It wasn’t me!

 When we were growing up, my parents would walk into a room and my sister would say, “It wasn’t me!” or “I didn’t do it!” None of us really knew where she got this guilt complex from because she would say it if she had done something, if I’d done something she didn’t want to be blamed for or even if nothing had happened. I can’t say that I was the perfect big sister who never exploited this trait (although I don’t remember doing so) or even that it was my manipulative self deflecting tactics that had caused it. 

However, it became a family joke and whenever anything happened we would all chorus, “It wasn’t me.”

 It helped enormously when we returned from a disastrous holiday in France and the kitchen ceiling had fallen in. 

The whole holiday had been cursed from beginning to end. The gite was rat filled with a temperamental Aga. The weather was the coldest, wettest August on record. The farmer didn’t take as much care over his animals as monsieur Cadeaux had the previous year. Getting to the front door was an obstacle course of cow pats. My mum had always been convinced that she would be murdered by a cow or a Frenchman, while she was camping, so she spent the week feeling very stressed. When the crab she had bought from the harbour walked off the kitchen table she started smoking again and when I caught her I was sworn to secrecy. Then we drove to Paris for a week and the accelerator cable snapped on the huge roundabouts in front the Arc de Triomphe. Dad managed a temporary fix by commandeering all of our shoelaces and hanging out of the window to pull them with the other hand on the steering wheel. That was the holiday that my sister discovered a passionate dislike for goats cheese. 

Although the trip had been an experience and not all bad, (first Big Mac, discovering that rats are quite good company at 3am when you read all night)  we were all glad to be home. The memory of telling each other that before we opened the door to the kitchen will stick with me forever. It was like one of those cinematic moments where life is perfect, a door swings open and everything has changed. The shower had been leaking for the whole two weeks we were away and brought the entire kitchen ceiling down. We stood. Looking. Silent. Mouths flapping like fish. Then a little voice said, “It wasn’t me!” and we all joined in like the film where they all pretend to be Spartacus. And we laughed.

The reason I was reminded of this story was because our Prime Minister was asked by a journalist on the BBC where he had spent the last ten days and his answer had strong ‘it wasn’t me!’ vibes.

There are several responses to that question that would have worked. My suggestions include:

Eating all the cheese

Avoiding the mother-in-law

At home 

Nowhere. It’s Christmas. No one goes anywhere at Christmas, it’s like a Zombie Apocalypse.

Fighting over the last purple chocolate in the Quality Street tin, pah, plastic box. Have you noticed how much smaller they are now?

Watching my small children opening their gifts from Santa and then playing with the box.

Visiting friends. We are very lucky to have a pal with a big house.

He said, “I’ve been, in, pah, I’ve been in this, ha, Country, pah ha, why do you think?”

However simple the question was, with numerous answers that wouldn’t have raised suspicions he went for the nothing-to-see-here answer, immediately letting us know that he probably wasn’t in the country (nothing wrong with taking a holiday) and that it was probably really dodgy. 

 

Nothing

This is the nothing period.

The waiting time.

Waiting is hard.

Short, fragile days, hoping that life will spring back soon. 

We have to wait, though. Forcing the buds open will kill them.

We pretend we aren’t waiting. We eat cheese, bring lights inside and have parties. We try to connect or withdraw. We think if we do something then the wintering will be over quicker.

Unfortunately, it takes as long as it takes, which is heartbreaking. 

We did it!

 Congratulations to everyone who survived Christmas. It’s not always an easy task, with so much pressure to be perfect, so much food and drink.

Those cooking dinner can now throw away their lists, delete the spreadsheets and prepare to live on the leftovers for the next week. 

Those who ate the food, will, hopefully be feeling more comfortable after a good night’s sleep and a morning elimination. The people who drank the drink might have a sore head but it will pass.

If you spent the day with people then your duty is done and you can re-charge your introvert batteries. If you spent the day alone then the world goes back to normal today (or as normal as it gets with a relatively new virus trying to overwhelm our fragile healthcare system)  and you can walk the streets without it feeling as though there has been a Zombie apocalypse.

If you are the Pope then you didn’t die, despite ITV news’ bulletin. I know this because of a long-running joke with a friend about him being the Pope (or running for Pope, I can’t remember now, as it’s been such a long time). Luckily, my friend hadn’t been subjected to the Long Suffering Husband’s Bailey’s measures and was able to check his pulse and let ITV know their story was wrong. 

It was fine though because the rest of the country was engaged in the annual Monopoly battle. 

However you spent the day yesterday, I hope it was as good as it could be but if it wasn’t then it’s important to remember that it is only one day and if you are reading this then you survived it.

Our family, not only survived but had a lot of laughs on the way and are now heading into my favourite day of the year.

Cheese and Wine or Darts and Beer

 There are many things I can’t forgive this government for but demonising cheese is the worst.

The photo of staff in the Downing Street garden on the 15th of May 2020 may be the final nail in the Boris-can-no-longer-be-Prime-Minister-coffin. They may not have to release the pictures of him playing naked twister after the grouse shoot at Chequers with Lord and Lady Squaffy-Waffly after all. Thank goodness!

People have looked at the photo and remembered that if they were allowed to go into work (and work hard) they weren’t socialising after their shift. Teachers are remembering that their staff rooms were closed and hospital staff don’t remember anything but working and sleeping. Those who were working from home (in isolation) are wondering what exactly government do that couldn’t happen on Zoom. 

The picture is complicated by the fact that there’s a woman with a baby with pointed ears or a dog in her lap at a business meeting and the cheese and wine on the table. 

I like cheese. Cheese is not the enemy but we live in a polar world. Pick a side. You are a cheese and wine person or a darts and beer person. 

Once upon a time the darts and beer people loved Boris. Bizarrely, they saw him as one of them; a man of the people, beer belly, glass in hand, resisting any physical exercise that isn’t getting younger women pregnant. They’d forgotten that he is in fact a cheese and wine for breakfast kind of guy. Champagne and truffles for lunch and grouse shooting and naked Twister for tea.

There was a televised darts match from AllyPally last night. The Long Suffering Husband was watching. 

Raymond Van Barnveld stepped up to the oche. His gut straining on his Lycra sports top. The camera flashed to a young woman who the announcer introduced as his girlfriend/ manager ‘Bendy Cock’ and the crowd went wild with excitement. The Barney Army started to sing and by the final dart were in full voice.

They were so full of beer and so cross about the cheese that they were singing, “Stand up if you hate Boris!”

It got ruder than that after Mr Bendy Cock won but the message was clear. Boris Johnson’s position as Prime Minister is untenable. I predict that the cheese is the final straw.

Christmas Redemption

 Christmas, pre the Victorians, was about welcoming light into the home and desperately praying that things would start to grow again. These days, we have absolutely no idea how cold life was. Heating is better, clothing is better and the weather is better. Making is through the winter is expected, rather than a luck something to be hoped for and celebrated.

The industrial revolution changed that. It allowed people to think about Christmas in a different way. Many people had spare money and could focus on things other than their own survival.  New workhouses were built to look after the poor, elderly and infirm. The people of our town were proud of ours, in writings, they boasted about how old men had their own room and freedom to go out, while still being cared for. Campaigners saw an opportunity to even out some of the inequity.

Charles Dickens, not only changed how we thought about workhouses but he also changed the Christmas story with his Christmas Carol. It’s a book I re-read every year but this year it has a resonance that is slightly uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because inequality is so obvious at the moment or because the people in power are showing absolutely no desire to change their ways. 

The thought of not making it through the winter persisted through the Victorian era and Christmas cards show just how much they thought about it. 

There were also lots of cards with the theme of eating children. Times were hard!

But Dickens gave us an enduring redemptive Christmas story; a tradition that’s continued. A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, even Home Alone all carry strong themes of redemption. Christmas is a time to say sorry and change your ways. Christians will ague that redemption is in the bible but I think it too Dickens to make it a Christmas theme. 

Last Train to Christmas, on Sky, is supposed to be the new Christmas classic. However, I was really disappointed. It didn’t feel like a Christmas film at all. Martin Sheen is still a brilliant actor and the costume changes are amazing but it just didn’t have a good enough element of redemption. Going home or being home for Christmas is central to any Christmas story (echoing the bible) and this film did have that. He was on a train to Nottingham. Train nerds may be distracted by the countdown of the stations. However, it lacked a good redemption story.

On the journey, Martin Sheen’s character discovers he can time travel if he moves through the carriages. At the beginning he is a smarmy 80’s nightclub owner with a beautiful fiancé and a brother who is happy with his own wife and children. At the end of the train journey he is an old man with a gammy leg and a brother who has no relationship and is possibly dead from a drugs overdose, having been in prison several times. We are left with a vague feeling that the brother might have been ok with the final time travelling meddling but maybe not, maybe he just got his girlfriend back. And most bizarrely the reason for most of these changes happened not because Sheen’s character realised he was a bit of an idiot but because he was jealous that his brother got better Christmas presents from his aunt. This wasn’t a film about someone realising their actions were selfishly making other people’s lives harder. It was a film about selfishly changing time to make your own life better. A true Christmas film for our time.

I’m not saying we should go back to sending people dead birds as good luck charms but I can’t help thinking a little compassion and a touch less selfishness would go a long way.

Pre-release anxiety

“You can go out from midnight tonight.”

“What? Out there? With people. Germs. Omicron. Christmas.”

“Yes, Christmas. It’s ok. We’ve saved Christmas for you. You can be kissed by all those extended family members you only see once a year and have an argument about Brexit.”

“Do I have to?”

“You should be grateful. We’ve saved Christmas.”

“But is it safe?”

“Don’t be silly. Nothing’s safe. You should know that.”

“Right. I do. So, I’ve got to go out there?”

“I think so.”

“Right. So what are the rules again?”

“There are no rules.”

“I’m sure there are.”

“Well, yes but they don’t have to apply to you. You’re not one of the people who will get arrested.”

“Really?”

“I think so. You’re not poor or from an ethnic minority. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m not an MP.”

“No, you are right, that would be the ultimate protection.”

“Against Omicron?”

“No, against being prosecuted. No one is safe from Omicron. Get boosted.”

“Do you mean, get a booster vaccine?”

“Get boosted.”

“Has it been tweaked to deal with the new variant?”

“No but it can be. Get boosted.”

“I do have to wait 28 days after infection, though, right?”

“Get boosted.”

“You said that. Are you sure you know what you are doing?”

“Don’t break the golden rule.”

“You said there are no rules. Couldn’t I just stay here and watch Strictly on loop?”

“Just follow plan B”

“Plan B? So everything up until now was plan A?”

“It’s simple. Get out there but don’t get out there. It’s Christmas. It’s all perfectly clear..”

Important Dates for 1883

Stuck at home, with nowhere to go I've returned to my old hobby of reading local newspapers from  1882.  It's a niche hobby but it is uniquely mine.

I know that you couldn't care less that the Orleans Club was brought down by Charles Timperley, the master of the workhouse and the rest of the Maldon eleven, even though the ground was slow going.  I'm sure you are also less than interested in the same man's vocal stylings at the cricket club concert, even though the comment, "Of the able performances of this little chorus, too much could not be said," does make you wonder just how bad he was.

What I do know you will be interested in are the important dates for 1883, printed in  a December 1882 edition.

Jan 1 – New Year’s Day 5 – Hedge Sparrow sings 6 – Epiphany 17 – Blackbird whistles 21 – Septuagesima Sunday 27 – Field Speedwell flowers 28 – Sexagesima Sunday	Feb 1 – Pheasant and Partridge shooting ends 2 – Candlemas Day 6 – Shrove Tuesday 7 – Ash Wednesday 11 – Quadragesima Sunday 14 – Valentines Day	March 1 – St David’s Day 17 – St Patrick’s Day 18 – Palm Sunday 23 – Good Friday 25 – Easter Sunday
April 1 – Low Sunday 5 – Game licences expire 6 – Old lady day 12 – Swift appears 23 – St George’s Day 29 – Rogation Sunday	May 2 – Rogation Day 3 – Ascension Day 9 – Honeysuckle flowers 13 - Pentacost Whit Sunday 16 – Ember Day 20  - Trinity Sunday 24 – Queen Vic born 1819 25 – Milkwort flowers 28 – Gueldre rose flowers 31 – Joan of Arc burned	June 21 – Proclamation Day 28 – Queen Vic crowned 1838
July 3 – Dog Days begin 23 – Horehound flowers 26 – Teasel flowers	August 1 – Lammas Day 6 – Bank holiday 11 – Dog Days end 13 – Grouse shooting begins	Sept 1 – Partridge shooting begins 12 – St Ledger Day 19 – Ember Day
Oct 1 – Pheasant Shooting begins 6 – Earthquake in England 17 – Foxhunting commences 25 – St Crispin’s Day 29 – Hare hunting begins 31 – All Hallows Eve	Nov 1 – All Saints’ Day 5 – Guy Fawkes Day 22 – St Cecilia’s Day 30 – St Andrew’s Day	Dec 1 – 1st Sunday in Advent 4 – New law courts appeared (1882) 21 – St Thomas Sh Day 25 – Christmas Day 26 – Bank Holiday 28 – Innocents Day 30 – Sunday after Christ 31 – New Year’s Eve

 

The thing that constantly surprises me about History is how much things change. You think that holy days and holidays are always the same but there are so many changes.

What surprises me most about these dates is that when the blackbird whistles or the honeysuckle flowers is as important as the Queen's birthday.

Although, now that I know I will be looking out for a whistling blackbird on the 17th of January, checking to see if the field speedwell has flowered on the 25th and whether the hedge sparrow is singing on the 5th.

And the winner is....

Whatever name 'it' chooses to go by, 'it' has won.  I don't want to be negative but it seems to me that it might be time to be honest, say goodbye to and hug your elderly or sick loved ones and just get on with it.  Treating a virus like an enemy you can beat with firepower has always been problematic because human bodies are complex and unpredictable.  When you add in human behaviour, weak  and confused governance, and an app that is buggier than the hotel we built for them in the garden, then there is no hope.

I say this because two confusing things happened today.  The first is that the antibody test result I took, bruising the ends of two fingers because my blood really likes to stay in my body, came back and the second is what a friend was told after she tested positive on both lateral flow and PCR.

My antibody test told me that I have antibodies from both a previous infection and the vaccine. It says that it is unlikely that these antibodies are from the current infection.  So, I am able to get infected with this virus, despite having active antibodies?  Ah, you say, but you don't have serious illness. And it's true, I don't but I do have a heavy cold that still hasn't gone away after seven days and has caused a complete loss of smell.  Although I am over fifty, I am also very fit and healthy and this level of illness is rare for me.

When I thought about this result, I decided that it was even more important to self-isolate, wear masks, wash our hands and get on the next slide.

Then a friend tested positive, after her partner was already sick (for the second time in a few months).  She dutifully put her result into the app and prepared to cancel Christmas only to be told that she didn't need to self isolate.

Now, I know I don't understand much but we've given up, haven't we? Wave the white flag, declare the winner.  

The only problem with this approach is there has been no funding or help for the NHS and no one in hospital has been told to give up on 'it'. In fact they are still prioritsing 'it' because if they don’t the whole system falls over.

Dear Boris

 Dear Boris,

Please resign. 

I’m mildly unwell and confined to my house,  having caught the Covid from a place you promised me was safe. I got the jab, jab, jab. I took personal responsibility. While I’ve done all those things I expected you to provide the NHS with everything it needed to fight this continuing pandemic. Instead you ignored them and expected them to jump, every time a crisis appeared, which they did to the best of their dwindling ability and now you’ve written them a thank you letter that you couldn’t even be bothered to write your name on properly. Everyone knows that the line about the government doing whatever it takes is absolute rubbish. And boosted isn’t the right word (I used to respect you, as a writer)

But it is not for these reasons I want you to resign. In fact I don’t think any of the rest of your party would do a better job and I’d much rather have a change of government than a change of leader and a reprise for the party.

It’s the brilliant Pippa Crerar of the Mirror is giving us a masterclass in journalism at the moment that is the reason I want you to resign today. Genius, to gather the evidence and slowly drip feed it exactly one year later. You know she has more, right? It might not have been you at those parties but it was in your house. You were the boss and you should have put your foot down, although you couldn’t because according to Dom, you and a Carrie were having parties of your own.

The last thing I wanted to see over my breakfast this morning (which tastes of cardboard, by the way) was a bunch of idiots in braces, smiling their horse teeth smiles, posed in front of a buffet. I do not want to spend my time wondering what the hot food was, although I am imagining beef olives and macaroni cheese. I do not want to read the quiz name teams and know that they were laughing at us. Prof Quiz Whitty, Next Slide Please, We’ve Been Clear and Hands, Face, First Place.

Come on Boris. Do the decent thing. You know she has the naked Twister pictures. Go now and spare us all.

Clever little virus

 I know there’s a lot of negativity about at the moment. You are supposed to pick a side and stick to it and if you are human then you are meant to be against the virus. Probably all viruses but let’s just concentrate on this one for now. 

As I am currently playing host to the little chap I find myself feeling quite proud of it. Seriously, it’s clever and I’m always impressed by intelligence. 

It’s a fascinating bug. Virologists must be having their best day ever, being able to watch a virus, new to humans, develop and assimilate. It might not be behaving as anyone expected but it is progressing in a way that must be fascinating to study.

The hope is, that this study will be of some benefit to humans but it might not be. It’s a virus. It doesn’t really care about us. 

Rona, Corona, Covid, It. There are so many names and so many varieties. It’s like the Heinz of the virus world. Last winter ‘it’ gave children tummy ache. This winter, ‘it’ is ‘just’ a cold. Maybe we should call it the special Christmas cold that could kill your granny. 

I know that someone has now died with the new variant but statistically that tells us nothing, so keep calm people and carry on partying. 

Sorry. I think that was Rona speaking, although I agree with the one case doesn’t tell us anything part.

It is a clever thing though. Christmas is a time when our natural instinct is to gather together indoors, to be foisted with unsolicited hugs and kisses. No wonder it loves this time of year.  

I’m particularly impressed with it because it made me sociable. Briefly. On Friday, when I started to sneeze, I cut my lunchtime walk short because it was freezing and I was tired.

 “It’s been a busy week,” Rona said, “You need a rest. Just pop into the staff room and have a hot drink. Ooh look! People! Sit down. You deserve a rest. Of course you’re not sick. This is what always happens to you when you stop. Look, a funny conversation. Join in. Of course the staff room isn’t too loud for your holey brain. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy this moment.”

I hope no one in the staff room does get sick because Covid guilt is a bigger thing than I imagined but you’ve got to be impressed with ‘it’.

‘It’ is rather pretty too

The curse of the afternoon tea voucher

For Christmas 2019, my daughter bought me an afternoon tea voucher for three. I was thrilled because it was for the farm shop behind where she lived and came with the instructions that it would be for a girly day for her, me and my sister. We planned it for Mother’s Day but the voucher was cursed.

As soon as she bought it she started to think about moving back to Essex. Then over New Year she caught a nasty flu, which confirmed the idea. As soon as she got the new job we started to hear about a novel coronavirus emerging from China. 

By the time Mother’s Day arrived the world was in such a panic that cafés had closed but the farm shop was doing takeaway. This would be our last opportunity to use it, as she was due to move home in a few weeks time. I was so concerned with persuading her to move back straight away that I left the vouchers at home and had to pay for the ordered takeaways. We sat on the floor of her flat (her table was full of work from home screens) and ate, while random people arrived to buy her furniture and we stuffed things into bin bags and shoved them in my sister’s car. The Long Suffering Husband came with me the next day to help collect more stuff and as we drove home Boris made his lockdown announcement.

The voucher stayed pinned to the board until my daughter moved and I gave it to her to use, the next time she visited friends. 

This weekend we were due to go to Birmingham with friends for the Christmas market. It has been a long and stressful couple of weeks, so I was looking forward to relaxing and starting to get into the Christmas spirit.  We had planned to stop on the way for some lunch and the LSH suggested Market Harborough. 

“Ooh, there’s still the afternoon tea voucher,” I said

It was still in my daughter’s kitchen drawer.

Last week was particularly stressful. It was the week of the school nativity, meaning that I had to be in school everyday and also a week where I had eight pupils taking exams. My daughter was away on Monday night and so we walked to hers in the morning to feed the cats before an afternoon  in a hall of coughing children. When she came home on Tuesday evening, she discovered that we had left a tap on and flooded her house. Soggy moggies, lifting laminate and cupboards full of soaked rice and pasta weren’t the only things we found during the clean up. The afternoon tea voucher was floating in a drawer.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to use this,” she said, putting it on the radiator with the cats vaccination records.

The cats and and the voucher dried out and the LSH booked the afternoon tea and put the voucher in the car glove box, so we didn’t forget it. 

I was taking a lateral flow test almost every day because twice a week didn’t feel enough with the number of cases in school. The last thing I wanted was to be a super-spreader.  Thursday was the morning of the exams, the afternoon of the last nativity performance and I had a scratchy throat. By the evening I felt understandably tired. I had a meal booked out with friends and so took a lateral flow test before I went out. 

“Phew, it’s negative. I was really worried,” I told the LSH.

Then on Friday morning I started to sneeze, my nose was runny and I was freezing. 

“Do you think I should pop down for another PCR test?” I asked the LSH, just to be sure.

“We will be on our way to Birmingham by the time you get the results,” he said, “The lateral flow was negative, it’s just a cold.”

However, my usual Friday night lateral flow came back positive. PCR confirmed. Weekend cancelled. No chance to use the cursed vouchers. 

I wonder if I could end the pandemic by ceremoniously burning the voucher?

And the camel did a poo on the stage

 That’s a wrap. 

End of nativity season for another year. 

This weekend, key stage one teachers will be hitting the wine hard, sitting a a dark room and rocking, mumbling fragments of songs that are wedged between their ears. Tortuous rhymes, “But you’re going to be a mum, his highly honoured chum!” sneak out at night, morphing into twitching dreams.

Although, it’s too late to change anything that happened teachers will reflect on the successes and failures, hoping that next year’s nativity will also be described as, ‘the best ever.’

The failures always make good dinner party tales. Who doesn’t enjoy hearing stories about the moment when the music stops and the children carry on singing but change both the key and tempo of the piece? Or about the child who stuck two fingers up at his mum to stop her taking pictures when she’d been told not to? 

There are always a lot of stories to choose from. It’s inevitable when working with 150 small divas between the ages of 4 and 7. 

There will have been wardrobe malfunctions. Mary’s veil will have slipped over her face, an angel’s wing will have fallen off, the lead presenter will have lifted her skirt above her head, a shepherd will have dropped a crook and the donkey’s tail will have fallen off.  A small child, dressed as a sheep will have dropped their leggings during the class dance and told the teacher encouraging them to pull them up, “I’ve got an itchy bum cheek, though, innit?”

Small children aren’t always proportionate with the noise they make and so a comment like that will have carried right to the back of the room but the whole birth of Jesus gets mumbled and swallowed into a twisting whisper. There is a myth that under sevens can stand still on stage and project their voices but I think you are more likely to see a unicorn, which is lucky for seven year olds because that’s all they really want from life.  Teachers try various techniques like putting a star, cross or spot where each child should stand but there is always a risk that a child standing on another’s shape could lead to a punch up.  Then there is the microphone dilemma, as inevitably it will be the loudest child that has been spookily cast as Herod that will stand in front of it and sing at top volume, while the child with the line about calling the baby Jesus shrinks back from it and gets even quieter.

Props can cause a whole host of problems but most primary school teachers will be watching the clips from the school in Ireland where the intended sparklers turned out to be fireworks  and feeling very grateful that they only had to deal with the flock of inflatable-sex-toy sheep that Amazon were selling with their shepherd outfits this year. 

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/3592775/alloa-mum-son-school-blow-up-sex-doll-sheep-amazon-pulled/amp/

All of this always happens in winter vomiting virus season, flu now Covid season, so coughs, snot and other bodily fluids feature heavily. My favourite story from this year’s round of nativity plays that I heard was the camel who loudly shouted, “I’ve dun a poo,” shook his leg only for the offending turd to fly out onto the stage. I hope someone writes that into Nativity 6 (or whatever number we are up to) stretching the truth to make it land in the lap of the Mayor, sitting in the front row. 

Even with all of the disasters or maybe especially because of them teachers will also be feeling pride at their achievements. I know I am.

Seriously Nasty

 It wasn’t gin in a tin and a Mr Kiplings mince pie. It was spin the bottle, cheese and lots of wine, laughing at the general public, putting everyone’s lives at risk, telling lies about it and naked twister.

With governance like that, no wonder we have the highest excess death rate in the whole of Europe and the ONS have had to write a clear statement on their data page which, to me, reads as, this has been a public health disaster, don’t believe the lies.

Twitter is a very angry place right now. People are sharing their complex grief stories, filled with loneliness and despair.

Even if our NHS was the best health care system in the world (which it probably isn’t after all these years of a conservative government’s under-funding) it is still shameful to put all this unnecessary pressure on it, then lie about it and laugh at the people who elect you.

Joke makers are having the time of their lives. Their job couldn’t be easier. Even Ant and Dec are having a go. Rory Brenner tweeted, “If there was a piss up at number 10 last Christmas then it’s unlikely that Boris organised it. Because. Well. You know.”

However, we don’t need comedians when Boris Johnson’s own especially appointed press officer can film her own comedy routine, in such a way that makes us all know that it’s not funny. In fact, it’s seriously nasty.

Social Worker

 There’s a social worker who is currently on sick leave, who stands to lose their job, is getting death threats, has been on anti-depressants for years, has been working crazy hours, maybe 20 hour days and feels as though they have been in a room with 100 small fires and an egg cup of water.

‘Just one?’you ask.

No. Not just one, or even the two in Solihull, who visited Arthur before his death: The two who considered that a boy who told them that he was happy and felt safe (interviewed alone) wasn’t as at much risk as the boy who had been returned to his parents by a judge, despite clear evidence of systematic abuse. They offered parenting and mental health support instead.

The government has pledged to leave no stone unturned until they can find an individual to blame. It definitely couldn’t be a failing of lack of money. An egg cup of water should be enough.

Meanwhile, these two social workers are not allowed to talk to anyone. Other social workers keep their distance because they are told to. The death threats are all over social media. Lies are told about them not being registered (they are, I checked). Social workers have to re-register every two years. They can’t leave their homes and their children get spat on on the school bus.

It breaks my heart that this little boy died but the people to blame are in prison. The people who failed to stop it are just as much victims (except maybe the people who cut funding and the judges who return abused children to their parents). The hairdresser who watched as the little boy was made to stand still in a corner for 6 hours, the grandparents and uncle who reported the issue but didn’t step in and insist the child lived with them, the school who had reported that the boy was traumatised from his mother previously stabbing his step-father and going to prison, the teaching assistants who were ringing during lockdown and the social workers will all be feeling guilty but they were only trying to help.

I wonder why this case has bothered us so much. How could I be so heartless? But this little boy isn’t the only one. There are thousands suffering at the moment.

You think we should know?

You listen to the recordings his step mother made and with the benefit of knowing he has died hear an abused child however if I had recorded my child’s tantrum after being told they couldn’t eat all the chocolate in their advent calendar then I’m sure it would sound very similar.

The fact that this happened so fast is what has shocked us but I can’t help feeling more sorry for the thousands of children that are dying slowly and the social workers who only have an egg cup.

A picture of my daughter’s cat as he tried to convince us he should have all the treats in the catvent calendar to lighten the mood.

It’s not always true

 Just because you say something it doesn’t always mean it’s true. Even if you passionately believe it, you could still be wrong. 

I know.

Mind blowing.

Surely, once you think something then you have to stick to your guns. No going back. No apologising. No reflecting on what happened with hindsight.

I was thinking about the Downing Street Christmas ‘gathering’ where ‘all guidelines were followed.’

Now, I like to bash the government as much as the next person but what if it was just a group of people, who had been together all day, trying to work out how to get the country through the mess of a pandemic, who had sat together in a room, cracked open a gin in a tin and a box of Mr Kipling mince pies and swapped their gifts? Was that against guidance? No. Admittedly, it wasn’t fair that some people got to do this and others were stuck at home, either working or on furlough, lonely and scared but some people did have to go to work and the rules were loose enough that they could be interpreted differently. Just because some people are saying laws were broken that doesn’t make it true. Just because the Prime Minister is saying that there’s nothing to see here it doesn’t mean the issue wouldn’t benefit from more scrutiny.

 Weirdly, the justice secretary is now saying that there can be no investigation into this to see if it was a crime because crimes aren’t prosecuted retrospectively. What he said might not be true. It has led to some very funny comments, particularly from writers of the most popular TV genre. Don’t we all love a cold case drama? Obviously, crimes have to be prosecuted retrospectively. It would be terrible if rapists or robbers could only be stopped if a policeman was present at the time. However, the people saying that all crimes are prosecuted retrospectively might not be saying the truth either. The Covid laws were not designed for witch-hunts. The point was that they gave the police powers to go in and break up large parties and fine people as a deterrent to others. It would be awful if anyone who didn’t like you could contact the police and insist that you were prosecuted because at the beginning of lockdown you walked your dog twice a day. 

As I was flicking through Twitter and laughing at the jokes being made by the writers of New Tricks, Silent Witness, The Unforgotten, The Missing,  Waking the Dead and the Pembrokeshire Murders I stumbled upon this picture.

It’s not true, is it? Although it’s a wonderful picture and the middle child looks so happy.

Getting outside is brilliant. I’m all for it. It’s good for your brain but I don’t have lasting memories of any walk I’ve taken. Not one. In fact that’s probably the benefit of them: that they allow your brain to rest and get on with the filing job without adding more to the pile.

However many of my early memories are TV. Mary, Mungo and Midge posting a letter and me wanted to do the same. Hartley Hare being stupid while I ate Heinz tomato soup. Trying to draw the test card. Thinking I was going to die as I laughed and cried at the same time over a Shirley Temple film. If you are a similar age to me then you know the end of this sentence.

“It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s …..”

I started senior school the same year as the first episode of Grange Hill and was convinced I would have my head flushed down the toilet. My teenage years are littered with jokes, humour and one liners from comedy programmes. Even now, I look forward to the next episode of a bloody murder programme more than I do a walk in the countryside and I love walking.

Tis the season of itchy chilblains

 Ask any musician about December and they will tell you that it’s a particularly challenging month. Outdoor gigs and the resulting itchy chilblains have always been a feature. 

I got my first when I was about 9 and had been carolling every night in one week. In the Seventies you couldn’t move for people singing and playing carols. Every High Street would have a brass band or a group of singing scouts rattling a tin. Groups of small Guides and Brownies would take a five mile route march, stopping to sing under a lamppost, while they sent the cutest to knock on doors and beg for money. 

This practice, which used to require the door knocker to give good wishes with an opportunity to check on elderly neighbours in cold winter months has been stopped by paperwork. You now need to apply for a licence from the local council or police (if you are in London). This gives you a window of three days and you still aren’t allowed to shake the tin. Also, we don’t need to now that we can check on people with telecommunications. Why Carol when you can WhatsApp?

Music is still a huge feature of Christmas and some of us work hard to keep the traditions of carols alive. 

Last year was a let down on the live music front and so this year we were all planning to make up for it until Omicron. Boris said, “Don’t cancel your nativity plays. Jenny Harries said, “Don’t leave your house unless it’s essential.” Penfold popped up with a football metaphor and Chris Whitby is hiding in a hole and rocking.

Whatever schools and other concert organisers do now they won’t be able to please everyone. Omicron is an anagram of moronic but, as someone pointed out, omicron b can be rearranged to make no crimbo and none of us want that. 

When I was walking the other morning I saw some children, dressed in sheets and others with tea towels on their heads going into a primary school. One little boy was talking to his mum about it. I tried not to judge while comparing her duvet coat with his sheet.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” he said, “We missed out last year but it is really cold.”

“Yes, think of me, having to stand in the cold and watch you though.”

“I don’t know why we can’t do the nativity in the summer.”

I waited for an explanation about the birth of Jesus, the meaning of Christmas or even a pagan explanation of bringing joy to cold, dark, lonely months.

“No. I don’t know why either. It would make so much more sense to do it in the summer.”

Any school that is brave enough to put on any concert or nativity play this year should be praised. Whatever they do, someone will complain and no one wants to be accused of killing a child’s grandparent.

However, if the price you have to pay is a few itchy chilblains then I think it’s worth it.

I wouldn’t swap days making paper chains, teaching Christmas carols while a donkeys head watches you, even if I do sometimes get a little stressed and grumpy.

Moronic

 Moronic is an anagram of omicron.

You might have seen the video of people on the tube, singing, “Wearing a mask is like keeping a fart in your trousers.” It’s like a Stephen Sondheim tribute/Shaun of the Dead mash up.

Moronic variant

This kind of behaviour, however, isn’t a symptom of the Omicron variant, despite being moronic and pointless. However, expect to see more of it. When messages are mixed and confusing you can’t expect people not to be scared and angry. 

The good news is that this new variant only spreads in shops and in public transport and not at school nativity plays or KFCs. 

Seriously, though, the good news seems to be that symptoms of this new variant don’t include a cough or loss of smell and just seem to make people tired. 

The bad news is that we may have to suspend our moronic tendencies for a while until we find out if it gets round the vaccine and kills old people.

Names

 Apparently, names matter.  Boris Johnson is really called Alexander, which is far too serious a handle for the PM. Frances Ethel Gumm wasn’t allowed to sing Over the Rainbow until she changed her name. Amazon only got its name because Cadabara kept being changed on spellcheck to Cadaver. 

This is how we are suddenly at Coronavirus variant Omicron. 

Omicron sounds like an evil robot overlord sent to destroy the Earth. The very name strikes terror into the hearts and minds of anyone who has ever watched an episode of Dr Who.  

As we watched the News the Long Suffering Husband questioned the name.

“Omicron? What happened to all the others? We started with alpha, went to beta, gamma and delta but how can we suddenly be at omicron?”

I thought he had a point but was quick to explain that they have variants of interest (VOI) that they name and only tell us about the variants of concern (VOC), especially now that we are all ‘over it’. When they decided to stop giving us the number and went to the Greek alphabet it made sense. The numbers were confusing anyway. Alpha was B.1.1.7, Beta  B.1.351, Gamma P.1 and Delta B.1.617.2. And with that logic you can see why they chose a simplified classification system for the public, after a brief but disastrous flirtation with naming it after the country it was first discovered. Racism, jingoism and viruses are not a good mix.

As viruses mutate all the time there will be as many mutations as there are cases because every human body has an impact. Every body gives the virus a chance to grow and develop so that it can live in harmony with its hosts. It’s sole aim is to get to a stage where it can not kill or terrify too many. We have never been able to study this process in as much detail before. It’s a fascinating time for science but a confusing one for most people. 

This current VOC B.1.1.529 was first identified in South Africa and Botswana three days ago and has panicked the scientists. It is the fourth VOC and they think it could change the course of the infections as much as the Delta variant. They are also concerned because it is different enough to get around the vaccine. It hasn’t yet spread enough to be a sure fire problem but keeping it in one place will help to stop that happening. Luckily, some learning has taken place.

So, what happened to all the other letters of the Greek alphabet?

Epsilon - B.1.427 & B.1.429 discovered in USA - No longer detected

Zeta - P.2 discovered in Brazil - No longer detected

Eta - B.1.524 discovered in Nigeria - No longer detected

Theta - P.3 discovered in the Philippines - No longer detected

Iota - B.1.526 discovered in the USA - no longer detected

Kappa - B.1.617.1 discovered in India - no longer detected

Lambda - C.37 discovered in Peru - still a VOI but seemed to have a random and not easy pattern of spread

Mu -  B.1.621 - discovered in Columbia - still a VOI but seems to have a random and not easy pattern of spread.

Nu - B.1.1.529 discovered in South Africa.

Wait! Isn’t that the same number as omicron? Yes, of course it is. Names matter. 

You can imagine the conversations.

You can’t call it the Nu variant. That’s too confusing. 

Which new variant? 

The Nu variant. 

I know it’s the new variant but there’s been so many I want to know what it’s called.

 Nu. 

Oh for gods sake!

So, the scientists at WHO scratched their heads and discussed it.

We’ll have to skip the Nu variant as the new variant. 

What’s next?  

Xi! 

How do you say that? 

No one really knows. 

K-igh? 

Zgh-igh? 

Shy? Shee? 

Ghee? 

We can’t have that, it’s too confusing and it sounds too Chinese. 

We will be back to square one. 

What’s next? 

Omicron. 

Perfect. 

Sounds like a scary robot. 

Do you think it will make people wash their hands, wear a mask and restrict their travel? 

BBC headline- Killer Robots are closer than you think: How scared should you be?

Reindeer from the knitting nest

 A small creature appeared from the knitting nest. 

Actually, he’s not that small. It turned out that he was much bigger than I thought he’d be. He is soft and cuddly and like all creatures born from moments of mindful knitting, he has a story to tell.

After just one season in the service of the big man himself he has been put out to pasture. 

It’s not that he wasn’t strong or that he lacked navigation skills. His nose was bright enough to guide the sleigh and even though he had one wonky antler that the other reindeer teased him about, most of the time he got on well with everyone. He was the kind of reindeer you’d want with you on a long difficult night, making it his mission to make sure that everyone else was happy and having fun. He invented the game where the reindeer used two carrots to make fangs and do vampire impressions. None of them had ever seen a vampire but it was jolly good fun.

Sometimes, though, he would get a bit overwhelmed at the responsibility. All those children. All those toys. All those hopes and dreams. There was so much belief in him and he wasn’t quite sure if he could live up to it. 

No one really thought it was a problem that he would dip his carrot in the brandy, Sherry or Baileys that had been left out for Santa, not even when he started to slur his words but when everyone started to get his name wrong because he couldn’t say it after the first 100 million houses Santa suggested that he retire.

He is now hoping to find a new home, although he would still like the occasional dipped carrot. All things in moderation.

Confidence

 Oh to have the confidence of Boris Johnson or Nadine Dorries. Even when their incompetencies are pointed out, extremely publicly and shared endlessly on social media, lampooned by comedians and Ant and Dec, they continue to believe they are brilliant.

Do they lie awake at night worrying about what they might have done wrong?

Do they stop writing, just in case they say something stupid or unforgivable? 

Do they turn down parties and social events for fear of not quite fitting in?

They might do. It might all be a fake smile and an insistence that everything is perfectly fine that causes them to blunder on, waffling on about Peppa Pig or Channel 4 receiving public money. They might be perfectly well aware of how dumb they’ve been and keep their anxiety private. It’s easy to look in from the outside and think they have it all sussed. I suspect that they don’t even know how incompetent they are , which makes it easier to fool themselves.

I also think they are supremely self confident, which isn’t fair. Why should they get it all? Couldn’t they share?

Advice

 It’s ok to write nothing.

MPs are revolting

 I haven’t been able to write for a bit.

But I saw the headline “MPs set to revolt over second jobs!” and decided that if I just wrote the title that popped into my head I might be able to.

However, that’s it. Enough for today.

The lies we tell ourselves

 It’s only a dog

You’ll know when

At least

Went to sleep

Perfectly fine 

The lies we tell ourselves

Life’s a bugger

Repeating patterns

Grief has its own agenda

It takes time

Grief is love

Unavoidable truths

Butters no parsnips

 This is a public service announcement. There has been a ground frost, so you can now eat your parsnips, unless you’re French, in which case you are likely to turn your nose up and wonder why the British get excited about animal fodder. 

Parsnips after the frost, lifted from the ground and eaten quickly have a unique sweetness that you don’t get from shop bought.

Today, I’m missing my allotment for the first time. I’m also looking as several conservative MPs tweets and thinking, ‘Fine words butter no parsnips.’

Never has anything looked more corrupt and sleazy than yesterday’s vote to protect Owen Patterson (and therefore giving corruption a green light to all in the future) and the MPs who are now tweeting that they abstained, as if we should be proud of them for almost doing the right thing are making me twitch. 

It’s pointless too. Like a parsnip in summer. The standards committee had already decided that the MP was guilty of taking money to lobby. He maintained that he was bringing the issue up because he passionately believed in it and was nothing to do with the £100000 they pay him a year on top of his MPs salary. The Conservative party whipped its MPs to vote against the next step which would mean a by-election. This would give the final accountability back to his constituents, making it a government for the people. His constituents probably would believe all his arguments and the majority would vote him back in, so what is the point of taking away this step that makes parliament accountable to us? 

Who else has mouldy parsnips in the bottom of their fridge?

Post Pandemic Craziness

 Last week I spent a day looking through original records of patients at Broadmoor between 1882 and 1910.  From the end of 1889 until about 1891 there were several admissions where their diagnosis was annotated with the word ‘pandemic’. This wasn’t something I knew about but Google tells me that it started in Russia, killed mainly old people, affected more men than women and that modern virological sequencing has suggested that it was a coronavirus. 

Broadmoor 1890

It made me wonder if it’s the type of virus that sends people nuts, rather than the circumstances. 

The world does feel particularly nuts at the moment. 

At the weekend I went into London and a group of about 30 men were being guarded by 8 police officers as they walked through St Pancreas. It didn’t look as though they were under arrest or in trouble in any way. The police officers walked by them, joked and chatted. They looked happier and more relaxed than if they’d been policing a climate change march. The men were singing and wearing a lot of Burberry. 

“That’s unusual,” I said to the Long Suffering Husband, “I wonder why those men are so important.”

A beat later, I realised that they were singing football-type chants and I got angry about the waste of resources. Eight police officers to make thirty men, who should be in jail for their repeated violent acts, feel safe and important. It’s the wrong way round. The world is crazy.

As the day wore on people seemed to be more drunk than usual, devils, ghosts and witches, spilling onto the streets from bars, as early as 5pm.

Then I came home to find another argument raging on feminist Twitter about what being asexual means. A woman had posted a picture of herself dressed in leather dominatrix underwear and captioned it, ‘This is what asexual looks like.” It was funny. I don’t know if she was serious but boy did it wind up the middle aged Twitter feminists. I am now at the stage where I’m fed up of seeing arguments about gender and sexuality and would really like to go back to the days where sex was real and binary, gender was not real and could be freely ignored and sexuality was a private matter that no one talked about. Obviously, that’s my version of how I’d like it to be and I do realise that those who ignored societal norms of gender and sexuality were persecuted when we didn’t talk about it. However, all this talk is just a little crazy.

Then we have the climate. Hundreds of people flew to Scotland to discuss how to save the planet. Boris Johnson fell asleep and the American news channels set up in Edinburgh (rather than 45 miles away in Glasgow, where the conference is actually being held) because the castle is prettier. At the end governments still won’t have done enough but they will have all tried to pass the blame.

As if this wasn’t all crazy enough I then got one of those news push pings on my phone that said,

“HEALTH NEWS: You could be getting too much sleep!”

I told you. Post pandemic craziness. 

Attracting the young

 The Long Suffering Husband has been worrying about his golf club for a while. The current owner has made noises about wanting to sell and has suggested that golf is a dying game. 

“We’ve got to attract the youngsters,” said the LSH, sounding like a very old man.

I’m not sure. It’s like Radio 4. Radio 4 would be dreadful if they started to attract the youngsters. It would stop being a place where you could accidentally listen to a very boring program about primordial slime and find yourself still thinking about it a day later. If you were making programs to attract the young then that one wouldn’t have made the cut. When you are young, you still have the energy to get up and change the station or know how to properly work your car radio.

I didn’t always listen to Radio 4 but I did always listen to radio. In my youth, I flitted. The Archers was my only concession to the old person’s station. Radio 1 and local stations took most of my attention. In my thirties I moved to Radio 2 and loved Soaps on the TV. It’s only now that I’m old that my Radio knob is stuck on the oldies’ channel. 

Maybe the golf club doesn’t need to attract youngsters, as long as young people are playing sport they will naturally be drawn to it when their knees are too old and creaky for football. (The step after is bowling)

Yesterday, I spent the day in Reading records office, reading autopsy reports and other interesting documents. After a while I looked round and realised that the other people there were all old ladies and wondered if History needed to attract some young people.  

Thinking about how to make sure there are old ladies sitting in record offices in the future I wondered what we need to make sure we offer to children. Is it good stories from the past or a rigorous school history curriculum? However, I suspect that it’s nothing except being human. History is what we go to when we become history ourselves. Living in 1882 has certainly made me feel younger. However, thinking about my sudden attraction to original source historical documents has now made me realise just how old I am. 

British?

 For reasons I can’t even explain to myself I decided to try the “Life in the UK test” which people have to pass if they want citizenship. 

I failed the first test. 

I was mortified. I’ve been British all my life and am pretty well read and deep thinking.

I took another test and passed - just. There were still lots of questions I didn’t know and many more I guessed. 

I took 8 tests in all and only passed four of them. 

I couldn’t pick out the Paralympian from the other athletes. I didn’t know anything at all about Ireland. My knowledge of composers and poets was quite good but who really knows the difference between Wordsworth and Browning? 

I know that there is no perfect system for granting citizenship but it does worry me that most people who are actually British wouldn’t pass the test.

It also worries me that they are teaching very un-British things.

One of the questions said, “What should you do when moving into a new house or apartment?” Quite vague, I know but it was multiple choice and the answer couldn’t  be, “Put the kettle on and make tea,” even though this would be the most British thing to do.

The options were:

1. Warn the people who live near you not to talk to you.

2. Introduce yourself to the people who live near you, so they can help you.

3. Tell the people who live near you not to make a noise 

4. Do nothing.

I chose option 4, which was wrong. The answer was the terribly un-British number 2.

These would also be good options:

5. Drop your gaze, so as not to accidentally make eye contact and be forced into an awkward conversation.

6. Walk around new house wondering why the previous owner took all the lightbulbs.

7. Clean frantically and tut that it didn’t look this dirty when you agreed to buy it.

8. Hover by the removal men as they get the box containing the family heirlooms out, just ‘knowing’ that they will break something. 

9. Discuss the rain with the removers and possibly the new neighbours if you accidentally made eye contact. 

10. Say, “Well, this is fun.”

Who knew that being British wasn’t about drinking tea, avoiding eye contact and complaining about the weather but was actually about knowing the exact numbers of Scottish Constituencies, where King Cnut was from (without sniggering at the spelling of his name) or knowing how few people live in Wales? 

I can’t believe there were no questions on innuendo, either. If there is one thing that marks out a true Brit it would be a love of signs like this:

Monkey Chatter

During lockdown, the troop of monkeys were quieter.  They only had one topic to chat about and none of  that was my responsibility.  In many ways, it was a relief.  But here we are again, back to normal life with everything to fit in and there's a whole shrewdness of gibbons living in my head again.

If you read about monkey brain (New Age thinkers, yogis and meditators talk about it a lot) then they all say that the monkey chatter is negative talk.  They suggest that it's the monkeys that shout, "You idiot, what do you think you were doing?  Can't you do anything right?"

I have a theory that everyone has different types of monkeys and apes that live in their head.  

A troop of chimps stand in one corner making stupid jokes and not taking anything seriously, while a flange of baboons concern themselves with chatter about bodily functions.  These particular simians get more noisy as you get older.  A tribe of macaques are always thinking about how to get out of doing things and a cartload of mandrills are sticking their huge noses into other people's business. A cup of capuchins chat about your coffee intake. A barrel of marmosets constantly consider your appearance, planning visits to hairdressers and beauticians that you really don't have time for.  A whoop of gorillas mull over your romantic relationships and a family of orangutans, thoughtfully mull over how your children are doing.  But that shrewdness of gibbons are the worst.  They are always making plans and have ideas for career advancement.  I keep telling mine that I don't really want a career: A part time job is fine but they never listen.  At 3am they come up with a new plan, a new idea, a new suggestion.  They are not a shrewdness for nothing.  These plans are genius, compelling me to suggest things I really don't have time to do.  

They are all capable of being negative because they want the best for their particular area of expertise.  However, my apes are positive most of the time but I'd still like them to shut up occasionally.

“Just tell them you’re busy.”

How do you quieten monkeys?  All I can think of at the moment is nuts. Am I nuts or do my head primates just need feeding?

Distraction notebooks

 I haven’t written a blog in a while. 

The world is a very strange and confusing place. Step away from the news. Don’t look at Tuesday’s Covid figures (never look at Tuesday Covid figures). Don’t think about the politicians. Don’t get drawn into discussions about women. Don’t worry about spiking or refugees or Michael Gove’s dance moves. And whatever you do don’t think about climate change or weirdos that think the Pope is in charge of all businesses.

Don’t think about whether dogs live past 14. Don’t navigate choices between steroids and kidney failure. Don’t question why you cook more for the dog than you do for yourself. Don’t forget you hate prawns. 

Instead get online and choose some new notebooks.

Don’t you just love a notebook?

My son bought me a Moleskin one for my birthday and it is a thing of pure joy. Stroke the cover, crack open the spine and stick your nose into the pages. You can smell the luxury, the possibility, the hope, velvety white pureness, waiting patiently for something, anything or even, nothing. That notebook doesn’t care what you put in it. It could be plans, ideas, suggestions, recipes, Covid figures, notes about death, life or drugs. It just loves you with its endless possibilities. 

So, instead of writing a blog that made any sense or filling any of my notebooks, I have trawled the websites of Paperchase, Papier, Waterstones, Smythson, Bookblock, Papermash ,Redbubble and too many others to mention.

I know it’s a distraction from the distraction of filling the notebook but sometimes it’s nice to just look.

Or it was until I came across this one.

Have I ever told you what my dog thinks of me? 

A bungalow of love and laughter

 The other day I wrote about the death of my brother and sister and how it might be linked to a feeling of sadness that I get on my birthday. After I had written it I feared that it sounded too sad; too ‘poor me’. 

Baby loss awareness week is really important. Talking about the fact that babies die is important. Not just this week but all the time.I love the fact that we have stopped calling it ‘stillborn’ and are also talking about miscarriage. 

It’s important that people can talk about their grief without fear of blame. There is a long history of blaming women that has lead to a feeling of shame. Our society is also really reluctant to talk of grief. It’s almost as though just talking about it will cause the sadness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t.

Talk about it. It’s fine.

Writing about my feeling of sadness and thinking about what my parents had to go through has also made me appreciate the love and laughter that was around me at that time.

My early memories from before my sister was born, marked out by the fact that we lived in a different house are not consumed by grief and sadness. Instead, I lived in a bungalow filled with love and laughter.

We listened to the radio and danced and sang. Lily the Pink: while my dad, in a pink jumper ran round, pretending to catch me underneath it to my squeals  of delight as he sang, ‘Oompah oompah, stick it up your jumpah.’

Mum and I ate Heinz tomato soup and watched Mary Mungo and Midge at lunchtime and then tried to draw the testcard. The smell of my watercolour paints mixing with the tiny pots of enamel paint mum was using to paint toy soldiers. When they were dry we took them to the dolls house that Dad had made (with real working lights) and marched them around before stuffing them in envelopes to earn a few pence extra for treats.

There were Thursday presents; a cream cake in a box, a pack of colouring pencils, a comic: Endless hours with a xylophone and later a recorder: Enormous amounts of patience for clipping the toenails of a child with the most ticklish feel on the planet, which ended in proper tickles and zuberding (if you don’t know, zuberding is where you blow a raspberry on the naked tummy of a wriggling child): Laughing at the neighbours grumpy poodle who did white poos: Learning to ride a bike with Mum laughing as Dad had to run behind because I wouldn’t let him let go: Our dog Tess who knew it was walk time when the six o clock news came on.

The more I think, the more I realise that the list is endless.

That  little bungalow was full of love, life and laughter. The loss of the babies was never a secret and something that my parents never ‘got over’ but it didn’t stop them having the happiest of lives.