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

All Aboard

Woo Hoo! All aboard the Christmas anxiety train.

Whoever you are, it is likely that the prospect of Christmas makes you feel a little stressed. There are extra things to do and a deadline. If you are a bit anxious that extra stress will make you feel more anxious. If you are a musician then the ‘extra things’ can easily run to two extra A4 pages on your “let’s try to pretend to be a normal person without anxiety” list. If you are also an idiot you’ll keep adding things and make everyone join you on the ‘New Improved Christmas Sparkle Anxiety Train.’

I am an idiot.

As if the lead up to Christmas wasn’t busy enough, with normal music teacher/MD of a Youth Orchestra/member of a band stuff, I thought, “You know what would be fun? We should make a school Christmas CD.”

It will be fun. The children are already very excited. Every child in the school is involved with each class learning one song and what could be better than listening to the whole school singing Away in a Manger while you eat your Christmas Dinner? They have been given a chance to design the CD case cover and I hope I’ve created a buzz around the project.

Also, it should raise some much needed cash for the school. We have been surviving with an ever decreasing number of music stands that we haven’t got the money to replace. We even have one held together with sticky tape. Everyone’s budgets for music have been squeezed, so that things we used to get for free we now have to pay for. For example, Sing Up and Charanga are wonderful online resources that used to be free and now cost hundreds of pounds each a year. It’s true that if we had never had them then we would have to make do with books and talent but as each recorder book costs £7 (= class set £200 and it’s illeagal to photocopy), each school singing book with music in is over £10 and the cost of a pianist who can play well enough to accompany at concerts is phenomenal, these apps are still good value for a school that does music properly. Many schools opt not to do music properly and there are some people who think of it as a subject that should just be for a few. Music is such a fundamental human response to things that it would be great if we could teach all children how to do it well. Children singing in tune can heal a broken heart (trust me) and people not even being able to clap in time can break one.

I have found a company (My School CD) that will do the sound recording, engineering and production. All I have to do is find the music, rehearse, make a timetable for the day, send off the paperwork, write new words to a carol for a staff song, stay excited about the project and sell enough CDs so that we don’t lose any money. It’s not keeping me awake at night at all.

Woo Hoo. All aboard!

A brush with privilege

The other day, I wrote about the Prince Andrew interview and joked that an elderly Dame with a man’s name would leap to his defence and say that these grls (they don’t pronounce their vowels) only have themselves to blame. I was joking, not having seen Lady Colin Campbell’s outrageous interview, but my joke was based on a brief brush with privilege.

 I had met rich people at University: mainly public schoolboys that were a huge disappointment to their families but this was a whole other level

In my early twenties I took a research job with an Australian social psychologist. He was an absolutely lovely man and an expert on questionnaire design. It was a great job and also a glimpse into another world.
 He had been one of the first social psychologists at the LSE and pretty much designed all those courses in the UK. His wife was a member of the aristocracy (I think). She spent her life doing good work and rubbed shoulders with actual Princesses. His eldest daughter was one of the few female barristers and was dating a very famous novelist. His son was a bit of a playboy and was dating our office assistant. Our office was close to his home: a mansion flat overlooking one of the parks and he treated us like part of his family.

Once, when I had a migraine, he sent me home to his wife because he was worried about my long commute. She popped me on the sofa with a blanket to let me sleep it off, which was lovely but it was a shock to wake up in the middle of tea with Princess Michael of Kent.

It was more common that his children would join us for a lunchtime drink in the pub over the road. Elsie, the secretary was furious about the way playboy son spoke about his girlfriend. He introduced her to his friend as his Pa’s Goffah, “She goes for this, she goes for that and boy does she go!” he said nudging his pal in the ribs and winking. I didn’t really understand at the time just how little respect he was showing for her.

The mate was a distant member of the royal family. He bragged that his mother was Dame Brian Something or Other. The other research assistant kept her composure, catching my eye in warning but it was too late. I snorted my Bacardi and coke across the table.
“Brian? Brian? What kind of name is that for a woman? Is she a very naughty boy?”

That Interview

“The trouble with you, is that you’re an inverted snob,” my oldest school friend told me when I was 13 and telling her that I didn’t understand the economics lesson.  I really couldn’t comprehend why money was the most important thing.
“I just think people who have too much money are a little, well, you know...”
(She didn’t know)
“Selfish and self obsessed.”
We lived in Billericay and she was a trailblazer for the time, already enjoying regular fake tans and a desire to be the first female Formula One driver. She couldn’t think that you could have too much money and thought I was just jealous.

I could have been. I’d not met many people with money and my philosophy could have stemmed from jealousy. However, now that I’m older and have met quite a few very rich people, my view has not changed very much.

Having money gives a person choices. Having much more than you need doesn’t automatically make you a bad person but it does enable you to make as many bad choices as good ones.

Everyone is talking about the interview Prince Andrew gave to the brilliant Emily Maitlis on the BBC on Sunday night.  It was absolute car crash TV and will go down in history, like Frost/Nixon and they will make films about it. Somehow, even though you knew he was lying and everything he said made it worse you couldn’t tear yourself away. It was funny too. There are things from this interview that will enter our culture and in time we won’t even remember where they came from. In the future people caught out lying will just say, “I couldn’t sweat,” or “I’ve only been to Wokingham a few times,” or “Pizza Express.”

The thing everyone is really puzzled by, though, is misplaced. No one is wondering why someone with so much money and power did such awful things. We are wondering why he did the interview. Why did he dig himself into a hole? We knew he could get away with it if he said nothing. We are wondering if maybe it’s about to emerge that the Queen has, in fact, been dealing crack Cocaine and he has fallen on his sword to be a distraction when it comes to light.

We know about money and what it does to people.
We know about Prince Andrew, who we called Randy Andy in the Eighties.
We know he had more money than sense and didn’t even have a true purpose.
We know that the very rich don’t even need to pronounce all the letters (Ghislaine Maxwell, ‘my friend G(pronounced phonetically) Laine’)
We know that very rich people can take advantage of very poor people.
We know that if you have no money you will consider doing anything to eat or get some of that status.
We know that very young people are more attractive than older people.
We know young girls are desperate for rich powerful men to love them and are easily manipulated. We know that providing a girl to give a relaxing massage was code for sex in the eighties.
We know that he wouldn’t remember one girl.
We know there were more than one.
We know he wouldn’t have even looked at her face or considered that she was a real person.
We know that you can take a position as an ambassador for NSPCC, working on a campaign to spot the signs of sexual abuse and not see that you are an abuser.
We know Epstein is everything they say he is.
We know they were friends.
We know that when you are very rich you can laugh about the suicide of one of your best friends.
We know Prince Andrew used young girls for sex.
We know some ancient Royal dame with a man’s name will leap to his defence, explaining that “these girls only have themselves to blame.”
We know normal rules for names don’t apply to the super wealthy.
We know that anyone who financially benefits from the Royals will defend his actions.
We know that, even though he his publicly disgraced, he can’t be asked to resign.
We know that money gives power.
We know that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We know that this kind of thing will go on forever. We might have abolished slavery but using people to make money, or because you have so much money you don’t even see them as real people, is fun.
We know people will call for the end of the monarchy.
We know it won’t happen.
We know young girls don’t matter. (If a fading alcoholic footballer can kiss a girl on a train without her consent then a Prince can do anything)
We know it’s all very depressing.

I wish I’d never watched the interview but then I can’t sweat or eat at Pizza Express in Wokingham.

Why Do Robins Sing in November?

I love the song, ‘I know why (and so do you),’ by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. I loved it, again, when Manhattan Transfer re-recorded it. It was very uncool to love Manhattan Transfer but love them I did.  I could never get the words right, though.
It is: Why do Robins sing in December?
         Long before the springtime is due?
         And even though it’s snowing, violets are growing,
         I know why and so do you.
I always muddled the month. As long as the month ends in ‘ber’ then there’s no reason to think that you have sung it wrong. True, it’s unlikely to be snowing in September but stubbornly that is frequently what my brain chose to sing, whenever I saw a Robin.

It was also a song that my parents liked (Dad more than Mum, I think). I remember having a conversation with my Dad about it when I was about nine or ten. It was December and it was snowing. We were walking back from Lake Meadows Park with our tea trays, red faced with exhaustion. My sister was about 4, in her cute little round, naughty phase. She was wearing a pink and white furry coat that had become soaked through as snow had stuck in clumps to it when she rolled down the hill. The hood was up, making her face seem even rounder, like some exotic bear that had been plucked from its tropical environment to spend winter in a British zoo. She had begun to grizzle. I was glad to go home, as I could feel my throbbing chilblains within my wellies. As we walked, we seemed to be serenaded by robins, sitting on bare beaches and Dad joined them in song.
I never quite grew out of my annoying ‘why phase’ and so I asked, “But why do they? They song says I know why and so do you but I don’t.”
Dad explained that Robins don’t migrate like other birds and are really sociable, loving to chat to people all year round.
“But,” he went on to say, “It’s a song about love. They sing because of love. All songs are about love.”

Grief is a thing with feathers, as Max Porter wrote and even when you think you are not actively grieving anymore, something can fly up out of the blue and make you catch your breath.
The jumper department of Marks and Spencer at Christmas, a song on the radio, walking past someone wearing your descended loved one’s perfume. Today, it was a Robin.

Before my parents died I was a firm believer in no afterlife.
“When you’re dead, you’re dead,” I would say harshly, “a belief in an afterlife is just for those who can’t accept death.”
Then when Mum died and I went a bit bonkers I had this thing about birds. If you’ve been reading my blogs before, you will remember the bird series. I started to think that psychopomps were a real thing and that the Greek myth of spirits coming back, as birds to guide people towards death might be true. We felt that my dad had chosen to be a very noisy, slightly angry Robin. As I trudged around the streets and footpaths in my traumatised state I spotted birds everywhere and wrote about them here.

I have been clearing my Mum’s art studio and put aside a couple of empty sketch pads to give to one of my pupils who loves art. An hour or two after she had left, her mum sent me some photos of her using the books already. Her first picture. A Robin.

Why do robins sing in November? I know why and so do you.

The Numbers of a School Trip

School trips can be stressful for teachers because it’s all about counting. You spend the day counting your children. Yesterday, we sang at the Royal Albert Hall for a concert in aid of the Barnardo’s charity. It’s a great thing to do and I’m sure I’ve written about it every year.

After the concert it can take a while for my brain to return to normal. The counting gets stuck and this year I have a whole load of numbers buzzing around in my head.

6 - Time to leave the house
30 - children  (count repeatedly, panic when you have less. Feel confused if you count more: they will keep moving)
3 - wonderful colleagues to come with me (and make the day run smoothly and easily)
29 - other schools
98 - children in the school behind us (fools)
1311 - people on stage
2 - conductors (Douglas Coombes = genius and his wife Carole Lindsay Douglas = also genius with sparkly tops)
76 - Trombones
1 - Trevor (on the organ)
11 - times I told my choir that Trevor was going to be my next husband.
110 - cornets
2 - wobbly teeth
3 - rocking mice
 5 - times I said, “Go to the toilet now, even if you don’t need to.”
180 - minutes until the next toilet break
15 - photos for Twitter
101  - photos to make a great display board
 33 - photos that came out blurred (they will keep moving)
5 - hours of rehearsal
2 - one hour food breaks
3 - hours on stage for the concert
87 - times I felt proud of our choir
17 - minutes of life I lost due to the ill advised screaming session by the Barnardo’s ambassador
32 - flights of stairs in the day to get between waiting area and stage
14- songs sung
16 - times one of my choir rolled her eyes at her brother
3233 - words sung
 3200 - words learnt by my choir (we never got Big Bang bonger  at the rear right)
3 - times one of my choir felt sick.
0 - words learnt by some schools.
5544 - people in the audience (I didn’t count but it was full to capacity)
4 - children left behind by a school (that will remain nameless) at the end of a concert (this would be my worst nightmare)
9 - children going home with their parents
21 - hyper children on the coach
7 - times they sang ‘The Wheels on the Bus’
12 - The time I arrived home
9 - days before we start rehearsing for our next concert (There’s no rest for the talented)

Half Term Haunting

The October half term holiday used to be my favourite. Apart from a little planning and arranging of Christmas carols and songs there’s not usually too much to do. It’s not like having to write report comments. When the children were smaller, I loved Halloween. We would go to the allotment and collect and carve pumpkins. I’d make spooky food, like witch finger chicken strips, ghost biscuits, spider web cakes and a jelly brain. They would have all their friends round and I would tell stories and we would play games. I managed to convince my neighbours children that I had actually been to a school for witches, so that when Harry Potter came out they could tell everyone that they knew someone who had been to Hogwarts. Obviously, I’d never mentioned the name of the school because, well, you don’t tell Muggles, do you?

This half term hasn’t been as much fun. 

I miss having small children around. I miss the pretend haunting. 

This half term has been filled with the kind of haunting that no one wants. The kind of haunting that makes me cross. The sort that I don’t want to admit to. 

There was one of those silly things that appear on Twitter that said something like: For Halloween let predictive text answer this question. Type “This Halloween I am haunted by..” and let predictive text give your answers. Without thinking, I typed in my answer (with no intention to post) and got, “I am haunted by my Mum and Dad.”

Wow! Not such a fun game.

It’s true too and I hate it. If you had told me three years ago that I would still be having some difficulties 18months after both parents had died I would never have believed you. I’m strong, determined, bloody minded and have realistic expectations about death. Parents dying in their seventies is normal. To be sad and miss them is normal. But here we are and some days I can barely function. I can’t sit still or be anywhere where I feel trapped.  My brain still can’t take too much noise or flashing lights (films can still be difficult) and my concentration is shot to pieces. It takes me four times as long to do anything and even then I have little confidence that I’ve done anything well. And all of this is made a million times worse if I spend any time in my parent’s house.  

The Long Suffering Husband looks at me, pityingly. He can see the toll it takes in my face. 

“Every time you go there you age about 20 years,” he says. 

Honestly, he’s such a gem.

My sister has recommended wearing a hat.

“It keeps it all in,” she says, “You look a bit silly but..”

I’m considering fashioning myself a little tin foil cap. It might help to keep the weird things that are happening in the world out too. 

But it just makes me cross with myself. Pull yourself together woman. It’s mind over matter. Don’t mind and it won’t matter. Then I switch and try to be kind to myself. What would I tell other people? I’d say it’s fine. Look after yourself, do whatever you need to. And therein lies the problem. When you need to do opposing things simultaneously it send you a bit bonkers.

I am currently in a phase of this extreme adulting malarkey where my parent’s house is sold. That’s great but it’s a very final step. There is light at the end of the tunnel. One day, soon, I will never have to go into the house again and maybe the holes in my brain can finally start to heal over. But before then comes the very difficult job of raking through their possessions. We did quite a lot of clearing before it went on the market. Clothes, lots of books, dvds, and some rubbish all went. The nice things, furniture and bits and bobs, we thought might have value, stayed. Now, we have the difficult job of sorting them out and let me tell you, this is a pretty shit thing to do.

You feel completely torn. You’d like to not have to look at it. Some people do this. They hire a skip and chuck everything in, or get a man with a van to come round and take everything. Whilst that is tempting, it’s something I find impossible. Other people take photos and list everything on Facebook sales, or take pieces to auction. Other’s give bits away. This explains why we have a hideous mirror and some glassware that isn’t to anyone’s taste. You don’t sell things because you need the money, it’s just that you can’t bear to think that your parent’s lives had no value.

When there is more than one sibling, this can also be tricky. What if you both want to keep the same things? What if there are things that neither of you actually want to own but you can’t face getting rid of? Whose loft has to groan with ornaments that your children will have to sort out when you go? What if one can’t face it and leaves it all to the other? Ultimately, though, you just need to look after each other. Your relationship is the most valuable of your parent’s possessions.

Over the years, I’ve tried to listen to things other people have said and not make the same mistakes. As death is such a big taboo in our society we don’t talk or listen and so we have no real idea of how we are meant to complete these tasks. I feel like our clearing is proving to be a very long and protracted process but maybe I just stopped listening when people talked about it.

Thanks for listening to my half term horror story. Let’s try the predictive text thing again - “I am haunted by my knitting.” That’s more like it.

Hamilton Hype or Honesty?

I finally went to see Hamilton.

People have been banging on about it for ages. The tickets were impossible to get, expensive and I’d never won the lottery (the Hamilton ticket lottery not the National one that acts as a subtle tax on poor people.) I wasn’t that convinced it could be as good as everyone said and I had avoided listening to the music because I’d heard that it was hip-hop, which is a genre I don’t really understand. I feared that the buzz around this show was just hype.

Then I got tickets for my birthday and we went on Monday.

Monday? You say, but it’s Saturday now. Why haven’t I blogged about it sooner?

The truth is, I’ve been speechless.

It’s not hype. This is the best musical. Honestly.

I say that as someone who saw Les Miserables in 1985, when everyone watching (except the critics) knew they’d seen something special. Hamilton, however, is better than that. It has everything: the songs are perfect, lyrical earworms, the dancing is amazing, the costumes fabulous, the story is historically accurate, the staging is stripped down to a perfect minimum, it’s clever, it’s funny and it is sad. Nothing is wasted. It will make you feel everything. I actually think it is a work of genius.

Nothing I write will do it justice, so I should probably not bother. Just go and see it for yourself and decide. If you do go, would you take me with you because I could watch it again tomorrow.

“Do de dooo. Dooby dooby doo de do”

I know I shouldn’t write anymore but here is a funny overheard in the toilet afterwards between a mum and her teenage daughter.
M: That was quite sad wasn’t it, at the end?
D: At the end?
M: Uh huh. What?
D: Not just the end. THE WHOLE SECOND HALF!
M: Really?
D: What about when his son died?
M: Oh yeah but I just found him annoying, so I was glad he died really.
D: Mum! Well it just makes me sad when children die and their parents have to live on without them. I don’t know why, it just that always makes me sad.

Holy Guacamole

I’ve followed this Brexit stuff quite closely. I read all 500+ pages of the first withdrawal agreement document.

 Before anyone accuses me of being biased let me nail my colours to the mast. I didn’t want to be asked, I thought the question was beyond my pay grade. If being politically aligned to the EU was bad for our country then it was up to politicians to work out why and how we could get out of it before they asked us. They didn’t. I think asking us to votes was like the following conversation:
A: Would you like a unicorn?
B: Sure, but aren’t they fictional? How are you going to give me unicorn?
A: Oh, don’t worry about that, just tell me.
B: No, I don’t want a unicorn, they probably smell.
C: Oh no, I’d like one because they do rainbow farts that smell of sweets.
D: I’d like a unicorn too.
A: Ok. So most of you want a Unicorn?
C&D: Yes. Give us our unicorn. You said we could have one.
B: I said I didn’t want one. Why won’t you listen to me?
A: The best I can do is a horse with an ice cream cone on its head.
C: What? You promised me a unicorn.
A: But you didn’t really know what a unicorn was.
D: I did. I know what I wanted. It’s farts had to smell of pear drops.
A: I can do a small horse with diabetes.
C: He wanted pear drops but I wanted sherbet lemons. Give me my unicorn.

Now that I’ve put it like that I’ve changed my mind. I’d quite like a unicorn.

I have no idea whether the EU is good or bad for the country, although I probably think it mostly is, for most people.

Boris Johnson returned from Brussels with a deal. People say it’s a bit worse than the last deal. I haven’t read this one. In fact, even the government ministers haven’t read it yet. They’ve had no time to work out if it is good or not but because Hilary Benn brought an act of Parliament that said if a deal wasn’t agreed by today’s date the Prime Minister had to request an extension to stop a no-deal Brexit happening, which is thought by nearly every MP to be disaster for the country, they had to vote on it today. A significant vote on a Saturday meant that we could all watch, or listen, live. People went to stand outside Parliament. It was a lot of pressure.

MPs don’t normally have to go in on a Saturday and lots of them looked tired and a bit pissed off. Some seemed to be playing candy crush and others chatted while other people were speaking. They used long words and bluffed and flustered for hours.

Oliver Letwin, MP for West Dorset, thought that being made to vote on something he hadn’t read was crazy and so he suggested that MPs should vote on an amendment that a short extension should be requested so that the deal could be properly considered. This seemed quite sensible to me but when we read the papers tomorrow, I’m sure that will make me an enemy of the people. 322 agreed and 306 didn’t. This means they couldn’t vote on the deal today and the Prime minister is legally obliged to write to the EU to ask for an extension.

Whatever you think of Mr Johnson, that’s got to hurt. He’s spent all his time saying that he’ll get Brexit done. As I listened to the radio I was feeling quite sorry for him. Then he stood up, stamped his foot and said, “Won’t! Can’t make me! So there!” and blew an enormous raspberry. It was quite extraordinary. It was so extraordinary that the normally very professional presenter said, “ Holy Guacamole!”

I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a unicorn anymore. No one told me avocado was an option.

I know everyone is going to get upset about this but I suspect it’s not as big a deal as everyone makes out. It probably wouldn’t have passed anyway. They’d have had to have tried three times. It still might go through on the third time as more MPs come around to the idea, or it won’t. Not that any of this matters because however we leave it will be a mess for years. Traditionally, divorce never goes smoothly for couples who can’t even agree on which solicitor to use. This is just the beginning of the process and that has taken three years, three prime ministers, lots of shouting and the resignation of David Dimpledknees from QuestionTime.  I just hope everyone can calm down a bit.

The Genetics of an Under-stairs Cupboard and age

This week, I’ve felt more like my old self than I have in a long time. Maybe, it is just natural grief lifting, as the NHS website says, “you might feel affected every day for 18 months after a major loss.”  I’d be surprised if you aren’t ‘affected’ every day for the rest of your life because your life is different now, you are missing someone important but maybe a switch gets flicked after 18 months to let you feel happy again. I suspect it also has something to do with a glimmer of light at the end of the death admin tunnel.

Feeling more me, I’ve been thinking about strange things again. This time, it’s been about age.  They say that age is just a number, so I picked 42, in honour of Douglas Adams but it’s not the number that I really feel. In the last few years I’ve been telling the children at school that I’m 112. “Come on if I can stand up to sing when I’m 112 you can too!” 

They ask, “Are you really 112 miss?”

This year I’ve said, “Oh no, I feel much older”

And it has been true. The pressure of the last few years aged me. 

Before, I felt about 9, with a wider vocabulary, particularly of swear words. 

I’ve noticed that a person’s actual age rarely represents the age they feel. 

This week, I accompanied my sister on her search for a new house. She chose to buy the one with the perfect under-stairs cupboard. It was the cupboard of our childhood and as I walked in I suddenly had a flashback to an argument about a monkey that said, “Have a banana, munch munch,” and my sister, secure in her safe space threatening me (deservedly, as it was her monkey) with a machine gun. I’m not proud of my big sister credentials. When she got excited about the cupboard, I was reminded of my son. He too, loves an under-stairs  cupboard and would have happily lived in ours. I could see him buying a house based on the same criteria. I had never seen a genetic link between my son and my sister before. My daughter always looked like my sister (and the LSH) but my son looks like my Dad.     Can under-stairs cupboards really show genetic links? They have another thing in common, that I had also forgotten. While I can talk to 8 year olds, they can both talk to 80 year olds. When we were little and went to holiday camps, my sister would have adopted at least 6 sets of grandparents. 

Yesterday, was a weird (and very long) day for me. It started with school band practise. The first in a long time, where all the wrong notes made me laugh. Then I taught all day. The children were funny and I didn’t find them irritating. (I was getting a bit worried that I’d got too old for this teaching lark.)

I was given a piece of music for a concert we are going to do with the local choral society and I laughed at the name of the lyricist. “Younger, more promiscuous brother of Darth. I’d like to see his light sabre,” my colleagues and I joked.

Then it was time for the Youth Orchestra. They taught me the happy llama, sad llama thing. All day children had been giving me what I thought were deformed rock finger signs. This is sign language for llama, which goes with a rhyme, “Happy llama, sad llama, totally rad llama, super llama, drama llama, big fat mamma llama.” Then there’s something about a camel, a moose  a fish and a turtle. 

“Where’s it from?” I asked, “Why is everyone doing it?”

“Tik Tok,” they told me, “Do you want us to teach you?” 

“No, it’s ok,” I said, “If it’s on Tik Tok, I can look it up.”

There was a incredulous gasp.

“Well, why not?” I said, making llama signs with my hands, “There’s no age limit.”

At that moment my hand decided to do the weird crampy spasm thing they’ve been doing to remind me of my real age and I feared I was going to have to go to the seventieth birthday party I was attending after with my hands stuck in ‘totally rad llama.’

Being invited to seventieth birthday parties can make you feel old especially when it’s a party for someone who is really 18. The Prosecco flowed, the band got louder, dancing followed and I sneaked away early to read my book. 

It’s a bad day for women

Well, here we go. Another blog from a stupid feminist, ranting about things that don’t matter. Doesn’t she know that there is equality between the sexes now? I mean, women have the vote and everything. They can even be Prime Minister. If anything, it’s gone too far, what with all this Me Too stuff, men are now frightened to even look at a woman.

Do you believe all that? I’d love to. I’d love to think that it’s all true but today, is a bad day for women because two things have happened that make me question our world.

Firstly, our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has pulled off a master stroke of hepeating. He’s come back from Brussels saying, “Look, I’ve negotiated a deal with the EU, aren’t I clever?” It’s the deal Theresa May negotiated but a bit worse but never mind because he’s a man and people will listen. Actually, I do t know if they’ll listen because it’s Brexit and the whole thing is messed up.

I’m only talking about that to avoid the thing that has really upset me: The Paul Gascoigne sexual abuse trial. He was found ‘not guilty’, so he didn’t do it, right? Get off his case, leave him alone, stop picking on him, some women are just trouble makers; jumping on a man’s fame.

Except...

I’ve been following this case from early on and I do not understand how the verdict has happened, unless the world hates women.

Paul Gascoigne, troubled ex-footballer and supposedly reformed alcoholic was on a train, smelling  boozy and slurring his words, when he, uninvited, sat on a young woman’s lap and kissed her  “forcibly and sloppily” on the lips leaving her “very shaken”.  She reported it to the police and witnesses told them who the man had been (she was too young to know of his fame, I presume).
When the police turned up at his house he said, “I know what this is about. It’s because I kissed a fat lass.”

Cut and dried, I thought. He assaulted her, he admitted it and there were witnesses.

It goes to trial.

People take their children to stand outside the court to get his autograph. What? Yes, really. Come on, don’t be so sensitive. Everyone wants a famous footballer’s autograph. But he’s on trial for sexual assault? Oh, that? It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.



He stands in the witness box and says that he absolutely did do it but he only did it to boost her confidence. What? When I was twenty a drunk man sticking his tongue down my throat on the train would have made me feel so much more confident. I’d have suddenly known it was safe to walk sown dark alleys alone at night! Then he says that it wasn’t sexual. Right! It’s just a kiss. Stop being so sensitive. Kissing isn’t sexual at all, you kiss your granny, right? Probably, not like that and not without some clue that you are going to do it, like saying “Bye Nan, take care, see you next week.”

The jury agree with him. He cries a bit, smirks and thanks his dentist, who has explained the slurring by suggesting ill-fitting dental work. His fans cheer. Men go on twitter to lambast the poor girl, who is now called a complainant, rather than victim.


Let’s think about how this would have worked with a different crime and a non famous person. Fred the burglar cleans out your house, your neighbours see him and when the police go round he says, “I know why you are here, it’s about number 42.” On trial he says that it doesn’t matter because all the stuff he stole was shit. The jury would obviously let him off then.

His feelings trump hers. He is a man. He is famous. He is more important.

The message is that it’s fine for a man to launch himself at you with no warning and put a part of his body in yours, as long as he didn’t mean it sexually. It’s absolutely ok for him to admit to it, as long as he can come up with a good story afterwards. Your feelings matter a lot less than his.

It’s definitely a bad day day for women.

Princess and the Pea

I love a fairy tale but The Princess and the Pea was not one I really had any sympathy for. Part of the problem was an inability to identify with a nameless princess. We never really got to know much about her, except that she said things like, “No one can understand how much I’ve suffered.”
Why would she even want to marry a prince and live in the castle with his mother who plays such horrible tricks? Then, you have to agree that it is a very strange way to choose a wife for your son. Why would you want a daughter-in-law that moany and sensitive? I used to think it was a commentary about inherited blood disorders and inbreeding in the monarchy. Such easy bruising used to scream, “thrombocytopenia,” at me.

 

Although, I don’t always sleep well, I can actually sleep on anything. I’m not a real princess. Or, I wasn’t.

The Long Suffering Husband has wanted a new bed for a while, claiming that after 12 years it was uncomfortable. I hadn’t noticed. However, I could agree that it looked a bit tatty.

Off we went to Dreams. They have a machine, whereby you lay on a bed and Caroline Quentin talks to you while the bed pummels your back to decide which of the most expensive beds they should sell you. We were told to get a firm Therapur bed. This is Dream’s own version of a tempura mattress with added cooling gel to stop it feeling sweaty (a known problem for these type). We tried the  suggestion in the shop.

“Oh dear,” said the consultant, “I think the machine has compromised in your favour, Sir,”
Then, looking at me, “Because you are.....”
“Bony?” I suggested.
She looked momentarily flustered but recovered quickly.
“Very tiny. I can see you are just lying on the top.”
The LSH didn’t like it anyway and I didn’t like the way it grabbed you. It’s not a good feeling for someone who is a little claustrophobic.
She suggested a compromise more in my favour. A sprung bed with a layer of this topping.

We spent ages in the shop, lying on these beds. I wasn’t sure about the slidey nature of the material and the sloping edges and feared I would fall out in the middle of the night but with the assurance from the Salesperson that we could change it if I did fall out because they had a 30 day comfort guarantee we handed over our credit card.

The first night on this bed was the weirdest experience of my life. After two hours I was awake and in pain. I felt sympathy for that poor Princess for the first time and checked the mattress for peas. The LSH wondered if they’d accidentally sent us a hard bed because it felt as though we had slept on a hard, cold, sweaty brick. Bizarrely, it felt slightly damp.
“It might take a while to settle down,” I told him.

We had read the reviews and people raved about this bed but some had said that it look a little while to get used to.

The second night was still painful and by now I had sore painful lumps on the parts of my body that made contact with the bed. I was feeling like a failure. You know that feeling you get when everyone has been raving about a book, it wins prizes and then you can’t stand it but you feel guilty? Well, that’s how I feel about this bed. This bed is my Cloud Atlas.

The third night was probably the worst experience of my life. That’s over dramatic. Sorry. I can think of one worse. However, it was definitely up there as one of the worst. I woke up after two hours with a burning sensation over the side of my body in contact with the bed. My back and side had swollen areas that felt bruised and I honestly wondered if I was about to die. Thinking that it might be something to do with the bed, I googled to see if anyone else had a problem with it. They didn’t. The bed wasn’t Cloud Atlas, it was Harry Potter and I’m the only person in the whole wide world that doesn’t like it. There were one or two people who had bought beds from Dreams who were upset that their bed felt different and had been told to give it 30 days. I can see the point of that. Beds do feel different and it can take a while to settle down. However, beds rarely try to kill you, so I decided to call them to trigger the comfort guarantee.

I described the problem and asked for some help. None was forthcoming. No suggestions. No helpful customer service experience, just a suggestion that I was making it up and I would have to continue sleeping on it for 30 days.
  “As you tried it in the shop and chose to buy it then it must have been comfortable and the burning pain must be caused by something else.”
It wasn’t. Last night I slept in my daughter’s bed. I’m not a princess. There were no killer peas in her bed.

Dreams really need to get their sales assistants to tell people of the 30 day rule, although I haven’t fallen out of bed, we weren’t told that I’d have to land on the floor for a month if I did.

Next time I buy a bed I think I will take my nightdress a duvet and see if I can get four hours kip. Then I will agree with customer service.  But it is fun to think I would now be eligible to marry a Prince.

Judy and the Wall

Okay. So. Deep breath. Here goes. Controversial opinion coming up. I didn’t love the film Judy.
I know.
There’s something wrong with me, right?
“But it’s so sad,” you tell me, “Zellweger is a wonderful character actress, she’s going to win an Oscar.”
True.
My problem is that it’s time to leave this woman alone. No film can do her justice. You want to understand how good she was then watch her films and listen to her albums. You want to know how sad her life was then read one of the million books that have been written but no film can do it all. This one hints at everything and says nothing and (sorry everyone) the singing is awful. I don’t have a problem with Over the Rainbow, as a musical because it’s a vehicle for aspiring singers to show their wonderful voices but to re-do it as a film and add elements to make it seem like a biopic just doesn’t work for me.

However, you will love it. Everyone does.

If you are like me and likely to find it a little disappointing then I hope you at least get the hysterical experience I had.

We went to Lakeside, which I thoroughly recommend, as it was excellent value. Lakeside is a place that seems to inspire hysterical laughter in me. Years ago, the Long Suffering Husband accidentally locked me in the car there. It was a new car with one of those new-fangled keys with buttons on the lock the door remotely. He had got out and before I could had accidentally pressed the button. The golf-tee shaped knobs went down with their accompanying sound and as I tried to open the door to get out I realised I was locked in. He stood in front of the car, looking in through the windscreen with a puzzled look on his face. I was heavily pregnant (hence my slowness in getting out of the car) and my brain wasn’t quite able to get me to form the words that explained what had happened, so I just flapped my hands to the side and said, “blip, blip.” It was one of those moments that prompted hysterical laughter - always dangerous for a heavily pregnant woman with a full bladder locked in a car - and 25 years later one of us only has to flap our hands and say, “blip, blip,” and we are laughing again.

Anyway, back to Judy and the Wall.

All cinemas are different. Some have a centre aisle, some a side one, others have one each side and the lucky ones have all three. This theatre was quite small with stairs at the left side only. We were in the front raised seats. The lights were dimmed and there was an announcement about lights and phones and enjoying the experience, followed by some extended silence. It was during this silence that an older couple came in. Their seats were on the right side of the cinema, so logically they walked across the front of the screen to go up the right hand steps. As, you know there were no right hand steps but it was dark and the man was determined. He launched himself straight into the wall, bounced back and looked surprised. A cinema full of people trying not to laugh is an infectious place to be. Shoulders were lifting up and down all over the place and people were wiping their eyes of the tears you get from suppressed laughter, as the couple sheepishly crossed back across the front of the screen to go up the only steps to find their seat. “Stop,” the woman next to me hissed at her friend, before taking in a sharp sigh, that indicated she was also slightly hysterical.

The couple found their seats and everyone tried to compose themselves.

The film started. Young Judy and the odious LB were in Oz and he said, “You’ve got to imagine what’s beyond the wall.”

We were gone.

 He was off to see the Wizard