Precious? Well I kept it 35 years.

So it's Sian's Story Telling Sunday again, you can join in over yonder! at High in the Sky!

This year Sian has asked us to story tell our precious items, and today she herself has chosen a postcard she received aged 10 years old, not depicting a momentous event today, but most precious at the time and obviously something she has never felt she wanted to be without.  I have something similar. I don't feel hugely strongly about it, but it is a small reminder and there doesn't seem any reason to not leave it in the little jewelry box with the charm bracelet from being a bridesmaid age 6 and my first signet ring.

As you may imagine there is a back story or two!

I was christened Kathryn and pretty much always called that by family and friends until I was a teen.  One of my first boyfriends, a lad from Mousehole had a Mum who's sister was called Kathy. She was a fab lady from Leicester and although she suffered with horrendous arthritis, to the extent that she could ride a bike more readily than walking, a\nd as a 15 year old I really loved her.. she called me Kathy and my Mum became 'Kathy's mum' to him and history was written. 

Now this is the bit I cringe about... I must have been a pretty pretentious teen in my own way (though on looking back I am sure I was pretty square.. but weren't we all in 1975 compared to pretentious of the 21st century?) because I kind of didn't like 'Kathy', especially 'Kathy Thomas', not sure why, it just didn't run off the pen, so I must have tried it out a few times and with the flourish of a teenager who was fairly academic (and in those days that meant being a pretty good essay writer as much as being a smart-ass!) I finally decided that it I was going to be stuck with Kathy, then I would make it a bit different and Kathi was born!  It ran off the pen nicely when I signed it and I liked how it looked on cards and stuff.

What I didn't expect was how stupid it looked when written by friends with tidy oval handwriting and the people who still practiced that joined up stuff we learnt for the 11+

Even today I use it still but have people apologising for spelling it wrong when they have sent me an email. When people ask if I am Kathi with  K or a C I take a breath, sigh and say whichever, then agree it is a K... then send one back and they must wonder.. why didn't she say it ends in 'i' but no 'e'... and if they do I just say, oh well I must have been a pretentious teenager.. and hope they smile too!

So, then there's KathiJo.. I know it sounds like a gingham-skirted-cookie-baking-southern-mom from Texas or somewhere, but it's actually just the first name hotmail would accept that didn't require a load of numbers too... and so Kathryn became Kathi became Kathi Jones who finally became KathiJo your blogger pal!

... and you may wonder, what precious item prompted this explanation?

(which in the true reason for my blogging, will one day explain in my usual protracted way,  to my nearest and dearest should they be ever wondering when I have long forgotten..why I was called Kathi..)... this necklace a(nother) boyfriend had made especially for me in about 1977. 

I think he had worries about how I actually spelt it.. but at least I knew it was made just for me because how many others were about just then!   Every now and then I find this in the little box and tell the story of how we had a whirlwind romance during my second year of A levels, prompted by his Dad (on holiday in Mousehole) suggesting he send him to take me out! He arrived in his Dad's car, took me to eat somewhere proper and even got out to open the car door for me.. well, we just weren't used to it in these parts were we.

Sadly a year on we had done it all, planned our lives, got engaged, he moved from London to live here, his family were moving here too anyways... and then the rot set in.. life was real, I was way too young, he liked his beer way too much and I got three good 'A' levels and realised that there was more to life than being a wife waiting at home until the pub called last orders! 

My darling Mum never judged for a moment, sat by, quietly not saying much at all, supporting during the high days and the low days, I bet she lay awake a good deal at night wondering just what would happen... but I made my own choices, eventually the right ones and it was over. She didn't say I told you so because she hadn't, but I knew she had thought so..... and about three years later the same guy was lost on the Penlee Lifeboat in 1981.. it was a strange thought, I saw his Mum and she said she was glad we hadn't worked out as I would have been a widow that day and probably had lost a father to my children. 

Truthfully the whole disaster was such a sad time for the village, I didn't feel worse about him than any of the others I knew and my step-father probably felt worst of all because he lived with and saw raised several of those guys in 1960's Mousehole.... but maybe there is a little more to the story of the necklace than I realise and maybe why I kept it longer than I may otherwise have done....a kind of a symbol of the innocence of a young romance in days when no-one can have predicted what would happen in the future... and now that little bit of story has been told..

Funny too, as I feel sadder writing about this now than ever before..xx

Picking My Precious..

Well it's definitely a blogging Sunday. Catching up on my view(s) for January to kick start the LuckySnapping challenge and now joining in with Sian's Story Telling Sunday here! It's a great idea and this year we are finding our most precious keepsakes and story telling around them.

So I set off for my special places.. a few drawers and little boxes in our chest of drawers. I pondered a few items and finally I knew which was my most cherished item.  There are lots of things I would be sad to lose, but this is the one I would be bereft if I lost...My Mum's engagement ring complete with a little brocade box in a heart shape which she always kept it in.

We were talking this morning about the tradition that you should spend three months salary on an engagement ring... yeah right! Somehow I think that should be filed away with the same box of things like not living together or having children before you are married..it just seems outdated for the 21st Century.

But way back in the 1940's it must have been such a big deal to get engaged and then plan the wedding and live together for the first time.

For Mum it meant leaving her Mum and her brother and sister (both older), leaving her Mum who had been suddenly widowed nine years earlier and moving down to the cove to live with dad .. and his Dad.. mmm, from what I hear maybe not the most special aspect of the deal!  (My Grandad was a bit of a miserable old thing, didn't take very kindly to my Mum doing his washing and generally making life a bit more homely and comfortable, you know sometimes you just can't help some people!)

Mum & Dad married in 1946 and her wedding ring was 22carat but only had '22CT' stamped inside it twice, no Hallmark, apparently that was the way just after the war (?)

She believed you should never take it off and in 1955 she had to have it taken off to have an operation and the first thing she asked for when she came round was her ring (now thy tape them over I think..)

Once married the engagement ring was a special occasion item and Mum only wore it when she was going out.. in fact as a child I remember coming home and asking her where she had been as she was wearing her ring.   After 23 years of marriage dad died and I think Mum wore her ring more, less working on the land and risk of losing it I suppose.  

Then in 1973 when she remarried she gave me both the rings. I have worn the wedding ring ever since, so it has been on her or my finger every day since December 1946 and you know, it is still a perfect circle, never dented or bent even with the lives we have led.  The engagement ring had become very thin on the underside so I only wore it on special occasions myself, usually to bring me luck in exams and I guess it did!  It's kind of cute too because it is very very simple and really a reflection of the life and times of the post war years..

.. so there we are, my most precious and not much of a story but a nice memory.. I wonder where they will go next..!

(and you know, that Jewellers, EJ Hutchens in Penzance is still there in Causewayhead, our cousin Penny used to work there in 1970's and now it is called Spiegelhalters, but I reckon lots of it is just the same.)

Story Telling Sunday: Coming Home

So, a moment this evening for Sian's Story telling Sunday over at ..High in the Sky

Back in 2004 when our five children were aged 7 up to 18 we were long overdue for a family holiday. Col had borne the brunt of working up our business for the previous five years and was in need of a get-off-the-world rest and relax.  Having never had a holiday all of us together with children not in need of fetching and carrying, I looked at ski-ing but resolved it was too much of a sport strenuous option (and expensive to kit out seven of us to boot!), then I looked at beachy places but it was going to be long haul to get hot weather in the depth of a European winter.

Colin had harboured a love for the Maldives from his days out there working (yes, working... good work if you can get it!), so I researched some all Inclusive options which turned out favourable vs skiing for seven and we pushed the proverbial boat out and went to Kuramathi in the Maldives.   We got exactly what we needed : sea, sun, sand, snorkelling and so much food and drink it was just what we all needed.

I couldn't believe the blue seas, the amazing coloured fish and mostly that for once all my kids were in the same place at the same time, no teen taxi calls, no school runs, no friends over for tea, just us ! We became a bit of a talking point having an entourage of five children and even the lady in the spa had heard about us.. I nicknamed myself Mrs Von Trapp!

We travelled home on 21st December and arrived in Gatwick amidst carol singers and crowds flying in from Lapland with holiday reps dressed in thick coats and ear muffs...and there we were in board shorts and flip flops!  Quite surreal with a choir singing Silent Night alongside an airport sized Christmas Tree! 

It wasn't easy settling back down to a Cornish winter either as I still felt I should kick into Christmas mode, but kick in we did.  

Some of the people we met on the holiday had a third week booked and we heard from them when they got back... on Boxing Day that same year the Tsunami in Asia occurred and we found ourselves rooted to the TV all day scouring for news of this tiny vulnerable group of islands which had found such a special place in our hearts just a few days earlier.  

 

Some of the islands had suffered badly but our island had flooded pathways and some strange ebbing and flowing of the seas (which Col observed that he would have found very disturbing, either the earth had fallen off its axis or some great earth movement was occurring would have been his first thought!), and was otherwise fine.  It turns out that because the islands are essentially sunken volcanos the tsunami surge went round them with a swell rather than treating the land as a barrier as in Sri Lanka.. any other way would have been devastating as there are no areas more than a metre above sea level... they sure wouldn't have taken some of our English winter gales!

 

We love that place, so much so we have been back several times since and Lisa went there on honeymoon.. just waiting now on the next wedding in the family to see if we can have a communal honeymoon.. any takers kids???!

365/309 Paper and A dark & stormy night...

..for Story Telling Sunday over at Sian's place! here!

My Mum used to tell us stories about a fictional character called Jan Stone, I am sure there was one in everyone's village folklore, but as a kid I was sure that someone really knew him.  

He wasn't blessed with being at the front of the queue when they were handing out the intelligence and poeple loved to tell stories about him.... the one I remember best was when Jan was round at his girlfriend's house, probably somewhere St. Buryan I believed, and in came some real bad weather.  

'Jan,' said his girlfriend's mother, 'the weather has come in bad and it won't be very good walking the three miles home on a night like this, so you had better stay here, we can make up a bed in the living room.'

'Proper job' said Jan  and settled down for the evening.  After supper about ten o'clock Jan got up and went and put on his coat.  'Where you off to Jan?' asked his girlfriend's mother...

'Well if I aren't goin' home I'd best nip and let Mother know as she will be expecting me'

It's kind of a nice story not so easily understood in today's age of mobile phones and the internet..

Paper: altered paper and added paper to be fair.. some images of the part finished altered book I worked on yesterday.  I plan to add images of underwater with the kids on holiday..but the plates and drawings are lovely themselves!

This first one has a backing paper from a Tim Holtz stamp and my favourite core papers added!
Yes, even the packaging of his stuff is good and the whole project would be dead but for Distressed Ink!

This right hand page was some layering I did but didn't like enough for the front cover.. thanks to Margaret for the hessian, Pat for the ribbon.. oh and my knicker drawer for the lace!

.. and I have caught up, two blogs below, but not very newsy.. promise to 'do better'!! xxxx

PS Looking forward to our challenge next year my bloggers!  xxxx

365/280-281 Peak or valley & natural framing

Apologies for the blogless weekend, I have been kind of in limbo, not really much to report and hoping some photographic opportunity or inspiration would come to me, though I do have a couple of ideas of pics that came to mind as soon as I saw the prompts! (incidentally neither of which I have ended up using!)

Yesterday we did a trip out with JB, previewed her some kitchen and bathroom ideas and changed her laptop without hassle at Tesco (luckily she got it less than 30 days ago and it has a shutting down thingy going on..) 

We also went and paid for our new sofa which arrives tomorrow, we have arrived in the land of desiring sensible seating as Col suffers with quite a lot of back trouble, a nagging ache really, not the awful sciatica he had before his two ops back in 2008.  We had two sofas about three years ago but he soon had to lie on them as they are too soft and he just gets sore straight away.  So we are trying out a nice Stressless sofa and if it goes okay we may get another. We tried a chair out too at the shop and to be fair they are actually more comfy than the sofa but somehow we seem to favour two sofas these days rather than single chairs (a remnant of nightmare Sundays spent at my aunties with no sofas or TV!.. God bless the Methodists and their curled up edged sandwiches and brimless hats.. sorry, but that's the stereotypical views from the eyes of a reluctant ten year old staying with me!)

Still every cloud etc.. the sofas move down the line, as is the way, and was the way when I was a young newly wed.. the spare sofa will go to our eldest girl's tomorrow night.

I have browsed my gallery and found a couple of pictures fit for that Sunday storytelling that Jen is so good at doing..as well as our prompts..

As the guys I work with know (as I ponder and mumble about it on regular basis), I grew up in a small fishing cove, at the bottom of Penberth Valley, just a valley or two east of the more famous Porthcurno, where the Transatlantic telegraph cables originally came ashore a hundred years ago. 

My Dad was a small cove fisherman and market gardener as was his Dad before him and my brother after, (though he hated the land work and managed to make the sea his home year round as soon as he could). We lived a simple quiet life (quiet as in no TV, telephone and very little radio.. can you hear that quiet.. not even the humm of a fridge, just the crackle of a fire and perhaps a sigh from my Mum as she wondered if the fish would bite or the violets would make a good price at Covent Garden next month..oh, and the Archers.. and the Fishing News.. Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, and a hush as we got to 'Plymouth'..)   I know I guild the life with a sheen I am sure would be more tarnished if we were living it ourselves, but they were happy and the material world of the 1970's was but a wonder of the future..

Sundays were a day of rest, they probably really needed it, even if money wasn't plentiful it was unlikely that a day's extra fish or hoeing or picking flowers would make the books that much brighter to make a family day worth missing.  If the boats went out it was to take old friends out who came to visit and the women and children went along, it was a rare event and I cried a lot with fear as the few fish we caught beat themselves against the fish rooms doubling up as seats.. would I ever make it as the daughter of a fisherman I bet they wondered..

Sundays then..  My Dad always shaved in the mornings (he was a stubble sporting man again by teatime and it felt strange to ride on his shoulders and feel his face smooth and try to avoid the Brylcreem hair..), sometimes we went out on the cliffs for a walk, perhaps up to our friends at the farm a couple of miles across the fields or perhaps to my Gran's at St Buryan, but this was a decent walk and it would have been when I was in the pushchair. 

The cove always got its fair share of visitors, usually someone we knew, in the photo below I am in my pushchair with Dad and his cousin's wife (Auntie June) is talking to me, I think showing me some shiny necklace, not sure if you know them.. a string of cut glass beads, all the fashion in 1962 I guess and I called them 'Johnny Noddies'.. don't ask as I don't know!  

I found a site called Dear Photograph here a while ago which is worth a look and this picture is a quickie attempt to make my own.. a picture of the past, in the same place in the present .... me and dad with Auntie June, in Penberth Valley, in 1962, in 2011.  (ideally it would line up better and be focused so the common areas look seamless, but JB was impatient and I was agreeable!)

And here is the end of that same valley last year, in fact if you turn 180 degrees from the site of the first picture, I love crabpots, though to be authentic I want mine in whithey but hey..and the lichen on the rocks, they reckon it only grows on housetops and rocks where the air is so very clean..  is that good enough natural framing I wonder?

(and there I was, again, with nothing to say..)

PS I have added this to Sian's Story telling and realised there is a theme.. ahh well, we did always dress up a little for a Sunday..