out, fill it with water, and hey presto……stick the soggy mass down the cellar.
The step-by-step instructions, which he is following diligently, promise three mushroom "harvests" within two to three weeks of each other. Well-meaning friends who’ve been there, done that, devoured the mushroom soup, reckon they all come at once, and since, as they say, life is too short to stuff a mushroom, I’m at a loss to know what to do with the glut come reaping time.
Cindy and Steve claim they chose the gift because we’re the only people they know with a cellar. That, coupled with an uncle with a penchant for peculiar presents…..
Preslo…1
Peculiar presents have raised their weird and wonderful heads several times over the nigh-on forty years I’ve been writing a column for the Derby Telegraph.
Who can ever forget being on the receiving end of a chip pan, on Valentine’s Day, no less? No, neither can I, and his head came close to bearing a lifetime’s scars. Then there was the elegantly wrapped and massive parcel which housed a washing up bowl, dust-pan and hand-brush, but of course, it was all in jest, the thought that counts, because the brand name was Lucy. It’s times like that when you wish your mother had named you Ruby - a thought which will no doubt fall on stony ground.
And I won’t go into detail about the state-of-the-art steam floor mop. Suffice to say my hiss was louder than anything that wretched thing emitted in its short, damp, leaking life.
It goes without saying that when he comes bearing gifts, I approach the unwrapping with unease and trepidation. But it has to be said he come good this Christmas, even though the prezzie was encased in birthday paper. I’d suggested an handbag. And that’s what I got – a stylish and snazzy bit of kit, and just the right size, shape, with plenty of internal pockets, adjustable shoulder-strap, and not a nasty, cardi-catching, garish brass buckle in sight. It was, more or less, exactly the detail I’d written on the note as he headed to town, targeting Brindley’s, in Babington Lane – just the one-stop shop - for his annual, oh-so-exhausting, seasonal sortie. But not quite.
It’s a brown bag. I’d asked for black. But heck, with all those 50-per-cent-off sales, it’s been quite a doddle changing the wardrobe to match the bag.
It was, after all, probably the best Christmas we’ve had, spent in a luxury cottage in the Lake District with our little family, a few flocks of sheep, four horses, cattle lowing in a lowly cattle shed, and a farm cat called Pebbles which adopted us for the week, and had to be turfed off the four-poster several times a day.
The place, all log fires and oak beams, had been festively festooned by the owners, complete with twinkling Christmas tree. Son and daughter-in-law Simon and Claire took over the kitchen, the cleaning, the cooking, and the driving, so all we had to do was wander the lanes in the cold and frosty air, indulge Jacob and Grace with grand-parental fun and games, and languish, under a big, star-filled sky, in an enormous outdoor hot-tub. Indeed, the most strenuous contribution I made was mashing the left-over veg for Boxing Day’s bubble-and-squeak. (Memo: omit the runner beans in future – they’re more fork-bending than mash-able).
Back at Orgill Towers, to a pile of presents too big to cart with us, he came into his own. Niece and nephew-in-law Cindy and Steve Alcock’s parcel contained a mushroom growing kit. It kept himself quiet until well into the New Year as he fiddled with spawned mushroom compost, casing peat, growing tray, and misting spray – not included, but hey, let’s jettison this EeZee-Orange Degreaser container with the squirty top, wash it out, fill it with water, and hey presto……stick the soggy mass down the cellar.
The step-by-step instructions, which he is following diligently, promise three mushroom "harvests" within two to three weeks of each other. Well-meaning friends who’ve been there, done that, devoured the mushroom soup, reckon they all come at once, and since, as they say, life is too short to stuff a mushroom, I’m at a loss to know what to do with the glut come reaping time.
Cindy and Steve claim they chose the gift because we’re the only people they know with a cellar. That, coupled with an uncle with a penchant for peculiar presents…..
Monday, 29 December 2008
Christmas Cards
Earlier this month I returned from a week away to find two timely reminders that Christmas was, indeed, a-comin’. There was a pile of cards on the doormat from those who are infinitely more organised than yours truly, and a story in the papers suggesting that we give Christmas cards a miss – and that from a man of the cloth, the Right Reverend Bishop of Reading Dr Stephen Cottrell.
And for a moment, I was torn.
The Right Rev had a point after all, with his claims that the hustle and bustle, stress and strain of the season of goodwill to all men takes its toll on all and sundry, and clouds the real meaning of Christmas. And yes, cards do gather on the mat, multiply in the hall, and take over mantelpieces, shelves and walls. We, at Orgill Towers, are so short of those aforementioned resting places that ours end up Blue-Tacked on doors, even though every year I visualise them cascading from scarlet velvet ribbon, or nestling in a purpose-designed holder shaped like a Norwegian spruce.
Anyway, that moment of indecision was short-lived. After all, I’d actually made the effort and already spent the cost of a few of bottles of gin on some three-for-the-price-of-two charity designs (I missed last January’s sales), given himself instructions to revise the computer-printed addresses, which was something to do while I was away, and his sole contribution to anything bordering on the Christmas build-up. And then there were all those people out there who we never see from one year’s end to the next, expecting the usual missive.
So I girded my loins and set to with a will. Well, at least the first dozen or so were approached with something bordering on enthusiasm. But doesn’t it pall? I’m not sufficiently organised enough to compile that new-kid-on-the-block, the Round Robin, so it behoves me to write little messages in each – even though I’ve probably seen or spoken to the recipients the day before they plop through their letterboxes. I run out of witty/deep and meaningful/clever things to say, can rarely refer to their family members such as grandchildren because I can’t remember their names, and at our age, there’s always the danger that somebody on the receiving end has died, and nobody’s thought to let us know.
Then there’s the price of the postage, which amounts to a few bottles of Schweppes, and the worry that the Scouts know their way around Derby when you’ve contributed to their dyb-dyb-dyb and woggle fund. Oh dear, against my better judgement, I’m warming to Dr Cottrell’s advice by the minute. But then, he also made an almighty faux-pas by suggesting : "Instead of expensive presents, why not hand out a jar of home-made marmalade or pickled onions?"
I may take his point, though I’d rather settle for a luxurious, if useless, frippery any day, and clearly, the man has never suffered the mess the making of marmalade produces, or sat at the kitchen table, eyes and nose streaming, as he’s peeled a few pounds of shallots. So for this year anyway, I’ve dismissed him in bah-humbug mode, and taken advantage of the credit crunch crisis and every up-to-50-per-cent-off offer in pursuit of that Christmas gift list I am, one day, determined to trim.
I won’t, though, any more than I’ll stop the annual chore of card-writing, because although the spirit of Christmas may be lost in the mists of time, there is no greater joy than giving. Or, in fact, receiving. May I wish our readers not only a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year, but also say to those not on our card list, I trust the grandkids are thriving, your piles are receding, your new dentures fit, and your home-made pickled onions never go soggy. Or is that a Round Robin too far?
end
And for a moment, I was torn.
The Right Rev had a point after all, with his claims that the hustle and bustle, stress and strain of the season of goodwill to all men takes its toll on all and sundry, and clouds the real meaning of Christmas. And yes, cards do gather on the mat, multiply in the hall, and take over mantelpieces, shelves and walls. We, at Orgill Towers, are so short of those aforementioned resting places that ours end up Blue-Tacked on doors, even though every year I visualise them cascading from scarlet velvet ribbon, or nestling in a purpose-designed holder shaped like a Norwegian spruce.
Anyway, that moment of indecision was short-lived. After all, I’d actually made the effort and already spent the cost of a few of bottles of gin on some three-for-the-price-of-two charity designs (I missed last January’s sales), given himself instructions to revise the computer-printed addresses, which was something to do while I was away, and his sole contribution to anything bordering on the Christmas build-up. And then there were all those people out there who we never see from one year’s end to the next, expecting the usual missive.
So I girded my loins and set to with a will. Well, at least the first dozen or so were approached with something bordering on enthusiasm. But doesn’t it pall? I’m not sufficiently organised enough to compile that new-kid-on-the-block, the Round Robin, so it behoves me to write little messages in each – even though I’ve probably seen or spoken to the recipients the day before they plop through their letterboxes. I run out of witty/deep and meaningful/clever things to say, can rarely refer to their family members such as grandchildren because I can’t remember their names, and at our age, there’s always the danger that somebody on the receiving end has died, and nobody’s thought to let us know.
Then there’s the price of the postage, which amounts to a few bottles of Schweppes, and the worry that the Scouts know their way around Derby when you’ve contributed to their dyb-dyb-dyb and woggle fund. Oh dear, against my better judgement, I’m warming to Dr Cottrell’s advice by the minute. But then, he also made an almighty faux-pas by suggesting : "Instead of expensive presents, why not hand out a jar of home-made marmalade or pickled onions?"
I may take his point, though I’d rather settle for a luxurious, if useless, frippery any day, and clearly, the man has never suffered the mess the making of marmalade produces, or sat at the kitchen table, eyes and nose streaming, as he’s peeled a few pounds of shallots. So for this year anyway, I’ve dismissed him in bah-humbug mode, and taken advantage of the credit crunch crisis and every up-to-50-per-cent-off offer in pursuit of that Christmas gift list I am, one day, determined to trim.
I won’t, though, any more than I’ll stop the annual chore of card-writing, because although the spirit of Christmas may be lost in the mists of time, there is no greater joy than giving. Or, in fact, receiving. May I wish our readers not only a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year, but also say to those not on our card list, I trust the grandkids are thriving, your piles are receding, your new dentures fit, and your home-made pickled onions never go soggy. Or is that a Round Robin too far?
end
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Home Alone by John Orgill
John Orgill’s column for December 16.
Holilo…1
How many holidays does a woman want in a year?
I knew she was getting a bit twitchy a couple of weeks ago. It all started with murmurings about the credit crunch – not that Ower Luce knows what she’s talking about – and how much cheaper it was to do the big Christmas shop in foreign markets. Not just more economical, she reckoned, but well, you know, gifts with a difference, some imagination. Although to my mind a copy Chanel belt, for the niece-in-law-once-removed, or Louis Vuitton wallet from a Mallorcan market (never mind the quality – just cop the price) for a great-nephew we never see from one year’s end to the next, is hardly worth the cost of the economy-price air fare.
That’s her trouble, you see. My missus buys for all and sundry. And then some.
She gets in a heck of a state at this time of the year. Although she has collected stuff throughout the past ten months, by way of sales, three-for-two-, BOGOFS, and must-haves, by the time Chrissy prezzie time arrives, she’s either forgotten for whom she has bought what, or lost a bag full of "bargains" in that wilderness known to normal folk as a wardrobe. It’s a stressful time for yours truly. So I’ve just waved her a cheery farewell on EasyJet – and came back from East Midlands International shouting "Yippee. I’m free."
But honestly, I wish it was just that simple. Most times when she disappears into the wide blue-ish yonder on a get-out-of-my-space break, my social life perks up. Isn’t it odd how people feel sorry for a man alone? Mates ring up and suggest nipping out for a quickie at the local. Their wives cotton on, and insist I return to their house for a bite to eat. Sisters-in-law who barely give you the time of day for the rest of the year, suddenly take pity on home-alone John and invite you not just for sustenance, but for the entire weekend.
The trouble is, most of these charitable folk have suddenly decided to "do a Lucy". And they, too, have gone on a sun-run to far-flung outposts courtesy of booze-cruises, the Costas, Guernsey, Malta even, leaving me high and dry, and a diet of takeaways, and, in the words of she-who-must-be-obeyed, a poke about in the freezer.
Not only that, Lucy made, as usual, great play of her panic over the dreaded Christmas card list. Oh, she’d bought them – together with the ones she bought in the 2008 January sales, but couldn’t locate at the estimated time of departure. So, would I attempt the honours this year, and at least give her a head start for when she returns from her exhausting sojourn by at least putting pen to card, so that she has but a few stragglers to attend to? Oh, and by the way, it appears you have to write down a bit of a personal missive, just to let friends and acquaintances know that they’re a bit special.
Which is a timely moment to those recipients who received a formal : "Yours sincerely, Lucy and John" that this was nothing personal. Merely a lazy lapse on my part.
Because not only was I deprived of free food and drink, plus the usual home comforts of cosy nights with her by my side but also I was left with instructions to record Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor, I’m A Celebrity .. and all the other dross that dippy women indulge themselves in.
But I am making a stand. I will NOT record any of the above appalling shows. Because a couple of days before she left we had a blockage in the upstairs loo. So for the entire week of her absence I’m having my rubber-gloved hand down the bog. There’s only so much a pre-Christmas martyr can do….
end
Holilo…1
How many holidays does a woman want in a year?
I knew she was getting a bit twitchy a couple of weeks ago. It all started with murmurings about the credit crunch – not that Ower Luce knows what she’s talking about – and how much cheaper it was to do the big Christmas shop in foreign markets. Not just more economical, she reckoned, but well, you know, gifts with a difference, some imagination. Although to my mind a copy Chanel belt, for the niece-in-law-once-removed, or Louis Vuitton wallet from a Mallorcan market (never mind the quality – just cop the price) for a great-nephew we never see from one year’s end to the next, is hardly worth the cost of the economy-price air fare.
That’s her trouble, you see. My missus buys for all and sundry. And then some.
She gets in a heck of a state at this time of the year. Although she has collected stuff throughout the past ten months, by way of sales, three-for-two-, BOGOFS, and must-haves, by the time Chrissy prezzie time arrives, she’s either forgotten for whom she has bought what, or lost a bag full of "bargains" in that wilderness known to normal folk as a wardrobe. It’s a stressful time for yours truly. So I’ve just waved her a cheery farewell on EasyJet – and came back from East Midlands International shouting "Yippee. I’m free."
But honestly, I wish it was just that simple. Most times when she disappears into the wide blue-ish yonder on a get-out-of-my-space break, my social life perks up. Isn’t it odd how people feel sorry for a man alone? Mates ring up and suggest nipping out for a quickie at the local. Their wives cotton on, and insist I return to their house for a bite to eat. Sisters-in-law who barely give you the time of day for the rest of the year, suddenly take pity on home-alone John and invite you not just for sustenance, but for the entire weekend.
The trouble is, most of these charitable folk have suddenly decided to "do a Lucy". And they, too, have gone on a sun-run to far-flung outposts courtesy of booze-cruises, the Costas, Guernsey, Malta even, leaving me high and dry, and a diet of takeaways, and, in the words of she-who-must-be-obeyed, a poke about in the freezer.
Not only that, Lucy made, as usual, great play of her panic over the dreaded Christmas card list. Oh, she’d bought them – together with the ones she bought in the 2008 January sales, but couldn’t locate at the estimated time of departure. So, would I attempt the honours this year, and at least give her a head start for when she returns from her exhausting sojourn by at least putting pen to card, so that she has but a few stragglers to attend to? Oh, and by the way, it appears you have to write down a bit of a personal missive, just to let friends and acquaintances know that they’re a bit special.
Which is a timely moment to those recipients who received a formal : "Yours sincerely, Lucy and John" that this was nothing personal. Merely a lazy lapse on my part.
Because not only was I deprived of free food and drink, plus the usual home comforts of cosy nights with her by my side but also I was left with instructions to record Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor, I’m A Celebrity .. and all the other dross that dippy women indulge themselves in.
But I am making a stand. I will NOT record any of the above appalling shows. Because a couple of days before she left we had a blockage in the upstairs loo. So for the entire week of her absence I’m having my rubber-gloved hand down the bog. There’s only so much a pre-Christmas martyr can do….
end
Home Alone
Lucy’s column for December 16.
Holilo…1
How many holidays does a woman want in a year?
I knew she was getting a bit twitchy a couple of weeks ago. It all started with murmurings about the credit crunch – not that Ower Luce knows what she’s talking about – and how much cheaper it was to do the big Christmas shop in foreign markets. Not just more economical, she reckoned, but well, you know, gifts with a difference, some imagination. Although to my mind a copy Chanel belt, for the niece-in-law-once-removed, or Louis Vuitton wallet from a Mallorcan market (never mind the quality – just cop the price) for a great-nephew we never see from one year’s end to the next, is hardly worth the cost of the economy-price air fare.
That’s her trouble, you see. My missus buys for all and sundry. And then some.
She gets in a heck of a state at this time of the year. Although she has collected stuff throughout the past ten months, by way of sales, three-for-two-, BOGOFS, and must-haves, by the time Chrissy prezzie time arrives, she’s either forgotten for whom she has bought what, or lost a bag full of "bargains" in that wilderness known to normal folk as a wardrobe. It’s a stressful time for yours truly. So I’ve just waved her a cheery farewell on EasyJet – and came back from East Midlands International shouting "Yippee. I’m free."
But honestly, I wish it was just that simple. Most times when she disappears into the wide blue-ish yonder on a get-out-of-my-space break, my social life perks up. Isn’t it odd how people feel sorry for a man alone? Mates ring up and suggest nipping out for a quickie at the local. Their wives cotton on, and insist I return to their house for a bite to eat. Sisters-in-law who barely give you the time of day for the rest of the year, suddenly take pity on home-alone John and invite you not just for sustenance, but for the entire weekend.
The trouble is, most of these charitable folk have suddenly decided to "do a Lucy". And they, too, have gone on a sun-run to far-flung outposts courtesy of booze-cruises, the Costas, Guernsey, Malta even, leaving me high and dry, and a diet of takeaways, and, in the words of she-who-must-be-obeyed, a poke about in the freezer.
Not only that, Lucy made, as usual, great play of her panic over the dreaded Christmas card list. Oh, she’d bought them – together with the ones she bought in the 2008 January sales, but couldn’t locate at the estimated time of departure. So, would I attempt the honours this year, and at least give her a head start for when she returns from her exhausting sojourn by at least putting pen to card, so that she has but a few stragglers to attend to? Oh, and by the way, it appears you have to write down a bit of a personal missive, just to let friends and acquaintances know that they’re a bit special.
Which is a timely moment to those recipients who received a formal : "Yours sincerely, Lucy and John" that this was nothing personal. Merely a lazy lapse on my part.
Because not only was I deprived of free food and drink, plus the usual home comforts of cosy nights with her by my side but also I was left with instructions to record Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor, I’m A Celebrity .. and all the other dross that dippy women indulge themselves in.
But I am making a stand. I will NOT record any of the above appalling shows. Because a couple of days before she left we had a blockage in the upstairs loo. So for the entire week of her absence I’m having my rubber-gloved hand down the bog. There’s only so much a pre-Christmas martyr can do….
end
Holilo…1
How many holidays does a woman want in a year?
I knew she was getting a bit twitchy a couple of weeks ago. It all started with murmurings about the credit crunch – not that Ower Luce knows what she’s talking about – and how much cheaper it was to do the big Christmas shop in foreign markets. Not just more economical, she reckoned, but well, you know, gifts with a difference, some imagination. Although to my mind a copy Chanel belt, for the niece-in-law-once-removed, or Louis Vuitton wallet from a Mallorcan market (never mind the quality – just cop the price) for a great-nephew we never see from one year’s end to the next, is hardly worth the cost of the economy-price air fare.
That’s her trouble, you see. My missus buys for all and sundry. And then some.
She gets in a heck of a state at this time of the year. Although she has collected stuff throughout the past ten months, by way of sales, three-for-two-, BOGOFS, and must-haves, by the time Chrissy prezzie time arrives, she’s either forgotten for whom she has bought what, or lost a bag full of "bargains" in that wilderness known to normal folk as a wardrobe. It’s a stressful time for yours truly. So I’ve just waved her a cheery farewell on EasyJet – and came back from East Midlands International shouting "Yippee. I’m free."
But honestly, I wish it was just that simple. Most times when she disappears into the wide blue-ish yonder on a get-out-of-my-space break, my social life perks up. Isn’t it odd how people feel sorry for a man alone? Mates ring up and suggest nipping out for a quickie at the local. Their wives cotton on, and insist I return to their house for a bite to eat. Sisters-in-law who barely give you the time of day for the rest of the year, suddenly take pity on home-alone John and invite you not just for sustenance, but for the entire weekend.
The trouble is, most of these charitable folk have suddenly decided to "do a Lucy". And they, too, have gone on a sun-run to far-flung outposts courtesy of booze-cruises, the Costas, Guernsey, Malta even, leaving me high and dry, and a diet of takeaways, and, in the words of she-who-must-be-obeyed, a poke about in the freezer.
Not only that, Lucy made, as usual, great play of her panic over the dreaded Christmas card list. Oh, she’d bought them – together with the ones she bought in the 2008 January sales, but couldn’t locate at the estimated time of departure. So, would I attempt the honours this year, and at least give her a head start for when she returns from her exhausting sojourn by at least putting pen to card, so that she has but a few stragglers to attend to? Oh, and by the way, it appears you have to write down a bit of a personal missive, just to let friends and acquaintances know that they’re a bit special.
Which is a timely moment to those recipients who received a formal : "Yours sincerely, Lucy and John" that this was nothing personal. Merely a lazy lapse on my part.
Because not only was I deprived of free food and drink, plus the usual home comforts of cosy nights with her by my side but also I was left with instructions to record Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor, I’m A Celebrity .. and all the other dross that dippy women indulge themselves in.
But I am making a stand. I will NOT record any of the above appalling shows. Because a couple of days before she left we had a blockage in the upstairs loo. So for the entire week of her absence I’m having my rubber-gloved hand down the bog. There’s only so much a pre-Christmas martyr can do….
end
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Jean Charity
Lucy’s column for December 9
Jeanlo…1
Derby daughter Jean Charity fell in love with Palma, Mallorca, from the top deck of a cruise ship docked in its magnificent harbour.
After the break-down of her marriage to a Derby businessman, and the death of her two precious Maltese terriers, Jean had long felt the need to pick herself up, dust herself down, and start all over again. After all, as she claims, she couldn’t live her life on the edge of her many friends, however supportive and kind they were in her hour of need.
Spurred on by her disillusion with life in the UK, her love of the sun, and itchy feet, the independent and feisty Jean made the decision, there and then, to relocate to this island paradise. For just a couple of years, maybe…. That was eight years ago. And she’s still there. And what’s kept her there? Well, actually, a touch of cancer.
And "A Touch of Cancer" is the title of a book she has written during the past gruelling six years since she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphona, at a very advanced stage. Jean, former secretary to Geoff Lambert at Frank Innes, self-confessed party girl, well known in Derbyshire for her charity work, put down one of the initial symptoms – severe fatigue – to her penchant for partying most of the night at her "somewhat advanced age". She was, in fact, only in her early 60s. There was neither rhyme nor reason for the hair loss, but the diarrhoea she blamed on climatic and dietary changes. And the itching was nothing to do with vagabond shoes feet, but the invasion of weird and wonderful insects which her apartment harboured.
This is no maudlin amble through the trials and tribulations of diagnosis, treatments, prognosis. In the true, up-beat Jean Charity style which her many Derby friends and acquaintances are more aware of than I am, she shows a fearless spirit and acceptance of all that life has thrown at her and her fellow-sufferers. And her humour knows no bounds. She leaves not a stone – good or bad – unturned. But there is a chuckle or a belly-laugh on every page.
Let’s face it, there’s nothing light-hearted about such unsociable conditions as diarrhoea, wind, bladder weakness, but Jean takes them by the throat and squeezes amusement out of them all. Her section on sexual activity is positively side-splitting. But there’s an overwhelming sense of fight, peace, acceptance, throughout.
A lot of it’s down to attitude, apparently, a fact borne out by her Spanish oncologist – and here, we have to bear in mind that Jean was being treated in a foreign land, relying on translators most of the time – who assured her at the time of diagnosis : "You will get through – you have the right attitude". Jean admits a positive attitude is hard to maintain when you’re sick and in pain. But by comparison it serves to make the better days even more precious.
Jean may be far from her Derby roots, but her many friends here have proved a supportive influence on her problem. Indeed, we learned about the book from her old pals Gill Maynard (senior stylist at Keith Hall’s hairdressers, and I’m not saying for how many years!), and that gastronomic host-with-the-most Joe Waldron, when we met them, quite by chance, when they were staying at the smart and expensive La Residencia Hotel, in Deya, Mallorca, where we’d popped in for a drink. They were over there to see Jean, and waxed lyrical about their brave and inspirational friend. I’ve since spoken to her. They didn’t underestimate her courage, compassion and comedy.
Jean will be in Derby in the New Year to launch, and sign, her book. She can be contacted by e-mail at jean@ginales.com. A percentage of the royalties will go to a cancer charity.
end
Jeanlo…1
Derby daughter Jean Charity fell in love with Palma, Mallorca, from the top deck of a cruise ship docked in its magnificent harbour.
After the break-down of her marriage to a Derby businessman, and the death of her two precious Maltese terriers, Jean had long felt the need to pick herself up, dust herself down, and start all over again. After all, as she claims, she couldn’t live her life on the edge of her many friends, however supportive and kind they were in her hour of need.
Spurred on by her disillusion with life in the UK, her love of the sun, and itchy feet, the independent and feisty Jean made the decision, there and then, to relocate to this island paradise. For just a couple of years, maybe…. That was eight years ago. And she’s still there. And what’s kept her there? Well, actually, a touch of cancer.
And "A Touch of Cancer" is the title of a book she has written during the past gruelling six years since she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphona, at a very advanced stage. Jean, former secretary to Geoff Lambert at Frank Innes, self-confessed party girl, well known in Derbyshire for her charity work, put down one of the initial symptoms – severe fatigue – to her penchant for partying most of the night at her "somewhat advanced age". She was, in fact, only in her early 60s. There was neither rhyme nor reason for the hair loss, but the diarrhoea she blamed on climatic and dietary changes. And the itching was nothing to do with vagabond shoes feet, but the invasion of weird and wonderful insects which her apartment harboured.
This is no maudlin amble through the trials and tribulations of diagnosis, treatments, prognosis. In the true, up-beat Jean Charity style which her many Derby friends and acquaintances are more aware of than I am, she shows a fearless spirit and acceptance of all that life has thrown at her and her fellow-sufferers. And her humour knows no bounds. She leaves not a stone – good or bad – unturned. But there is a chuckle or a belly-laugh on every page.
Let’s face it, there’s nothing light-hearted about such unsociable conditions as diarrhoea, wind, bladder weakness, but Jean takes them by the throat and squeezes amusement out of them all. Her section on sexual activity is positively side-splitting. But there’s an overwhelming sense of fight, peace, acceptance, throughout.
A lot of it’s down to attitude, apparently, a fact borne out by her Spanish oncologist – and here, we have to bear in mind that Jean was being treated in a foreign land, relying on translators most of the time – who assured her at the time of diagnosis : "You will get through – you have the right attitude". Jean admits a positive attitude is hard to maintain when you’re sick and in pain. But by comparison it serves to make the better days even more precious.
Jean may be far from her Derby roots, but her many friends here have proved a supportive influence on her problem. Indeed, we learned about the book from her old pals Gill Maynard (senior stylist at Keith Hall’s hairdressers, and I’m not saying for how many years!), and that gastronomic host-with-the-most Joe Waldron, when we met them, quite by chance, when they were staying at the smart and expensive La Residencia Hotel, in Deya, Mallorca, where we’d popped in for a drink. They were over there to see Jean, and waxed lyrical about their brave and inspirational friend. I’ve since spoken to her. They didn’t underestimate her courage, compassion and comedy.
Jean will be in Derby in the New Year to launch, and sign, her book. She can be contacted by e-mail at jean@ginales.com. A percentage of the royalties will go to a cancer charity.
end
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Comfort Food
Lucy’s column for December 2
Foodlo..1
Ooh, it was a gourmet delight, and one we hadn’t savoured since Adam was a lad.
We’re talking rabbit pie. And it was on the menu at my friend Pauline Phillips’s house the other night. That, along with a huge dish of lamb’s liver and onions. And I was spoilt for choice. I could have been picky and settled for some of each – one or two people did just that, so overwhelmed were they with the options – except it would have meant a smaller piece of pie. But when it comes to rabbit, I’m a bit of a pig. And rabbit is so much tastier than pork, not to mention cheaper.
Indeed, this particular rabbit was free, I understand. It fell off the back of a Landrover, somewhere in the wilds of Derbyshire, making it a well-bred English young buck, which hadn’t so much as glimpsed a supermarket shelf, let alone originated in foreign parts.
In the same week, we dined at our friends the Skivos – Julie and Rob Skivington, who are equally as lavish and imaginative with their hospitality as Pauline. And Julie isn’t behind the oven door when it comes to conjuring up dishes to make your juices run. After all, with five children, four of them strapping lads, she’s had enough practice. But on this particular night, she excelled, with bangers and mash, mushy peas, and onion gravy.
It could be just him and me, but when it comes to food, we go for comfort. Show us a bowl of caviar, and we’ll settle for the home-made tuna pate. Try the temptation of a T-bone, and I’ll be howling for egg and chips. And the one oyster I once attempted didn’t even reach the back of my throat before nausea took over, so there’s not much comfort in that embarrassing dash to the loo.
So you see, with the credit crunch, we’re well prepared on the cheap and cheerful, tasty and nourishing, gastronome front. And I write this in a week when foodies announce, with a great fanfare of trumpets, that beef suet is back on the menu. To be honest, I’d never realised it had been off, because there’s always a packet lurking in our fridge, not just for dumplings, but baked, as a pie crust, in the oven, and so much simpler to make than pastry.
During my time as women’s editor of this paper, with a regular cookery column, it was a standing joke that Lucy knew fourteen ways with a pound of mince, and it has to be said that mince still figures largely in this household’s culinary delights, emerging as rissoles, cottage pies, the more exotic lasagnes, and easy-peasy spag bols. And casseroles and stews reign supreme, bulked out with loads of vegetables to keep the five-a-day police off our backs. These concoctions are switched on at bed-time, and next morning, what better to waken up to than the heavenly smell of that night’s dinner.
You see, I couldn’t exist without a slow cooker, which is in action at least once a week. On a tour of Derbyshire recently, we happened upon the famous Maycock’s butchers in Holloway. It was where Julie bought the aforementioned sausages, in so many flavours and varieties that she couldn’t choose – so ended up with two of each. And it was there I espied a whole ox tail, just begging to be bought. That, alongside a couple of pounds of shin beef and kidney, has made three huge meat pies, and two bowls of stew.
There should be somebody out there passing on this old-fashioned, economical fare to today’s youngsters who aim for little more than a burger in a bun. Even I’m still learning. It’s over to Pauline, because I haven’t cooked a rabbit for 40 years.
end
Foodlo..1
Ooh, it was a gourmet delight, and one we hadn’t savoured since Adam was a lad.
We’re talking rabbit pie. And it was on the menu at my friend Pauline Phillips’s house the other night. That, along with a huge dish of lamb’s liver and onions. And I was spoilt for choice. I could have been picky and settled for some of each – one or two people did just that, so overwhelmed were they with the options – except it would have meant a smaller piece of pie. But when it comes to rabbit, I’m a bit of a pig. And rabbit is so much tastier than pork, not to mention cheaper.
Indeed, this particular rabbit was free, I understand. It fell off the back of a Landrover, somewhere in the wilds of Derbyshire, making it a well-bred English young buck, which hadn’t so much as glimpsed a supermarket shelf, let alone originated in foreign parts.
In the same week, we dined at our friends the Skivos – Julie and Rob Skivington, who are equally as lavish and imaginative with their hospitality as Pauline. And Julie isn’t behind the oven door when it comes to conjuring up dishes to make your juices run. After all, with five children, four of them strapping lads, she’s had enough practice. But on this particular night, she excelled, with bangers and mash, mushy peas, and onion gravy.
It could be just him and me, but when it comes to food, we go for comfort. Show us a bowl of caviar, and we’ll settle for the home-made tuna pate. Try the temptation of a T-bone, and I’ll be howling for egg and chips. And the one oyster I once attempted didn’t even reach the back of my throat before nausea took over, so there’s not much comfort in that embarrassing dash to the loo.
So you see, with the credit crunch, we’re well prepared on the cheap and cheerful, tasty and nourishing, gastronome front. And I write this in a week when foodies announce, with a great fanfare of trumpets, that beef suet is back on the menu. To be honest, I’d never realised it had been off, because there’s always a packet lurking in our fridge, not just for dumplings, but baked, as a pie crust, in the oven, and so much simpler to make than pastry.
During my time as women’s editor of this paper, with a regular cookery column, it was a standing joke that Lucy knew fourteen ways with a pound of mince, and it has to be said that mince still figures largely in this household’s culinary delights, emerging as rissoles, cottage pies, the more exotic lasagnes, and easy-peasy spag bols. And casseroles and stews reign supreme, bulked out with loads of vegetables to keep the five-a-day police off our backs. These concoctions are switched on at bed-time, and next morning, what better to waken up to than the heavenly smell of that night’s dinner.
You see, I couldn’t exist without a slow cooker, which is in action at least once a week. On a tour of Derbyshire recently, we happened upon the famous Maycock’s butchers in Holloway. It was where Julie bought the aforementioned sausages, in so many flavours and varieties that she couldn’t choose – so ended up with two of each. And it was there I espied a whole ox tail, just begging to be bought. That, alongside a couple of pounds of shin beef and kidney, has made three huge meat pies, and two bowls of stew.
There should be somebody out there passing on this old-fashioned, economical fare to today’s youngsters who aim for little more than a burger in a bun. Even I’m still learning. It’s over to Pauline, because I haven’t cooked a rabbit for 40 years.
end
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Home is where ....
Lucy’s column for November 25
Homelo..1
They say that home is where the heart is. Or, it has been said, the hearth. And in my very early days, that usually meant a black-leaded grate, with a side oven which permanently housed a simmering stew pot, and a shelf-like contraption on a bracket which swung back and forth over the fire on which sat a blackened, but non-stop bubbling, kettle.
After years of fiddling with flues, dampers, spitting kettles and boiled-dry casseroles, how my mother glowed with pride, and sighed with relief, when the great lump of heavy metal, which took her most of Friday to clean within an inch of its life, was yanked out, and replaced with thoroughly modern tiled fireplace. She still had to deal with the ashes, the coal bucket, paper sticks, kindling, and the twice-yearly mess known as the visit of the chimney sweep. So that, on the eventual installation of a flick-of-a-switch gas fire, she must have thought all her birthdays had come at once.
Fast forward a generation or two, and what have we got in its place? In our case, central heating, with a pretend coal-fuelled stove in one room, which glows like the real thing if we can be bothered to plug it in, and in another, a rather smart dog grate, complete with real logs, but with a red-glow bulb where the flickering flames should be. It could have been different. We could have opted for pebbles and posh candles.
But there are house-hunters who still crave those old-fashioned forms of heating the house – though they insist on the back-up of radiators, just to be on the safe, snug and warm side. I’ve watched them swoon at the sight of an ancient range, sigh over an ingle-nook, go potty at the idea of a belching pot-bellied stove. And how do I know? Well, I’m a closet day-time telly-viewer who occasionally catches a glimpse of these "to buy or not to buy a house in the country/in the sun" shows which crop up with alarming regularity.
Fireplaces apart, the wish-list of some of these home-seekers never ceases to amaze.
It’s hard not to hark back to dolly-tubs and wooden mangles in the back yard when they’re presented with fully-fitted, shiny utility rooms bigger and better than the average kitchen, and the tin bath hanging on the kitchen door when they’re viewing family bathrooms, wet rooms, shower rooms, and the ubiquitous en-suites, sometimes all in the same building. Other home-comfort must-haves appear to be a study, children’s room, summer room, TV room, snug, loft living space, and a kitchen vast enough to incorporate a banquet-size table, three-piece, family games computer, and 52-inch flat screen TV just in case there isn’t somewhere to house the home cinema.
In one recent airing, the would-be purchaser also demanded a room for the dogs. It’s not that long since it was the norm for kids to not only share a bedroom, but sleep three or four to a bed. The dog often had its own space, admittedly. It was known as a kennel.
I’ve not even touched on the basement, with its rumpus and games rooms, wine cellar, or the triple garage with electronic up-and-over doors. In the majority of the programmes, these are families with fewer than 2.4 children, and often couples looking to "downsize". Is it all a bid to keep up with the Jones’s? Or simply, like me, a deep-seated phobia of coal buckets and fire-lighters?
Ginlo..1
I’ll raise a glass to my favourite tipple, the gin and tonic, which last week celebrated 150 years as the world’s first cocktail. It’s long been a nightly treat as I cook the dinner. And I assuage any guilt by considering its juniper berries and lemon slice as two of those five-a-day fruit portions the health police are always banging on about.
end
Homelo..1
They say that home is where the heart is. Or, it has been said, the hearth. And in my very early days, that usually meant a black-leaded grate, with a side oven which permanently housed a simmering stew pot, and a shelf-like contraption on a bracket which swung back and forth over the fire on which sat a blackened, but non-stop bubbling, kettle.
After years of fiddling with flues, dampers, spitting kettles and boiled-dry casseroles, how my mother glowed with pride, and sighed with relief, when the great lump of heavy metal, which took her most of Friday to clean within an inch of its life, was yanked out, and replaced with thoroughly modern tiled fireplace. She still had to deal with the ashes, the coal bucket, paper sticks, kindling, and the twice-yearly mess known as the visit of the chimney sweep. So that, on the eventual installation of a flick-of-a-switch gas fire, she must have thought all her birthdays had come at once.
Fast forward a generation or two, and what have we got in its place? In our case, central heating, with a pretend coal-fuelled stove in one room, which glows like the real thing if we can be bothered to plug it in, and in another, a rather smart dog grate, complete with real logs, but with a red-glow bulb where the flickering flames should be. It could have been different. We could have opted for pebbles and posh candles.
But there are house-hunters who still crave those old-fashioned forms of heating the house – though they insist on the back-up of radiators, just to be on the safe, snug and warm side. I’ve watched them swoon at the sight of an ancient range, sigh over an ingle-nook, go potty at the idea of a belching pot-bellied stove. And how do I know? Well, I’m a closet day-time telly-viewer who occasionally catches a glimpse of these "to buy or not to buy a house in the country/in the sun" shows which crop up with alarming regularity.
Fireplaces apart, the wish-list of some of these home-seekers never ceases to amaze.
It’s hard not to hark back to dolly-tubs and wooden mangles in the back yard when they’re presented with fully-fitted, shiny utility rooms bigger and better than the average kitchen, and the tin bath hanging on the kitchen door when they’re viewing family bathrooms, wet rooms, shower rooms, and the ubiquitous en-suites, sometimes all in the same building. Other home-comfort must-haves appear to be a study, children’s room, summer room, TV room, snug, loft living space, and a kitchen vast enough to incorporate a banquet-size table, three-piece, family games computer, and 52-inch flat screen TV just in case there isn’t somewhere to house the home cinema.
In one recent airing, the would-be purchaser also demanded a room for the dogs. It’s not that long since it was the norm for kids to not only share a bedroom, but sleep three or four to a bed. The dog often had its own space, admittedly. It was known as a kennel.
I’ve not even touched on the basement, with its rumpus and games rooms, wine cellar, or the triple garage with electronic up-and-over doors. In the majority of the programmes, these are families with fewer than 2.4 children, and often couples looking to "downsize". Is it all a bid to keep up with the Jones’s? Or simply, like me, a deep-seated phobia of coal buckets and fire-lighters?
Ginlo..1
I’ll raise a glass to my favourite tipple, the gin and tonic, which last week celebrated 150 years as the world’s first cocktail. It’s long been a nightly treat as I cook the dinner. And I assuage any guilt by considering its juniper berries and lemon slice as two of those five-a-day fruit portions the health police are always banging on about.
end
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Ross-Brand affair
Lucy’s column for November 18.
Celeblo…1
Assuming the dust has just about settled on the Brand-Ross affair – nothing to do with fish fingers – and the Beeb, can I stick my head above the parapet and give my two penn’orth?
To get it out of the way, until the recent furore, I’d barely heard of the chap Brand, except to gather he was a long-haired, sex-mad, would-be "comedian" with a penchant for puerile behaviour, and not a lot going on upstairs. As regards his oppo, the boy Ross, he was the one whose juvenile Saturday morning programme on Radio 2 – complete with a sycophantic Andy who was forced to titter uncontrollably at his boss’s pathetic attempts at humour – made us switch the off-button on our hitherto happy weekend wireless listening many years ago. To be fair, I shouldn’t really be commenting because I’ve rarely been privy to the pathetic pair. Except they belong right there. In the privy.
But I can. As a wartime baby, I was brought up on the wireless. This was in the days before TV reared its intrusive head. We listened to elections, Grand Nationals, Wimbledon, the news. And if we hadn’t been fortunate enough to have a neighbour with a telly, the Queen’s Coronation would have been heard, and not seen.
Our crackling, Bakelite affair was permanently tuned in to the Light Programme, as opposed to the Home Service, which was a bit more serious.
Friday night was Music Night, with Henry Hall and his Orchestra. There was a daily dose of Housewives’ Choice, which my mother and her four sisters wrote in to regularly with birthday requests, to no avail, though the thought of hearing their names over the airways kept them glued.
Who could forget Workers’ Playtime? - with the presenter visiting office and factory locations all over the country, and the euphoria of Down Your Way, with Franklin Engelman, actually coming to Matlock is embedded in my psyche because we knew most of the people interviewed. And no Sunday dinner and its lazy aftermath was complete without Two Way Family Favourites, the Billy Cotton Band Show, and Sing Something Simple.
It wasn’t just music which raised the wartime, post-war, and rationing spirits. The likes of Al Read, Charlie Chester, Tommy Handley, Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne kept the nation chuckling, and Round the Horn, with its clever innuendo courtesy of Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick, may have been a tad risque, but was never the in-your-face vulgarity we hear today.
Compare Have a Go, with Wilfred Pickles, and Violet Carson, who went on to find fame as Coro’s Ena Sharples, at the piano, Twenty Questions, and Top of the Form, with the current offering of brash, garish quiz shows, and you had entertainment without the glitz and the greed.
Way before soap operas, and even The Archers, we had our everyday stories of family folk with Meet the Huggets and Life with the Lyons. Educating Archie made ventriloquist Peter Brough a household name – no, you couldn’t see his lips move – and stars of that cheeky little wooden puppet Archie Andrews’ sidekicks, Petula Clark and Max Bygraves.
This is not to dismiss totally BBC radio’s present-day offerings, though I can’t speak for Radio One because I’ve never actually sought it on my dial. But early morning "Bunty" – Sarah Kennedy, who can be a bit of a hoot, but never vile – Wogan and his TOGs, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Steve Wright, and Chris Evans, and the occasional dose of deep and meaningful discussion on Radio Four, are the characters and programmes which make for a favourite "Auntie".
Those who need their daily dose of vulgarity and bile should do what I had to when my mother whittered on at me for listening to Radio Luxembourg’s brain-numbing, wall-to-wall music: get under the bedclothes, with a fading battery and a dodgy station.
end
Celeblo…1
Assuming the dust has just about settled on the Brand-Ross affair – nothing to do with fish fingers – and the Beeb, can I stick my head above the parapet and give my two penn’orth?
To get it out of the way, until the recent furore, I’d barely heard of the chap Brand, except to gather he was a long-haired, sex-mad, would-be "comedian" with a penchant for puerile behaviour, and not a lot going on upstairs. As regards his oppo, the boy Ross, he was the one whose juvenile Saturday morning programme on Radio 2 – complete with a sycophantic Andy who was forced to titter uncontrollably at his boss’s pathetic attempts at humour – made us switch the off-button on our hitherto happy weekend wireless listening many years ago. To be fair, I shouldn’t really be commenting because I’ve rarely been privy to the pathetic pair. Except they belong right there. In the privy.
But I can. As a wartime baby, I was brought up on the wireless. This was in the days before TV reared its intrusive head. We listened to elections, Grand Nationals, Wimbledon, the news. And if we hadn’t been fortunate enough to have a neighbour with a telly, the Queen’s Coronation would have been heard, and not seen.
Our crackling, Bakelite affair was permanently tuned in to the Light Programme, as opposed to the Home Service, which was a bit more serious.
Friday night was Music Night, with Henry Hall and his Orchestra. There was a daily dose of Housewives’ Choice, which my mother and her four sisters wrote in to regularly with birthday requests, to no avail, though the thought of hearing their names over the airways kept them glued.
Who could forget Workers’ Playtime? - with the presenter visiting office and factory locations all over the country, and the euphoria of Down Your Way, with Franklin Engelman, actually coming to Matlock is embedded in my psyche because we knew most of the people interviewed. And no Sunday dinner and its lazy aftermath was complete without Two Way Family Favourites, the Billy Cotton Band Show, and Sing Something Simple.
It wasn’t just music which raised the wartime, post-war, and rationing spirits. The likes of Al Read, Charlie Chester, Tommy Handley, Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne kept the nation chuckling, and Round the Horn, with its clever innuendo courtesy of Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick, may have been a tad risque, but was never the in-your-face vulgarity we hear today.
Compare Have a Go, with Wilfred Pickles, and Violet Carson, who went on to find fame as Coro’s Ena Sharples, at the piano, Twenty Questions, and Top of the Form, with the current offering of brash, garish quiz shows, and you had entertainment without the glitz and the greed.
Way before soap operas, and even The Archers, we had our everyday stories of family folk with Meet the Huggets and Life with the Lyons. Educating Archie made ventriloquist Peter Brough a household name – no, you couldn’t see his lips move – and stars of that cheeky little wooden puppet Archie Andrews’ sidekicks, Petula Clark and Max Bygraves.
This is not to dismiss totally BBC radio’s present-day offerings, though I can’t speak for Radio One because I’ve never actually sought it on my dial. But early morning "Bunty" – Sarah Kennedy, who can be a bit of a hoot, but never vile – Wogan and his TOGs, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Steve Wright, and Chris Evans, and the occasional dose of deep and meaningful discussion on Radio Four, are the characters and programmes which make for a favourite "Auntie".
Those who need their daily dose of vulgarity and bile should do what I had to when my mother whittered on at me for listening to Radio Luxembourg’s brain-numbing, wall-to-wall music: get under the bedclothes, with a fading battery and a dodgy station.
end
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Blast from the past
Lucy’s column for November 11th.
Pastlo…1
A blast from my past flew through cyber-space all the way from 6514 Joy Road, Dexter, Michigan, a couple of weeks ago. And if anybody from the Canal Street/Carrington Street area of Derby, circa late 50s, early 60s, remembers the corner off-licence there, run by Ray and Betty Greatorex, then their son Clive wants to hear from them.
I recall the couple who kept what was known as "the 10 o’clock shop" – presumably because it stayed open until 10 pm – and their children, though, 50 years on, I wouldn’t have known their names. But Clive reminisces about his parents rushing over to the Barley Corn Inn, Canal Street, which my parents kept for a while, for the last half-hour’s drinking. And it was there that I, apparently, gave him some Elvis 78s, which he still has, hanging on the basement of his home, in what looks from the photograph to be a shrine to the King.
With his missive came a few more photos, including one of his mum – now 85 – and me, at a dance. I’d have been about 20 at the time, and we were both dolled up to the nines, yours truly, in what must have been a Grace Kelly moment, sporting a strapless gown, what looks like my granny’s "good" pearls, hair done up in a chignon, and with not just a waist, but one measuring little more than 20 inches. That’s near enough my dress size today!
Another photograph is of customers presenting Betty and Ray with a clock, when they retired from the shop. I don’t recognise anybody, but these are some of the people Clive wants to track down because he’s writing an account of his life for his grandchildren – grandchildren? He’s nowt but a lad.
I’m still waiting to hear where his mother lives, and how he arrived on Joy Road, Dexter, but from images on Google Earth, Clive has done very well for himself because his house looks like Southfork.
Incidentally, he and his wife supported Barak Obama, Michigan being an Obama State, and this isn’t his first venture into the hallowed columns of the Derby Telegraph. A few years ago he wrote an article for Bygones on the group he played in during the 60s, as a lead up to the Big Beat Bash in 2002, at the old Locarno, which resulted in "hooking up" with a few old friends. He can be e-mailed on clive_gtx@yahoo.com
I’m not too sure these recollections of our youth do much for our today’s image.
Twice every year, I meet up with my friend Pauline Worthy, nee Cowley, formerly of Darley House Estate, which was a bit posh, and with whom I shared my primary school days, and teenage and early motherhood years. We had such a day just the other week. Pauline, still as bright, bubbly, and talkative as ever, is a constant reminder of my School Certificate failures – she went on to teacher training college, and by the age of 22, was teaching English and maths at a Matlock secondary school. She gave up teaching to go into a heady and Very High Powered career with the Civil Service. And during all this, she and husband Alan produced four strapping sons – two more than me.
She turns up in blue mascara, the latest must-have fashion, perfectly coiffed hair, and is totally wrinkle-free. She regularly reminds me of when I was the flirty, flighty, blonde bombshell of what was known as the Matlock monkey-run, which took us across the town’s stone bridge, along Dale Road to the wooden foot-bridge, and back along the Hall Leys park, all the while pretending not to be on the look-out for lads!
Memories are made of this. Perhaps readers could help Clive Greatorex with his.
end
Pastlo…1
A blast from my past flew through cyber-space all the way from 6514 Joy Road, Dexter, Michigan, a couple of weeks ago. And if anybody from the Canal Street/Carrington Street area of Derby, circa late 50s, early 60s, remembers the corner off-licence there, run by Ray and Betty Greatorex, then their son Clive wants to hear from them.
I recall the couple who kept what was known as "the 10 o’clock shop" – presumably because it stayed open until 10 pm – and their children, though, 50 years on, I wouldn’t have known their names. But Clive reminisces about his parents rushing over to the Barley Corn Inn, Canal Street, which my parents kept for a while, for the last half-hour’s drinking. And it was there that I, apparently, gave him some Elvis 78s, which he still has, hanging on the basement of his home, in what looks from the photograph to be a shrine to the King.
With his missive came a few more photos, including one of his mum – now 85 – and me, at a dance. I’d have been about 20 at the time, and we were both dolled up to the nines, yours truly, in what must have been a Grace Kelly moment, sporting a strapless gown, what looks like my granny’s "good" pearls, hair done up in a chignon, and with not just a waist, but one measuring little more than 20 inches. That’s near enough my dress size today!
Another photograph is of customers presenting Betty and Ray with a clock, when they retired from the shop. I don’t recognise anybody, but these are some of the people Clive wants to track down because he’s writing an account of his life for his grandchildren – grandchildren? He’s nowt but a lad.
I’m still waiting to hear where his mother lives, and how he arrived on Joy Road, Dexter, but from images on Google Earth, Clive has done very well for himself because his house looks like Southfork.
Incidentally, he and his wife supported Barak Obama, Michigan being an Obama State, and this isn’t his first venture into the hallowed columns of the Derby Telegraph. A few years ago he wrote an article for Bygones on the group he played in during the 60s, as a lead up to the Big Beat Bash in 2002, at the old Locarno, which resulted in "hooking up" with a few old friends. He can be e-mailed on clive_gtx@yahoo.com
I’m not too sure these recollections of our youth do much for our today’s image.
Twice every year, I meet up with my friend Pauline Worthy, nee Cowley, formerly of Darley House Estate, which was a bit posh, and with whom I shared my primary school days, and teenage and early motherhood years. We had such a day just the other week. Pauline, still as bright, bubbly, and talkative as ever, is a constant reminder of my School Certificate failures – she went on to teacher training college, and by the age of 22, was teaching English and maths at a Matlock secondary school. She gave up teaching to go into a heady and Very High Powered career with the Civil Service. And during all this, she and husband Alan produced four strapping sons – two more than me.
She turns up in blue mascara, the latest must-have fashion, perfectly coiffed hair, and is totally wrinkle-free. She regularly reminds me of when I was the flirty, flighty, blonde bombshell of what was known as the Matlock monkey-run, which took us across the town’s stone bridge, along Dale Road to the wooden foot-bridge, and back along the Hall Leys park, all the while pretending not to be on the look-out for lads!
Memories are made of this. Perhaps readers could help Clive Greatorex with his.
end
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Sex education
Sexlo contd…2
It has to be said that this bit of role play was more to do with bandages and broken legs than giving birth, because in our tender years, babies came in a doctor’s little black bag, or from under a gooseberry bush, so I probably believed I was born on the local allotments because all we had in our garden was a few sticks of rhubarb. But we kept our eye on that doctor’s visits, and lo and behold, the sighting of the local GP with his Gladstone often resulted in Mrs So-and-So emerging a week or two later with a swaddled infant.
I really don’t recall any serious sex education, either from school or from my mother, and it was probably at secondary school where I learned the life-cycle of a frog, and the prolific mating habits of rabbits, which all ended up in a bit of a giggle-fest. But I was fortunate enough to spend the first few years of that secondary education at boarding school, so what I learned from after-lights-out girly talk, plus the bodily-changes of my peers, was enough to set me on the straight and narrow as a teenager. My mum, bless her call-a-spade-a shovel character, must have fought shy of the whole shebang.
Apart from regularly uttering the mantra : "Like time and tide, wait for no man" - which has stood me in good stead all my life! – her one acknowledgement of my coming-of-puberty was two bras, two pairs of stockings, two suspender belts, and a pack of you-know-what, languishing on my bed one half-term.
I’m not suggesting that my experience was proper and correct. But I’m convinced that a childhood free of all the trials and tribulations of womanhood when you’re nowt but a nipper is the innocence today’s children deserve. And guess what? None of we ignoramuses became teenage mothers.
end
It has to be said that this bit of role play was more to do with bandages and broken legs than giving birth, because in our tender years, babies came in a doctor’s little black bag, or from under a gooseberry bush, so I probably believed I was born on the local allotments because all we had in our garden was a few sticks of rhubarb. But we kept our eye on that doctor’s visits, and lo and behold, the sighting of the local GP with his Gladstone often resulted in Mrs So-and-So emerging a week or two later with a swaddled infant.
I really don’t recall any serious sex education, either from school or from my mother, and it was probably at secondary school where I learned the life-cycle of a frog, and the prolific mating habits of rabbits, which all ended up in a bit of a giggle-fest. But I was fortunate enough to spend the first few years of that secondary education at boarding school, so what I learned from after-lights-out girly talk, plus the bodily-changes of my peers, was enough to set me on the straight and narrow as a teenager. My mum, bless her call-a-spade-a shovel character, must have fought shy of the whole shebang.
Apart from regularly uttering the mantra : "Like time and tide, wait for no man" - which has stood me in good stead all my life! – her one acknowledgement of my coming-of-puberty was two bras, two pairs of stockings, two suspender belts, and a pack of you-know-what, languishing on my bed one half-term.
I’m not suggesting that my experience was proper and correct. But I’m convinced that a childhood free of all the trials and tribulations of womanhood when you’re nowt but a nipper is the innocence today’s children deserve. And guess what? None of we ignoramuses became teenage mothers.
end
Sex Education
Lucy’s column for November 4th
Sexlo…1
Now, what was I doing when at infants and primary school? I certainly had the three Rs drilled into me, by a lovely team of teachers who I thought were ancient, but with some perhaps only in their 30s, but delivered with such intensity and interest that by the time I left Class One, I could read, and ‘rite, though ‘rithmatic baffled me then. And continues so to do.
It was a school play-time of hopscotch, skipping games, hand-stands, and leap-frog, all the while willing the lads to loan you a conker or a bull’s eye marble to show your prowess on the macho front. Before sulking on the back row of the form’s afternoon music sessions with the miserable triangle when you craved the front row with the tambourine – the boys always got the drums – or dreaming of the day you were asked to read out YOUR poem, or landing the part of the Virgin Mary in the school’s nativity instead of a one-liner angel with dodgy wings and chunky legs.
What I’m getting round to saying is that there were far more things to worry about as a school-kid than sex-n-drugs-rock-n-roll. This comes in the light of the latest edict from our nincompoop nanny state, which proclaims sex sessions for tiny tots as young as five. It’s something I cannot get to grips with.
When we weren’t belting around the playground, playing hide and seek or tick-a-nit, the majority of my female compatriots were at home with whips and tops, a dressing-up box, in the back yard under the clothes horse covered with a sheet with a tea-set and soggy sandwiches our claim to housewifery fame. We had dolls and prams – my friend, animal lover Lil Bancroft, didn’t have dolls and made do with the family cat, done up in a bonnet, lolling in the pram, until one legged it in the Arboretum, but that’s another story - before moving on to Doctors and Nurses.
Sexlo…1
Now, what was I doing when at infants and primary school? I certainly had the three Rs drilled into me, by a lovely team of teachers who I thought were ancient, but with some perhaps only in their 30s, but delivered with such intensity and interest that by the time I left Class One, I could read, and ‘rite, though ‘rithmatic baffled me then. And continues so to do.
It was a school play-time of hopscotch, skipping games, hand-stands, and leap-frog, all the while willing the lads to loan you a conker or a bull’s eye marble to show your prowess on the macho front. Before sulking on the back row of the form’s afternoon music sessions with the miserable triangle when you craved the front row with the tambourine – the boys always got the drums – or dreaming of the day you were asked to read out YOUR poem, or landing the part of the Virgin Mary in the school’s nativity instead of a one-liner angel with dodgy wings and chunky legs.
What I’m getting round to saying is that there were far more things to worry about as a school-kid than sex-n-drugs-rock-n-roll. This comes in the light of the latest edict from our nincompoop nanny state, which proclaims sex sessions for tiny tots as young as five. It’s something I cannot get to grips with.
When we weren’t belting around the playground, playing hide and seek or tick-a-nit, the majority of my female compatriots were at home with whips and tops, a dressing-up box, in the back yard under the clothes horse covered with a sheet with a tea-set and soggy sandwiches our claim to housewifery fame. We had dolls and prams – my friend, animal lover Lil Bancroft, didn’t have dolls and made do with the family cat, done up in a bonnet, lolling in the pram, until one legged it in the Arboretum, but that’s another story - before moving on to Doctors and Nurses.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Enjoying bad health
Lucy’s column for October 21st
Doclo..1
Years ago, my mother once said of a neighbour who was a permanent fixture in the local doctor’s surgery queue : "She enjoys bad health…".In other words, she was a hypochondriac. This was the section of society which my old mum treated with total contempt, since she was one of those stoics who, in the 46 years I knew her, never went into hospital, and succumbed in her latter years only to an under-active thyroid which meant taking a tablet a day – which she loathed and detested doing, treating it as a weakness, rather than a life-saver.
Indeed, on the day she died, in her 81st year, she woke up feeling "a bit iffy", went downstairs and rang the doctor, went back to bed to await his arrival, and shuffled off her mortal coil as calmly and uncomplainingly as she had lived her life, just a couple of hours later.
So this "can’t bother that busy doctor – mustn’t be a drain on the NHS", attitude must have rubbed off on me, because I really have to gird my loins before I pick up a phone and ask for appointments. I don’t suffer from what’s known as the white coat syndrome so far as I know. I like to think I have a fairly good relationship with the young man who’s been monitoring my fairly hum-drum and boringly normal blood pressure for the past 20 years. I tend to limit my visits to perhaps two a year. But when I go, I certainly go, with a list, and the question : "Shall we start with my head, and work downwards, or the other way around?"
That doesn’t mean to say I’m a paragon of virtuous good health. In fact, most days I feel like rubbish, and my one gleeful thought of the day is actually waking up – alive and kicking. So far, I’ve been in hospital for the birth of one of my two babies – I had the second at home – wisdom teeth extraction, varicose veins – which came back with a vengeance just a few years later, and are still there – and the dreaded breast cancer lumpectomy. I can’t really count the cataracts. It only took about 20 minutes and I didn’t even have to take so much as my shoes off.
But despite my reluctance to cave in to what is known in medical circles as "the fat file" – the aforementioned hypochondria – I’m in the hospital appointments, and repeat prescriptions, loop. I have a yearly blood-letting date. And an annual mammogram at the Breast Clinic. And yes, the Statins are washed down with the nightly cocoa. I’m a martyr to a hideous corn, and a "bad back". As I write, the latter has been stopped in its tracks with some over-the-counter pain killers, and a heat-emitting ugly truss thing-y, which himself found on Google, which was lying beside me, stuck to the sheets, along with a corn plaster, next morning.
Talking of feet – oh, those 50s stilettoes have a lot to answer for – he, and Google, have come up with a cheese-grater contraption heralded as The Ultimate Foot File, so gentle it won’t burst a balloon, which claims to remove callouses and dry skin, neither of which I suffer from. I’m not sure what my chiropodist June Allen will make of it. It may trap the shavings in a little egg. But nothing calms a corn like June.
Currently, I’m awaiting the results of recent visits to the jolly vampires at the DRI, and the wonderful girls at the Derby City General Breast Unit. Fingers crossed. Back aching. Corn throbbing. I hope I don’t sound smug. I so want to be like my mum.
end
Doclo..1
Years ago, my mother once said of a neighbour who was a permanent fixture in the local doctor’s surgery queue : "She enjoys bad health…".In other words, she was a hypochondriac. This was the section of society which my old mum treated with total contempt, since she was one of those stoics who, in the 46 years I knew her, never went into hospital, and succumbed in her latter years only to an under-active thyroid which meant taking a tablet a day – which she loathed and detested doing, treating it as a weakness, rather than a life-saver.
Indeed, on the day she died, in her 81st year, she woke up feeling "a bit iffy", went downstairs and rang the doctor, went back to bed to await his arrival, and shuffled off her mortal coil as calmly and uncomplainingly as she had lived her life, just a couple of hours later.
So this "can’t bother that busy doctor – mustn’t be a drain on the NHS", attitude must have rubbed off on me, because I really have to gird my loins before I pick up a phone and ask for appointments. I don’t suffer from what’s known as the white coat syndrome so far as I know. I like to think I have a fairly good relationship with the young man who’s been monitoring my fairly hum-drum and boringly normal blood pressure for the past 20 years. I tend to limit my visits to perhaps two a year. But when I go, I certainly go, with a list, and the question : "Shall we start with my head, and work downwards, or the other way around?"
That doesn’t mean to say I’m a paragon of virtuous good health. In fact, most days I feel like rubbish, and my one gleeful thought of the day is actually waking up – alive and kicking. So far, I’ve been in hospital for the birth of one of my two babies – I had the second at home – wisdom teeth extraction, varicose veins – which came back with a vengeance just a few years later, and are still there – and the dreaded breast cancer lumpectomy. I can’t really count the cataracts. It only took about 20 minutes and I didn’t even have to take so much as my shoes off.
But despite my reluctance to cave in to what is known in medical circles as "the fat file" – the aforementioned hypochondria – I’m in the hospital appointments, and repeat prescriptions, loop. I have a yearly blood-letting date. And an annual mammogram at the Breast Clinic. And yes, the Statins are washed down with the nightly cocoa. I’m a martyr to a hideous corn, and a "bad back". As I write, the latter has been stopped in its tracks with some over-the-counter pain killers, and a heat-emitting ugly truss thing-y, which himself found on Google, which was lying beside me, stuck to the sheets, along with a corn plaster, next morning.
Talking of feet – oh, those 50s stilettoes have a lot to answer for – he, and Google, have come up with a cheese-grater contraption heralded as The Ultimate Foot File, so gentle it won’t burst a balloon, which claims to remove callouses and dry skin, neither of which I suffer from. I’m not sure what my chiropodist June Allen will make of it. It may trap the shavings in a little egg. But nothing calms a corn like June.
Currently, I’m awaiting the results of recent visits to the jolly vampires at the DRI, and the wonderful girls at the Derby City General Breast Unit. Fingers crossed. Back aching. Corn throbbing. I hope I don’t sound smug. I so want to be like my mum.
end
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