Christmas Tradition

Everyone has their own Christmas traditions and whatever yours are I hope you are really enjoying them. Whether you were looking forward to this day or dreading it, the build up is often quite stressful. Sparkly Christmas Anxiety takes over, as those of us who live by the list need a book of lists to co-ordinate the lists. (There used to be a writing rule that you didn’t repeat the same word in a sentence but I think times have changed and we can get lists done as many times as we like)

The Christmas tradition that I enjoy the most is going to church on Christmas Eve for the five o clock  candlelight service, before cracking open the Prosecco and sharing a mince pie with some friends.

It may seem a strange thing for me to enjoy. The vicar certainly thought so.
“Hello Julia. Another carol service?”
He had a look on his face that said, “Are you mad, woman?”
But, as I explained,  “I don’t have to do anything for this one. It’s down to you.”
Maybe that’s the appeal. It’s like a re-run of my previous month, without the pressure but I think it’s more than that.

We have been going to this service since my daughter started school. The church and the school have strong links and at that time the five o clock service was a crib service led by an extrovert vicar who ended with a stand up/ sit down version of the twelve days of Christmas. As the years went on, the service became more popular and it would be standing room only by 4.45.  When the extrovert retired people gave him loads of pigs (stuffed, china, wood) because he once mentioned liking them) and eventually he was replaced by a quiet musician, who secretly thought the whole thing was a bit mad.
His church wardens told him that he couldn’t get rid of the 12 days but he wanted to make it his own.
He split the service in two. A three o clock crib service for the small children and a five o clock service of light for us bigger kids. Both services are now heaving and to get a seat you have to be there an hour before but it’s worth it.

I’m not sure I’m a religious person because I can’t quite cope with one doctrine but I am spiritual and the metaphors around religious traditions appeal to me. Every year the church wardens do a risk assessment, conclude that it’s risky and then they go for it anyway. It’s this trust and the throwing away of the health and safety rule book that I find most inspiring.

Everyone gets a candle and they turn the lights out. The main candle is brought up the centre aisle and as the Christmas story is told and carols are sung the light from the large candle is passed from person to person. The church slowly fills with light and warmth. I love the metaphor. Sometimes you can smell singed hair or the edge of a carol book catches light but mostly it’s beautiful and peaceful.

It’s not this part of the service that most people come for, though. The twelve days is still the draw. There are four sections of the church. Section one gets to sing about the first, fifth, ninth day. Section two, the 2nd, 6th, 10th etc. Each section stands up to sing their line. Everyone wants the be Five Gold Rings and people queue at the door to get themselves in the right pews.
While we were waiting for the service to start I said to the Long Suffering Husband that it would be funny if they changed the sections.
“I would, if I was in charge,” I told him. “Change it up a bit.”
He thought that was wicked but we talked around the idea for a while, wondering if people would be upset or find it funny. We saw that one of my sparkly friends was in the Five Gold Rings pew.
“I’m going to text her,” the LSH said. “I’m going to say that I’ve had a word with the vicar and he’s promised to make us five gold rings this year.”
I didn’t let him. I thought it would be mean.

When we got to the end of the service, the vicar abdicated his responsibility to a church warden and an Elf.  They must have heard us.  We were the first section. The usual five gold rings crowd were relegated to 3, 7 and 11. They weren’t happy but what could they do? It wouldn’t be in the spirit of a Christmas to start a punch up in church over not getting to sing Five Gold Rings. So instead, it became a competition. They might not have been able to sing five gold rings but three French hens were the loudest you had ever heard. Each section then raised their game and and if we couldn’t have been heard on the moon then I’d have been surprised. This was achieved with good humour and followed up by the most rousing, heartfelt ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas.’

There was a real sense of community and shared experience as everyone left.

I plan to keep some of that feeling with me throughout the whole Christmas period and wish you all a very merry Christmas before I go off to peel my sprouts.

Big Nan Loved a Sequin

“I’m keeping the mint sauce jug! I know! When am I ever going to have mint sauce? But I just can’t! It’s the mint sauce jug. All those Sunday dinners!”

My sister had been through the kitchen of my parents’ house to see what she wanted to keep and now it was my turn.

“Oh, look,” I said pulling two tall glasses with red and blue flowers and a black rim from the glass cupboard, “Long hot summers. Coke float.” The memories flooded back and she decided to keep them.

The problem with stuff is that memories attach to it and memories are precious. You can touch a fairly ugly glass and suddenly be freewheeling down a country lane in 1976 on your second hand bike with the annoying beads attached to the spokes, breaking the silence of the hot day with the constant rhythmical clattering. The sound sends pheasants springing up from the edge of the heavy wheat field, through the oil-like haze rising from the tarmac beneath your wheels. You are imagining the coke float that your mum will make you, using her new soda stream, when you get back.

We have exchanged contracts on the house and have until the 3rd of January to get everything out. No one else is worried about this time frame, so I’m sure it will be fine.

The other day I was reminded of my grandparents’ Golden wedding anniversary and I wrote that my Nan was in a sequinned outfit. As I wrote it I thought, “Big Nan bloody loved a sequin.”
This seems a strange sentence to pop into your head but it is true.
Growing up, we had two Nans. My mum’s mum (little Nan) and my dad’s mum (big Nan).
There was a significant difference in size. Big Nan must have been 5ft 10 and a size 16, with the most comfortable shelf-like bosom that gave you a hug within a hug. When resting she would place her folded arm on top of her bust.

By the time my sister was born Nan and Grandad had moved into a seniors assisted living complex, where the bathroom smelled of Lilly of the Valley bath salts and had a big red handled cord for emergencies. There was a communal hall and lots of opportunities for joining in. When I stayed I loved going to the events and talking to all Nanny’s friends. They were so interesting, with so many stories. Grandad took great pride in learning how to call the bingo.
“Everyone knows two fat ladies is eighty eight but you have to know that in a sate is number 28 and dirty Gertie lives at number thirty.”
One of my greatest accomplishments is winning a huge bar of Dairy Milk at bingo, although thinking back, they have rigged a win because I rarely got a single line.

Big Nan enjoyed all sort of crafts. She taught me to knit (no mean feat, as I am and always was the clumsiest person). One of the classes she took was making pictures by winding sparkly thread around pins. From that she progressed to her favourite craft, which was sewing sequins on felt and adding embroidery to make pictures. Pushed right at the back of the under stairs cupboard we found the picture that Nan had given to Mum and Dad for Christmas one year.

“What are we going to do with that?” I asked my sister. “I not sure I can throw it away. It’s the memories.”
She agreed.
“Actually, I could let it go if I just took a picture. Mum and Dad couldn’t have liked it or it wouldn’t be shoved in the back of the cupboard.”
“No. They loved it,” she insisted.
I suspect it will have pride of place over her mantelpiece and every time I visit I will be reminded that Big Nan loved a sequin.

Who You Gonna Call?

The world has gone slightly mad. It seems to be suffering from teenage angst. Politicians are deciding that there is a date from which we will never be able to say a made-up word again. It will be done and so using the word will become a thought crime. When I was a teenager I devoured dystopian fiction, horror books and read everything I could about the supernatural. Although, I knew the world was still full of Secret Garden and Little House on the Prairie I wanted to read about the very worst because I’d stepped out of my egocentric bubble and noticed a faint whiff of despair. The world seems to be acting out these novels of my teenage years. Soon, we will all know the temperature at which books burn.

My little town has also lost the plot. Yes, I know we have a nice new bookshop and a silo shop and it looks great from the outside, with a pretty estuary park, more historical buildings than seems possible  and at least four choirs (a town that sings together wins together) but it is firmly in the grip of teenage angst.

At my Aunt and Uncle’s anniversary lunch my sister was telling someone about where we live.
“Yes, it’s lovely,” she said “But we did just have our first murder.”
The death of a young man walking down the High Street and being set upon by some other drunk young men looking for a fight was tragic but it wasn’t the first murder. It wasn’t even the first that started at that spot. In 1582, two shoemakers had a fist fight in Friars Mead, which I think is the same alley. They followed it up with a duel at dawn with pike staffs in the Heybridge rectory but the result was the same.

Then there was the famous murder in the cow barn of 1814. William Belsham had his head beaten in by William Seymore, a returning seaman, who then stole his silver pocket watch and chain, a pound note and 25 shillings.

Obviously, there was also the White House murders and after the ITV drama in the new year you will have as many opinions on it as the rest of the town.

About the time I moved here there was a big murder case going on. A body had been found in a concrete coffin at the back of a Turkish kebab shop. The body was that of the owner,  Fezvi Demir and although two people confessed and were imprisoned the case remains ‘unsolved’ because the conviction was unsafe due to an unreliable pathologist. I remember the case at the time because the builder who had found the body had said that the place was in a terrible state. The electricity had been cut off and the meat in the freezers were rotten and contained maggots the size of alligators. (There are some things you read in your local paper that can never be forgotten.)

A town with so many murders will clearly have a ghost problem. Maldon is, apparently, one of the most haunted places and you could find out more by taking one of the ghost walks or visiting Beeleigh Abbey. However, in the true sprint of teenage angst our town is no longer happy to let these spirits roam free.




I saw this sign in the chip shop. Who you gonna call?

One in a Hundred.

My uncle and aunt celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary yesterday. They are my ‘lynchpin’ cousin’s parents, so it was an absolute privilege to be invited to celebrate with them. We had a beautiful meal at a pub with the best name (The Unruly Pig). Before we went I had struggled to find a card. It’s always tricky to find any kind of card in December, as my Mum always used to complain when we were looking for my sister’s birthday, but a card to celebrate 60 years of marriage seemed very rare. My Aunt told me that her doctor had said that she was lucky to have made it, as only one in one hundred couples reach this milestone.

I’ve trawled the Office of National Statistics websites for wedding anniversary stats because I’m that sad kind of person but I can’t find anything official to back up the doctor’s claim. I remember when my grandparents had been married 50 years, it was treated as some kind of miracle. We had a party in a village hall with a big cake. My Nan was resplendent in a sequinned outfit, delighting in her score of grandchildren, running feral around the hall with balloons. Grandad sat in the corner, sucking toffee with a twinkle in his eye, like an off-duty Father Christmas. Everyone kept saying how amazing it all was. When it was my parent’s Golden Wedding Anniversary, they didn’t seem very old and it didn’t feel like such a big deal.

Lynchpin had arranged for her parents to be collected in a vintage white Rolls Royce and brought to the pub where we we were all secretly waiting. Because I’m like Arthur Christmas (“I have to worry. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”) I contemplated the risk of shouting, ‘surprise!’ at a couple of eighty year olds (this is poetic license and not meant as an insult to my Aunt who hasn’t reached that number yet). However, it was all fine and their surprised faces showed no trace of an impending stroke. My Uncle is a quieter version of my Dad with more hair, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that they would take it all in their stride. He and the Russian spy are the only two of the eight siblings left. My dad always referred to him as the ‘good one’. Apparently, he was always well behaved at school, getting on with everything in a quiet way. It was clear, though, he still had the family sense of humour and the trademark family kindness.

We had a brilliant afternoon. My sister was on sparkling form, as we told her, ‘my naughty little sister stories.’ Everyone laughed about the time she covered herself in creosote five minutes before a family Christening because she didn’t want to wear the pretty dress. Lynchpin’s lovely friend concluded that there were two kinds of people in the world: square (which included me and her) and funny (which was my sister and Lynchpin). It can be quite harsh to hear that you’re not funny and Lynchpin’s husband wasn’t sure he liked that bit of the description, even though he had to confess that he was square, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of skip sizes.

My uncle told how he’d joked with the postman on receiving his card from the Queen.
“A card from the palace, you’re not 100, are you?” The surprised postman asked.
“Nope,” my uncle told him.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Ninety-five,” he said, quick as a flash, stunning the confused postie into silence.

The Queen doesn’t only send cards for 100 birthdays but she also sends them for105 birthdays and every year thereafter and also 60, 65 and 70 wedding anniversaries. She doesn’t personally send them but has staff in the anniversaries office of the Palace to do the job.  A while ago, I saw a job advert for the position. For £21,000 a year, you could be responsible for checking the details and making sure the right people get the right cards on the right day. People have often speculated about whether the Queen will send herself a telegram on her hundredth birthday but she could have sent herself three cards already for her wedding anniversaries. When I was looking for stats on wedding anniversaries I found this blog Why-the-Queen-is-1-in-a-million, which did some maths to come up with the likelihood of reaching your Platinum wedding anniversary as being one in a million.

When my aunt told me what her doctor had said about being one in a hundred and explained that her secret was belonging to the bowling club I thought that they were more like one in a million. Hopefully, they will continue to have a long and happy life and prove the statistics right.

Knowing When to Quit

It has been a strange few weeks. I’ve taken on too much and I’m suffering for it. My brain has been decidedly holey. I know that’s not a word but it should be. Move over Shakespeare, you’re not the only one who can make up words. Where was I? Oh yes, brain full of holes, you see? Easily distracted, unable to focus on much, leaving my bank card in shops and being full of cold.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. Even the dog is a bit run down with a cut on his lip and a cough. (Vet bills always make you appreciate the NHS). I expect politicians, vicars, journalists and music teachers everywhere feel the same.

People who are in this kind of frantic state aren’t easy to help. They don’t take kindly to being told to step down. They worry that if they take their finger out of the hole the world will flood. Even if they aren’t doing the best job they just can’t stop.

Political commentators are speculating about why Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t resigned. There is a strange interview with him in the Guardian today where he says that he won the argument. Clearly, he didn’t win the argument because the Labour Party were devastated at the polls. The problem came because he only had the argument with people that already agreed with him. Those of us who would like a Labour Government need to accept that the next leader needs to be someone who doesn’t necessarily appeal to those who are already going to vote for them but one that convinces others that their policies are a good thing. The left also needs to stop being so tribal and work together a bit more. But Jeremy Corbyn can’t quit. He’s not a quitter, he will stubbornly see things through to the bitter end and beyond.

Being tenacious is a strength most of the time. However, there are occasions when you just need to give in and let someone else step in, without feeling like that makes your whole life a failure.

This morning, I should be standing on the freezing cold prom with a bass clarinet in my hands to play music while hundreds of Santas run around me.

It is usually the point where I feel I might be hallucinating but that happened a week earlier this year, with the blue cat, so I’m giving in. I’m going to have a morning on the sofa with the dog, a box of tissues and a lemsip before I pull myself together and keep on going. Like Jeremy, I’m not ready to completely quit yet.

General Election

I don't sleep much, so I have watched in horror as the results from the General Election are announced. 

If I were a conservative or a Brexit supporter I would be thrilled but I'm not.

Yesterday, I wrote about how this was a bizarre election campaign where it had become a request to vote for who you disliked the least.  I'm not surprised there has been a Conservative victory but I am surprised at just how badly Labour has done. Actually, I'm not.  Their campaign was awful.  They sat on the fence, they didn't bother to argue their case and their MPs were divided over so many issues.  The Conservatives, on the other hand, ran a campaign that worked.

This morning our children will be waking up to have learnt a few things that worry me.

1. If you want to win you have to repeat a meaningless phrase.  There is a word for this: battology.  The children won't have learnt the word but they will know that if they want to win an argument they can just say the same thing until the other person gives up.  This happens a lot already in school. We try to not let them get away with this because it is morally wrong but they may have learnt that it works.

2.  You don't need to tell the truth - winners lie more than the losers. There is no doubt that many of the Conservative statements have been less than truthful and still they have secured the overwhelming majority of the votes. Again, teachers really try to instill a moral accountability in their pupils.  It's not OK to lie, we tell them but will they now know that's how to become a leader.

3.  If you don't want to answer a question you can just hide in a fridge, or under a table.  This happens a lot when you teach and mostly teachers have assumed that these children won't get on in life.  Now we know that they are the future leaders.

These things make me sad.  I would like to live in a world where we are kind and honest. 

Have You Checked in the Fridge?

This election has been the weirdest thing.

I always suspected it would be because it was all wrong. In 2011 the government passed the fixed term parliament act, which meant there would be an election on the first Thursday of May five years after the last election. The incumbent government used to be able to choose when to have the election at a time convenient, within a 3-5 year period and that gave them an enormous advantage. The 2015 general election followed the new law but neither Theresa May nor Boris Johnson believed it applied to them and because they are the government they can amend laws whenever they like, tomorrow will be the second general election since 2015. And tomorrow’s election isn’t even in May.

Every music teacher in the land groaned at the thought of a December election. Fitting an election into a schedule where a mince pie for breakfast, a Quality Street lobbed at you from a distance makes a good lunch and a couple of chips stolen from a family member’s plate as you leave the house, dressed as the Michelin man to play carols in the freezing cold seemed impossible. Watching debates and keeping up with the news has been next to impossible.

Normally, I would read the manifestos and make up my own mind but this time I’ve had to rely on the sound bites and snippets that I get from the radio and Twitter. I watched a few TV debates and have always been a Question Time junky, although I do miss David Dimpledknees.

Every day the election campaign got weirder. There were things you couldn’t write in a dystopian novel because no one would believe you.

Instead of being a poll to find out who is most popular it seems to be choosing the person you dislike the least and politicians have gone out of their way to show us why we should hate them.

Jeremy Corbyn has been his usual humourless, uncompromising self. Members of his own party have been recorded saying that they can’t win the election because of him. The chief Rabbi has told everyone not to vote Labour because the leader is anti-Semitic.  The deputy resigned and Jeremy wished that the horseradish he gave him would thrive (this is an allotment owners curse). After all these years of austerity and cuts to public services, where schools, the NHS, social care and even to a certain extent the Police are at crisis point a Labour government should have won easily but Jeremy Corbyn can’t quite understand that people need to be persuaded. The party are divided on the issue of Brexit and the leader has decided to sit on the fence.

Jo Swinson has annoyed everyone because she’s a woman and no one likes her dresses. Sarah Vine said she liked her. Then she upset a lot of women, who don’t want your average teenage pervert to be able to hang out in ladies toilets because he says that today he feels like a woman, by saying

that sex isn’t binary. I don’t think she was saying that she enjoys a threesomes and although I don’t really understand it, this does seem to have been her bacon sandwich moment.

Boris Johnson has been delighting everyone with his buffoonery. People seem to love him for it. Personally, I can’t understand that. An idiot with an impressive vocabulary and ability to quote Greek myths in Latin is still an idiot.
I have learnt a lot of new words from him and have been keeping a Boris dictionary on my phone. Lacuna has been my favourite so far.
“He’s not an idiot, he’s impulsive,” I was told by someone yesterday.
His impulses aren’t those of a sane person and he has been a gift to those of us that like to mock. Every day it seems to get a little worse. He has been very clear on his single message. “Get Brexit done,” he shouts as he knocks down a wall with a digger, grinning like a happy toddler before striding away to let others clear up the mess. He keeps telling us that he has a half-baked deal. Sorry, I think the phrase he used was oven ready but they amount to the same thing. He took a journalists phone and shoved it in his pocket to avoid looking at the picture he was being shown, he made throat slitting actions while talking about the NHS on LBC radio. And then, today he hid in a fridge.

When my children were still at home and I got a little stressed I would often lose things. My keys accidentally ended up in the fridge a few times and so whenever I couldn’t find something one of them would shout, “have you checked the fridge?” If only one of my children had been working on GMB yesterday.

People running around, panicking because the live broadcast with the PrimeMinister is due to start.
“Have you seen him?”
“No. He was here and then he found out that we weren’t going to just take selfies and let him play with a digger.”
“Really? Weren’t we? I’ve built a wall specially.”
“Damon, you prize idiot. I know you’re not being paid for this work experience but...”
“Sorry, I thought it would be fun.”
“Well anyway, he’s gone.”
“Apparently, he didn’t want to talk about the NHS, lying or anything really. He wanted to drive a milk float. It’s been a lifelong ambition.”
“We’ve lost the Prime Minister.”
“Have you checked the fridge?”

I know it didn’t exactly go like this, however it is the last in a long line of funny things.

Tomorrow, we will get a rest. They will be standing outside their polling stations, trying to get a feel on how people have voted. The press aren’t allowed to comment and we will have to wait until the early hours of the morning to see how it’s going.

I will make time to vote even though I’m cross that they are asking us to. I will also take my dog for his #dogsatpollingstations selfie and see if he ends up on the Chinese news with the caption that could translate to something about looking like a tasty dinner.

Busily Hallucinating

A music teacher wrote on Twitter yesterday, “I know everyone is tired and it’s not a competition but there’s no tired like a music teacher in December tired.”

It’s true and I’ve finally got to the hallucinating stage where nothing seems to make sense anymore. There are so many pieces and accompaniments going around in my head that I’m not sure what is real anymore. Did I really forget how the song the choir sang at a church service last night went or did the CD start in the middle?  It’s not surprising. Between the 29th November and 18th December I will have taken part in thirteen musical events, as well as my normal teaching, having flute pupils take exams and dealing with the stressful business of selling my parents’ house. A musical performance messes with your Adrenalin and makes sleep pretty difficult.

So, when, at the weekend, I did the most bizarre performance of my life, I wasn’t sure if it was real.
I took a smaller version of the Youth Orchestra to play some festive tunes at the museum of power.
The Long Suffering Husband came with me because he’d never been before and was curious.
We parked in a very muddy field and walked in, across a tiny bridge and miniature railway track to a huge turbine hall that smelled of machine grease.
“I’ve never been here before, “ the LSH said for the fifth time.
I reminded him that I had but as it was in the period that my traumatised brain has chosen to completely forget I couldn’t tell him anything about it, except what I’d written in my blog, which was that it was a place with grammatically incorrect signs threatening to smack badly behaved children and sell their parents.

They had left a little circle of chairs in an area in the middle of a few fed up looking stall holders, where we set up. It was rather quiet. Some of the stall holders perked up at the thought of being entertained.
“Can we make requests?” asked the lady with the nice make-up bags.
“Yes, almost any Christmas Carol,” I told her.
“Do you have a list?”
I gave her a music book to flip through. She chose Mission Impossible.
We started to play and a few more people appeared. I gave jingle bells to some stall holders and distracted the orchestra by waving my arms and talking about all the people in Christmas Carols.
“Let’s play David, then Wayne.”
They all knew that I meant Away in a Manger.
“Gerry, next. You know. Gerry Mentlemen.”
They started to join in.
“There’s Joy and Joyce. You could play Joyce twice and you’d get rejoice.”

After a little while the machines decided to join in with huge sighs and belches.
The stall holders had cheered up and a huge blue cat type thing tapped me on the shoulder. I gave it some jingle bells and it danced around me. I thought I had lost it. My mind totally gone for good. I had started hallucinating and then I looked at the orchestra, who were creasing up. The cat wasn’t in my head. I’m sure one of the older players mouthed words that fitted the acronym WTAF.

We finished our 45 minute set and started to pack up. They had played really well and people started to come over to say nice things.
“Are they all your children?” a man asked me and followed it up with, “Its nice to see a family group,” when I said, “No. They are from our local Youth Orchestra.”
That was quite bizarre. I’ve never thought I looked like someone who could have popped out 9 children between the ages of 11 and 18 and turned them into the VonTrapps but he wasn’t the only person to say it.

Next, a lady I knew asked me the same question.
I used her name and told her the name of the orchestra, which was also on our stand banners.
“Oh,” she said, repeating the name of the orchestra.
“Did you know Norman?”
I was a bit surprised and said nothing for a while, trying to work out how I was going to confess to knowing my own father.
In the pause she continued.
“Because he was wonderful, Norman. He set up the orchestra and ran it all on his own.”
I used her name again and told her that she knew me and that I was Norman’s daughter.
“Oh well, you would have known him then, I suppose,” she said.

I did and I also knew that he didn’t think he set it up and ran it on his own. We started it together, drove my mum mad by talking about it all time at every family gathering.  We wouldn’t have been able to do so without all the help we’ve had from so many people over the years. In the last two years it is the place me and my wobbly brain have felt the most supported.

On the walk home from the church last night I met a man who was frantically looking for a lost pet.
He was calling its name.
“Excuse me. Have you seen a cat. It’s a big blue. It just ran out and down the path.”
I looked back and swear I saw the big blue cat from Sunday disappear into the trees leaving only a smile.

Okay Boomer

There’s a nasty little phrase that’s entered our language recently: ‘Okay Boomer’. It is to be said, sarcastically, to anyone you don’t agree with and it’s making me feel quite sad.

The implication of the phrase is that anyone in the baby boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) have had everything so easy and can’t possibly understand what someone else is going through. It’s also a way of negating the experience of older people. This is a really weird aspect of human nature that seems to be hard-wired and counter-productive.  Don’t listen to your elders, gyrate your hips like Elvis Presley and do all the things they could have told you were mistakes. Clearly, as humans we need to make our own mistakes and think we are the first to invent the wheel.

I’m generation X, so I could stomp around and shout, “Okay Boomer. Whatever. Just know that it’s not fair!”

It’s such a horrible ageist position to take, though. Just because a generation had a lot of things that were great (introduction of free healthcare, lots of them paying tax, high employment, the ability to buy their own homes) it doesn’t mean they didn’t have hardships, or that they can’t empathise with the difficulties of the current generation. Empathy is a gift. Those shouting, “Okay Boomer,” at everyone they disagree with would benefit from that gift.

I know lots of Boomers who have virtually bought their children’s houses, acted as free childcare and are selfless, wonderful, compassionate people. They understand. They also know that when they bought their own houses they didn’t eat out every night, have two foreign holidays a year and furnish their homes with expensive grey matching furniture. They used the packing crates for furniture and huddled round a calor gas fire.

This ageism makes people feel as though they should be ashamed of getting older. They are made to feel as though they should apologise for the perceived luck of their generation, float into the background or pretend to be much younger than they are.

Yesterday, I walked into town at lunchtime, to get some fresh air and keep my head straight. (We recorded our school CD - 15 tracks in 3 hours, with the whole school, the staff, choir, flute group and each class.) I was stopped by a young woman collecting for the deaf. I say collecting but what they actually do these days is steal your bank details. I honestly would have been more than happy to chuck a few quid into a bucket but there you go, I’m showing my age again. I knew what she was doing when she approached and I could have walked on and genuinely muttered, “too busy,” but it’s not the nicest of jobs and it doesn’t hurt to be friendly.

“Oh, you stopped,” she gushed, “you must be a very nice person.”
Awkwardly, I shifted from foot to foot and checked the Town Hall clocks in the distance.
“Do you have children?” She asked.
“Yes but they’re grown up.”
“Really? How old are they?”
My inner voice was telling me to run away but I told her that my oldest was 25.
“Twenty five? Wow. Really? That must make you in, like, your forties?”
 My brain was shouting, ‘Bullshit alert.’ I wasn’t finding her obvious attempts flattering.
“No, I’m in my fifties,” I told her.
“No way!” she gasped.
‘Yes way’, I thought. What’s wrong with being in your fifties?
“You don’t look it. What’s your secret?” She wittered on.
Sleeping for 4 hours a night, not having time to eat properly, having at least one stressful event a day until Christmas. Having both parents die within 18 months of each other, having PTSD, being menopausal, selling a house.  Join me. You too can have huge bags under your wild shining eyes and wrinkles on your wrinkles.
She carried on talking about deaf children and how they were raising money to get sign language on the curriculum (Good luck with that. There’s not enough time to do everything as it is).
“Do you know any sign language?” She randomly asked.
“Oh, just the essentials” I said, chopping my hand under my arm, making the sign for ‘crap’.

I’m mortified. How could I have been so rude? Okay Boomer.

Let’s Talk About Death (again)

Here I am, stressing about music and concerts and whether I have enough thermal vests to do another outside gig and I’m still awake at 4am thinking about death and how bad we are as a society at talking about it.

Clive James, Gary Rhodes and Johnathan Miller died and the press and social media were awash with euphemisms. These people passed on, passed over, lost their battles, their relatives lost them, they collapsed and didn’t make it. Gary Rhodes relatives have been upset because people then speculated about the cause of his death.  As the youngest of the heavenly trio, people just can’t understand how he could have died. We’ve lost our connection to the fact that it’s something we are all going to do and when and how is just a matter of luck. The pressure on medical staff to keep people alive at any cost has become immense.

The medical advances that stop people dying early are brilliant. My dad had another 32 years of healthy productive life after his first by-pass. Not only did that invention keep him alive, it also restored his fitness and meant that he could walk from Keswick to Barrow for charity and get kissed by Glorious Honeybunch (as he called her).

I have been thinking a lot about a friend and colleague, whose baby died shortly after birth. Everyone who knows her and her family is heartbroken for them. They are lost for words. Because we don’t talk about death, we are left floundering. We don’t know what to say  and are fearful of saying the wrong thing. What we want to say is, “Oh my God, that is a shitty thing to happen.” We want to be angry for them. We want to shout and scream that it’s not bloody fair. And it’s not.

I am so proud of her, though. She is such a strong person. She has put a beautiful picture of her baby on Facebook and is having a proper funeral. She’s not hiding.

When I found out I came home and shed a tear or two for them and said to the Long Suffering Husband, “I just can’t imagine....”
He reminded me that I didn’t have to.
“But it was different.” I argued.
I was very lucky and never lost a baby but my Mum gave birth to my brother and sister when I was 3 and 4 and they died straight away. They were called Johnathan and Jennifer and although we have birth, death and burial certificates, society didn’t allow us to grieve.

Medical advances mean that nobody should have a child die at birth for the same reasons. These children died because of the Rhesus factor. My mum’s blood was negative for rhesus antibodies, my Dad’s was positive and when I was born some of my blood crossed into her blood, causing her to develop antibodies. These antibodies then destroyed the red blood cells of the next babies with rhesus positive blood. They were born with Hemolytic disease of the newborn: being anaemic and having difficulty breathing. Their liver’s and spleen’s may have been enlarged. They would have been yellow and probably puffy. Not that my mum knew any of that. Her children were whisked away and she never saw them again. Luckily, by the time my sister was born, they knew what it was and so were able to transfuse blood and save both their lives. Now that they know what causes this problem, blood tests allow Rhesus negative women to have a preventive Rh immunoglobulin injection at 28 weeks. However, not all causes of stillbirth have been eradicated and some babies die.

You would think that when you are pre-school you wouldn’t remember any of this. However, I do. I remember the first pregnancy and the excitement that I was going to be a big sister. I don’t remember what happened after but I do remember trying to run away in the late stages of the next pregnancy. I remember the midwife visiting and me slipping out the front door when no one was looking. I remember running down the road, away from the bungalow and I remember the midwife’s face close to my tear stained one telling me that I was a naughty little girl who had no right to worry my mum like that.
“She’s already worried enough. This baby is very precious, you mustn’t go spoiling it.”
There was no baby, after my visit to Nanny and Grandad’s, where we watched Tom and Jerry Cartoons and I played hide and seek with my Aunt in the shed (a brick outhouse that smelled of vim and washing powder and housed the tin bath). I don’t remember what happened after but I do remember thinking that I had to be extra good during Mum’s pregnancy with my sister. I also remember overhearing conversations my Nan had with women in shops about my sister’s difficult birth. I remember being thrilled that we could go out and buy presents and equally disappointed when the four booties I’d insisted on, weren’t needed because my sister was just a human baby and not an elephant. I had heard my Nan telling people that being an elephant had saved her. In fact, she was just a bigger baby (that would be considered small these days) and was still a little yellow and puffy when she arrived home. I remember having to wear a face mask (like the Chinese do now) for weeks.

My parents were brilliant. They were both strong. They didn’t openly grieve but they did talk about their babies, especially if I asked, which I did. I wanted to know all about how they died. I needed to understand. I could never understand how they hadn’t even been allowed to hold their children. I still can’t quite understand how they could risk it again. Twice. But that is human nature. We are eternally optimistic.

My colleague’s baby’s funeral is next week and she is asking for donations to Blossom Ward at Broomfield Hospital (instead of flowers). She says on the notice that it’s a place she didn’t even know existed but is so grateful that it did.  It’s a room that is funded by charitable donations where families can spend time with their child, letting them go and grieving.

How I wish my parents had that. My Dad told me that when they were in their fifties, with no children at home to support and ‘travelling the world one weekend a month’ they were sitting in a Cafe in Vienna and reminiscing about their lives when for the first time they properly talked and cried about the death of their children.
“We must have looked such idiots,” he told me, “Sobbing our hearts out over nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing.
 I told him that I thought it was lovely that they were able to have that moment and how sorry I was that they hadn’t been allowed to grieve sooner.
From what I know about grief, they could have still had that moment if there had been a Blossom Ward but at least it wouldn’t have been the first time.

I will be donating to Blossom Ward in memory of my colleague’s baby and also my siblings, Johnathan and Jennifer.
donate here