Past Times week at Lucky 7's

So I set a 'past times' challenge over at Lucky 7's and as has become the norm I am busy writing my offering all in one go on a Sunday evening.  

It is Father's Day here in the UK, we have not done much. Colin celebrated by doing chores in his own Dad's house for most of yesterday and part of today... and also by showing what a great Dad he is by sorting out the double puncture Jordan got less than a mile form home before we had even got out of bed!

But with the prompt as well it has been a bit of a Nostalgia day for me.... and you know how I love a bit of 'how it was, way back when...'  My Dad died when I was only 8 and half years old so my memories are few and quite hazy really, though made vivid by the number of times I have recounted them and by my Mother's own translation of how Dad was, and remains, in my mind as a consequence.  

(No thoughts of my dad are ever not followed by the satisfaction that he and my Mum loved each other so much that little money, a simple existence and a cantankerous father-in-law living with you could diminish..)

My cousin Neil met me at his own Dad's funeral about 10 years ago. We were both in our late 40's and Neil observed that when my Dad died at 47 ('our age') he seemed old then, but there we were almost 40 years later at his own dad's funeral, my dad's best friend, and we didn't feel anywhere as old as we thought my Dad had been.  

Do you ever feel the age you are? 
Do you get stuck in an 'age' and is that dependent on the life chances and changes you have? I for sure log most events in my life as before or after the prime dates in my life : 1969 Dad died, 1973 we moved to Mousehole, 1992 Zac was born, 1997 we moved to our current home with all our family, 2008 Mum died.

So.. to my Past Times offering for the week:

A wedding (or two) of the past

Mum & Dad 1946

Joe & Leo Warren
Mum's parents
1916

Cars of yesteryear

We didn't have a car in our family until my brother had one when I was about 8.  I think it was like this one.. >>>

My Uncle was the family 'driver' and would do the honours if anyone needed to go anywhere. He was a mechanic and always had a car with leather seats, but certainly not a new one. It would squeak as you drove along and the indicators were orange wing lights which came out between the doors!

It was about 15 miles to the nearest town, a bus journey of almost an hour so you had to be content where you lived. But we were, we didn't know anything else. that's why today we all want more, because we know about it and we 'can'

Toys & hobbies

Banana Box cooker

My favourite thing to play with was a large banana box which on the odd occasion Mum would get from the Grocery Van which used to come by our house twice a week.

I had a plastic cooking set and tea set and would play for hours with a few rings drawn on top and the door on the side. 




Clothes we had to wear

Pinafore & pretty blouse
had been for Ken's wedding

1969

Just about whatever we got given.. 

..usually something Mum may have bought at a jumble at school, sometimes it came from the girls up the road and had been donated!

 If we had new it was for best and probably too big at first, then once it fitted or got too small it was for every day and you finally loved it!  




You can see knitted jumpers and short second hand bits in all these pics.. sometimes I got boys things.. and shoes.. as in the 60's somehow they seemed much harder wearing!

How towns change
I have really enjoyed looking at some of those Ghost pages you get on facebook, especially the ones from D-Day where they ghost old images in the context of the new.
I especially wanted to share this old footage of fishing life in Mousehole in the 1940's.
Thought it might be interesting. My step-dad would have been in his 20's then and a local fisherman whilst many men went away to war, fishermen did not have to as they were part of the home front war effort.

Mousehole archive

Vintage look

This is a cravat I have in my drawer which Mum gave me, it belonged to my Dad and I think it would look just fine if I wore it now.

May even try it tomorrow..might look good with a navy dress?






A new picture vintage-d

23 years on.. mine and Colin's wedding, pictures at the Minack Theatre which doesn't seem to change .. ever!

Doesn't feel vintage to me ;-)

The day the police came to my party!

When I was a kid I used to really look forward to my birthday parties.. and then as soon as we had eaten the birthday tea and everyone was running about I would find myself a book and wish they would all go home!  

Mum always did me a lovely spread, party games and if it was fine us kids often had parties on the 'lawn' which had once been a grass tennis court in the cottage next door. 

I remember a blindfolded game where they made you think you were flying off a pile of cushions, I have no idea what it aimed to be / do, but it is a big memory of a tall pile of cushions and having to trust the grown ups not to let you go!

We were a small fishing cove a long way from town and only ever had the rare visit from a policeman on a motorbike about once every 6 months. P C Glover was a kindly man and used to drop in to ours and Mum would always make him a cup of tea (it was her true vocation, making people at home, making them tea and cake!)

One year my birthday party, probably my 6th or 7th..was in full flow, ten or twelve kids all shouting and reaching for their favourite food from a huge table full of goodies (this was when a party was extra special and we didn't eat party rings all year round!)  
Quietly PC Glover appeared in the door and the place fell silent.. well apart from my cousin Neil who had his back to the door and was last to notice the presence of 'the Police'..  his face was a picture and he soon stopped yapping!  
The grown ups loved it, very amused.

Half an hour later PC Glover came back again, he had been up the road to buy me a box of chocolates for my birthday.  Not bad community relations huh?

I don't have any pictures of those parties I can add here but it seems fair to add this lovely shot of me at about four outside our house with Ted (Neil's dad) and his brother Bobby George; they were painting the outside of our house and once again Mum had done the tea making duties!  Loving the big cup!  (thanks Sarah for the pic)

West of Hayle River..1 of 5

Well I thought I'd show willing and be amongst the first to share some of my 5 things you may not know about me..  but as you may expect I will make the fact which is actually quite simple into rather a ramble..

I was born in Redruth! 

There , I said it.. I am not proud of it, but the fact remains and I cannot lie!

There is a great book about the far west of Cornwall called 'West of Hayle River' and it says that in some people's opinion you are not truly Cornish unless you were born 'west of Hayle River' ... I quietly tend to agree but then on the same hand disagree as it makes me not eligible!  But proudly I can announce that all my children are.. just!

I grew up, the formative first thirteen years of my life, in my special special place, a fishing cove way out west, decidedly Cornish by this definition.  But in 1960 the nearest maternity ward was in Redruth Hospital. It must have been a busy place as ladies came from as far apart as Newquay, the Lizard and Land's End, in fact Mum made a lifelong friend in one of the ladies, Hazel Broad of Manaccan, she had a son the day after Mum had me... and hey, they discovered that they also had wedding anniversaries on consecutive days..in December about nine months before we were born!

It must have been a trek to visit as well, about 25 miles each way. Dad didn't drive but I guess with the goodwill of friends visited Mum for three evenings after the Wednesday (when her waters broke after a short sharp shock of an iron burn on her arm my Godmother suspected) with no baby appearing, until eventually on a Saturday night he got a call just when he got home to say I was in the world! They say he didn't see me awake for a week until they brought me home, but seems he heard me then pretty good! 

Mums and babies were transferred after delivery to a maternity ward for a few days, Mum told me that they were in a room where they climbed out through a window and handed babies out afterwards, to get to the ambulance which took them.  Not sure why, maybe it was to short circuit the trip through the hospital?
Redruth for those of you who don't know is a more industrial town in our area, the kind of place which suffered a lot of depression in the years when trendy towns were booming and good old fashioned moning and industry was being replaced by service jobs..  the kind of place they joke about having a million pounds worth of improvements after the recent floods..or where they had a proposal for development, bulldoze a local peak called Carn Brea into the town and raise it to the ground!  so you can imagine thta it does grate rather to say that technically I was born there whilst feeling I really 'belonged' and grew up in a picturesque fishin cove.. but hey, fifty-few years later I can live with it... (the hospital is gone now, new housing sits teasingly where the grey dull building once taunted me.. )

BFF?

Well I have prompted my blog friends to explore the stories of the BFF Best Friends Forever... and here I am wondering if I ever had one?  It's not a sad thing, it's just I don't remember ever having a friend I was that way with, you know, inseparable, had to sleep over all the time, couldn't go a day without talking to...

..I grew up in a small community where most of us were related, our parents were cousins and despite us not being very closely related like first cousins we had a common history and even now we share the same memories and we have not fallen far from the trees.. 

As I was kind of an only child, my brother was 11 and at Secondary School when I was born, perhaps I grew up happy enough to not have someone around me all the time..I recall my eldest daughter commenting once that she would hate to live alone, and that was at a time when all I thought she wanted was to be away from us.  Living in our extended family has definitely made all our kids able to enjoy company but also make a space for themselves when they needed some quiet.

At our local school, St Levan, we often had children coming to us for only a few terms, their parents worked at Porthcurno Cable & Wireless Station and would often be moved around after a few years, others had Dads in the Coastguard Service and again it was a shame when a new friend had to move away when you were just getting to know each other. 

I remember Alison Normanton, and her sister Carol, gorgeous girls with blonde curly hair, at our Junior school. They wore uniform gym slips and shirts and ties but we didn't have uniform, I guess it was from their previous school.. they really stood out in the year photos.   Alison was so funny, she got a big telling off one day for miming the story across the desk to me as our Head was reading us some tedious book on a Friday afternoon.  Two years or so and they were gone, I think to Wogga Wogga(?) in Australia, we never did do well on the pen-pal thing though.

Other times names cropped up many years later.. I recall a cute little lad called Nicky Nash, I think a bit younger than me, but I had a soft spot for him when I was about 7, you know how cute 5 year old boys are when you are getting gangly at 7!
Turns out he is now a captain with Princess cruise ships, though my Zac has not met him yet, and he only lives about five miles from here, even though he left the school after a year or so..story goes he hit one of his ships against a rock or something and got the nickname Crash-Nash!

Probably my best girl friendships came at 16 when some new girls joined our group to do 'A' levels, we stayed in touch after we all went to Uni but it kind of tailed off when we all got married and didn't stay too friendly. Now I bump into them sometimes, but it isn't the same, again we are all close to home and have raised our kids, in fact Ross often comes home with a new Facebook pal and turns out I was at school with their mum!

Of course I had almost forgotten my best childhood friend, Teddy, I have written about him before., last year this time actually.. here!  He lived right opposite me, about three years older and was probably more like a brother growing up than my teen hero!
I was a sweet gullible thing, believed everything he told me...and this is the best one.. In July 1965 Ronald Biggs the infamous Train Robber escaped from prison and it must have been on the television and the radio (we didn't have  TV til I was 9) as big news. Teddy let me into a huge secret....

'you know that Ronald Biggs who escaped from prison.. (not sure I did to be fair!)... well he is hiding up Jonack Lane, near the crabpot stands'

                            ... well, you know, I didn't know whether I believed him, but I sure as hell didn't go up that Lane for ages!

Even when I moved in 1973 we stayed in touch, met up for lazy Saturday lunches and evenings listening to Roxy Music and Bowie, (and for this musical influence I thank him wholeheartedly) but again marriage beckoned to other people..even though lots of people thought we were a pair!... and we lost touch, but now and then I see his family and hear his news..

365/365+1 Reflections.. New Year's Eve!

Writing this at 2am January 1st with the Proclaimers on the radio!!

It's been a busy 2013 already!!!... just got back from collecting Zac from town and the others have all checked in by text and stuff! Ross & April are working in St Ives and Kate there with pals for a 16th.  Jordan worked earlier and is at a friends, so we saw the New Year in at home just us two... awwwhh a nice hour though, we had been playing taxi taking kids out, then went for a quick Indian and checked out a band for Col's 50th (possibly!) and still got homw in time to see his Dad before 12!

So.. reflecting.. on the year.. well I think the 365+1 gang have really made it special.. my family and work guys have got used to me delivering 'my word of the day' and recounting my tenuous links!  I have had a lovely year, I stood back pretty much and enjoyed the world and his sister raving about the Olympics and the Jubilee, I had a few lovely family gatherings and a few weekends away just chilling.  No big holidays, a short trip to France for work and play, but if I browse back through the blogged bits to the roots of things I enjoyed were family and the people I know and have got to know...oh and those two little girls who have continued to amuse and beguile the whole family!

Just last night (Sunday) Col and I went with all the home based kids to see my cousins up at their local.  We usually meet at the Carol Service and this year Ross set up another catch up which turned out to be last night. Sarah bought lots of pictures and some great family tree info I shall have to share with my brother.. we wondered at how our children look like each other when we were kids and tried to remember ourselves when we had 'that hair' or those shoes'!

If you recall this picture I posted a few days ago,

 

I had an idea that we daughters of the ladies in the Sports Day picture took up the mother's spots..  Penny moved up to Val's place, Sarah slipped into Penny's place and me and Gill completed the picture.. see and I'm still talking!

Funny too as we could ALL have moved again and our daughters were also there and could have done the next generation. 

On the way home the kids were asking me the detail of how close we were as cousins, hard to explain, our great grandmothers were sisters, but what I told them, and this is the rub.. that is has much much more to do with having experienced a common history .. you know, that boy who lived across the road may have been from Timbucktoo but if your Mum and his raised you in the same road, with the same events and friendships and you each called your Mums 'Auntie' from respect and love as much as if they were your Mum's sisters.. then that's a cousin..more so than the ones who visit twice a year and maybe look a little more like you but have had lives lived in different towns and with experiences you will never quite understand! ( ;-) )

I'm just so glad that my kids get what I mean and that they will keep it up, maybe Facebook and iPads will be the way they do it, but so long as some of them can feel the way I do about that little square few miles then my job is done.. x

Happy New Year everyone, to you and yours.. and hope we catch up next week at LuckySnapping in 2013... xxxxx

365/325 The Bridge.

Firstly I have to confess to finding my pics today on the internet, it was in the office and I didn't have access to my files, and in any case these fit perfectly! 

I grew up, my formative years, til I was 13 years old, in a house called 'The Bridge'. We lived at the bridge and all the houses there, four in total, were all called that. When we left things got confusing as the surnames of the people were the same so they were changed to 'The Bridge House' and others.    I didn't think of this instantly, it has just evolved as I have considered pictures for today.. then I realised that all of the cove, Penberth that is, is dotted with bridges!

I did feature the White Gate bridge on this post here! and the bridge right down cove where I was pictured with Dad as a baby in a pushchair. 

This was also the bridge where the fishermen weighed their fish into boxes before taking them to Newlyn.  Our old spaniel would sometimes help himself to a nice large mackerel from one of the boxes and run home very proud, fish in mouth.. into the dog's box as we called it's kennel!

Neil's Dad was a carpenter but had a great boat called the Father Bob and he sometimes went long lining in the summer. If he caught conger eels they would gut them on the steps by the bridge and I was always fascinated to see what little fish were in the conger's stomachs!

This is the bridge where most people have to stop and park.

We lived just opposite this thatched house and the old lady who lived opposite was 'Auntie Janie', she was like an old Victorian lady, you know, brown or black dresses, a shawl or wool cardigan and those lace up boot shoes they wore. (This was the 60's and the Beatles and Mary Quant were not going to arrive her anytime soon!)  I used to show her everything first.. a new dress, the decorated Christmas tree, the tea party I had made for my toys.. anything.. and she was always interested.. she spent time with me as a toddler and my first words were hers : 'Who's'at?' when a new person came around!!

The house closest is now joined to the thatched cottage internally but my best friend Teddy lived there. He was closer in age to me than my brother and he was the youngest in his house, so we were always going to be doing things together.  He was old enough to make the most of my trusting gullible nature.. oh the stories he led me to believe! (but they are for another day!)  We were best buddies, even when we fought..

Just where this picture above was taken from is 'the bridge'. It is still great for Pooh Sticks and sometimes, if you are very quiet you can see a trout hanging in the deeper water..but be careful, he will hear you first most times!

One Guy Fawkes night ... (and this was a BIG night in our world... my cousin Neil's mum always put on a big food and firework evening and we collected trees and papers from September onwards for the huge bonfire which every year we thought would reach the trees!!.... well, it must have been a great 'go do' activity for kids once the evening started to draw in and they were bored form so long a summer holiday!)... a major incident happened at the bridge...

A retired genteel Sea Captain (Mellonie) yes, a Captain Bird's Eye lookalike, who lived in Robin's Cottage, was walking over the bridge at dusk when his walking stick went into a small hole.. he wiggled it and the hole got bigger....earth fell away through the bridge, the only way in or out of the cove for the fish truck and every other vehicle...and the hole got bigger.

Captain Mellonie raised the alarm, I guess he must have called the Police, who knows.... Well to cut a long story short (as if!) the bridge was condemned and had to be replaced. It was so cool from a kid's point of view, we had a wooden bridge to replace it, which bounced when you walked across it, and it almost came into OUR garden, it ran right through the trees where we had OUR CAMP and it was right by OUR house!  I think secretly we all hoped that maybe we would not have to go to school, that somehow it would be like we were completely isolated, but as adults do, they sorted it and life became normal again pretty soon... not til my Mum had carried a fair few trays of tea out to men working I bet! 

Lucky though that a car or the fish lorry didn't come a cropper..!!

So, there's a taster for my story telling nostalgia week each month next year..

and bringing you up to date.. JB has crossed a bridge and got over it.. today she made mini lemon meringues and they were F.A.B., her cornflour demon is dead!!

365/319 Nostalgic

So this is what most people think should be my middle name ... (and to be fair is much preferable to the middle name I do have!!) I stop well short of being one of those people who has a 40's styled house, or one who wears a certain style of clothing relating to a period.. but I do fit the definition perfectly..

Nostalgia : a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time
I read Anne's definition and blog and understand that slant and how it can be a painted negative emotion but mine is more 'wistful' and 'sentimental' purely I think because I had a lovely childhood and as I moved home at 13 it compounded the fact that I was leaving not only a place but also a time.

The place has hardly changed since then and some of the same people live there still and I can go back and reminisce about things so it's a nice feeling all round... my family refer to a return visit (it is only about 15 miles away) as Mum's Nostalgia Tour and they tease me about taking new family members there so I can recount the tales to a new audience!

But I know it is them teasing me and one day, in fact already, they have tales of their own about Penberth.. Ross' first paddle, seing a snake and going there with Will & Michele in the bitter cold and with Uncle Bill taking river photos.

this is a double layout I did when one of Ross' friends got the Nostalgia Tour treatment out west a few years ago....

... and Nostalgic feelings can be conjured up even about quite recent things.. our Zac had hours of fun with Squawky the parrot when he was young. It just says everything you say back to it and seems to be a favourite with toddlers forever...he was featured with vintage model cars in a nauticalia magazing I saw in the office today, of all days!

.. we have one still and I think it is the third or fourth we have owned since Zac's! Lilly likes to make him wear a Pirate's hat too!

One for Linda!

 

(I am blogging early tonight, planning to watch Erin Brockovich with Ross & April..(I love that film.. @*$%! ugly shoes! ).... oh and off to find a fatted calf.. Zac is home for the weekend!!)

365/297-8 B&W Family Portrait & free choice

Well this will take a bit of nostalgia. This is my Dad's Dad and his brother Uncle Fred, at the crabpot pit in Penberth where the grand work of making withey crabpots went on in the bad weather months ready for the summer crabbing. 

The men in my Dad's line were all called Thomas Thomas, but they had different middle names. Dad was Thomas Gordon, his Dad was Thomas Henry and his dad was Thomas Botterell. In the family dad was called 'Boy Tommy', his dad was 'Father Tommy' and his dad 'Granfer Tommy'... oh such great imagination! 

Neither my Mum or my brother's children have kept it on, no baby Tommy Thomas's since the 1920's., but I have snuck it into Ross' name and my neice has a son Thomas with her married surname. I always fancied Tamsin as the Cornish derivative for a girl but it didn't happen.

Uncle Fred was married to a lovely lady Auntie Elsie who was like a Gran to me, lived up the road, always had time for me and I think she had been a teacher (she was from Northumberland originally, not that that would denote her being a teacher!) and taught me lots of things. You can see a great picture of her here.

My brother tells me Fred loved the ladies, not in a bad way, but if they were going to sea and he was late it was probably because he had stopped several times on the way down cove from his house (about 200 yards) to chat to one of the ladies out doing her chores, putting out washing or something.   They didn't have their own children so were our favourite aunt and uncle really.

I loved him and called a teddy I had after him. I was also impressed to have an Uncle Fred, the same as Teddy Bear from the comics, who had a threadbare Uncle FredBear who always wore tatty clothes but had big cars in his garage!

This is my free choice B&W to keep in the theme. A portrait of my Mum, probably in her late teens, early twenties.  I found lots of these type pictures in her and my auntie's stuff. I guess in those days, like now, it was the thing to go get your photos taken.

 

..and just to see how my dad was around the same time, him and some of his Navy pals, about 1943-5.

Sometimes I try to imagine what courtship was like then. They only lived three miles apart but she heard he was home from sea (during the War) from someone on the bus as she travelled home from work.. so the next time you'buse your mobile or the internet, think on the 40's

Night everyone!

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..

365/213 Stronger.

Great day today, decided last night to take Lilly over to the Minack for a kid's show, just an hour long, puppets and stuff.. local guy, really fun and boy, what it takes to roll with the punches as a kid's entertainer!  

We also took flowers to the church for my mum and dad and looked in the church, then a little discovery walk where I grew up, quietly tip-toeing along the riverbank in case we could spot a trout, telling her some of the nostalgia stories of when I was a kid...(well she is new blood and I haven't bored her with any of it yet... hahah.. Lisa will laugh when Lilly starts telling her my stories Lisa thought she had heard the last of!)

We called in on an old friend of my Mum's, she is 89 on Saturday and I wanted to sneak in some birthday wishes before she is inundated with visitors over the weekend. She is very forgetful now but luckily able to stay in her own home, doesn't wander and is always laughing and enjoying seeing people, so that makes this time of their life, caring for her a little easier on her family.

It's an odd thing dementia, takes each person differently and consequently the effects on the family, I often wonder if they one day know they are losing their memory and choose to not mention it, or if the condition itself leaves you in a place where you never actually realise.

Lilly and I had lots of conversation, she has a huge vocab and asks very pointed questions for a 4 year old and I try to answer, but then worry that poor M&D will have to answer even more questions later! Today a big topic was coffee ice cream which I got the drift that she liked but didn't have when out with Mum so I thought we'd go for a small one.. only after she had eaten it and I relayed the story at home did I hear from Lisa that it was 'toffee'.. well, good intentions!

I took a whole bunch of pictures, Lilly mostly, eating or drinking!  then I looked at the prompt..

.. the White Gate bridge is falling down at penberth, huge pieces of granite standing proud where recent rain has put paid to the cement and earth which binds it together.  There is a steel grid there, and  Keep Out sihgn, I guess they are going to make it 'stronger'

Over at St. Levan Church there are some gorgeous agapanthus, loads at the Minack too.. stronger colours this year, maybe the sun / rain combination! 

And the same door handle at the church I can remember as a child.

Every time I use it I remember having to learn that you pull it towards you and turn whilst it is pulled ..always difficult when we were young to master something the grown-ups knew so well..I like going back there, the draw gets stronger and there is something lovely about the familiarity and reliability of the things still being there fifty years on...

365/202 Matched pair

Writing a day late (Saturday) and timing was good.. as we left the harbour on the Mount Col spotted the Sailing Club buoys and said 'there's your Matching Pair'..how good is he!  To be honest there were four but in two pairs of pairs!  I think they will make a fun thumbnail when everyone looks at the 365 page!

Not much to report from yesterday so that suits me too.. Zac called about 3pm but kept losing the link so we didn't have great flow, but I think life here and there is same old, same old.. so long as we are all okay and he is still enjoying learning lots and meeting lots of new people and places then we're happy.

More about today to tell but this is one of those daft 'arm's length' pictures of another Matched Pair...can you see him thinking.. just get on with it!!

Oh and a Happy Birthday for yesterday to Ken, still my Big Brother.. it's a daft thing we always say to each other like we were kids....I remember sometimes he used to have a play fight with my Dad, very light.. what we would call a scruff ... I would have been about 6 or 7 and Ken 17 or 18 so I would get upset and tell him to stop as he might 'hurt my Daddy'

(I guess as a young kid I always knew my Dad was not well, he was often weary and never able to rush, but it wasn't really something we talked about...)  Ken would say 'he's my Daddy too and I'm older than you'  to which I would reply 'ahhh but if I live longer than you he will have been my Daddy longer'  and Ken would tease me back..'but even if we're dead he'll still have been my Daddy first'

Not sure how my Mum must have felt about that conversation, so innocent and yet we kids, even Ken as a teen, couldn't have known that those days would be irrelevant as Dad would die before I was nine and Ken 20. 

We went out west today in the boat, some spiritual topping up for me and some repeated images for this blog but I will never tire of these rocks...

We went past Penberth and could see the rusty scar on the slipway (caunce) and it was one of those moments when I wonder at the fact that it is the same view Dad and Ken had in the 50's and 60's and probably our Grandad a hundred years ago.. and every pulling up of a boat along that caunce has made the ridge and marking what it is today... touching history.. simple yet for me it is like a race memory or something, however odd that seems.

365/156 Colourful

This is just lovely.. following on from yesterday's prompt, my cousin Sarah who reads the blog sent me this picture.. for sure the better viewpoint of 'White Gate'...and she wrote..

Love it, how bad is that - we get excited over a "gate". My memories of the gate, every Easter Sunday Grandad Ted would man the gate when the gardens are open for St. Levan Church funds. He would chat to people as they walked down cove and then back up again for a cream tea...

(her Grandad Ted was my Dad's best man and best friend, they joined the Navy together, despite both of them having valid reasons not to... and used to go courting together with Mum & Val... who worked together in town)

Cheating somewhat for the prompt today, but these colourful fruits at a stall we passed in Paris a few years back made me think about all the lovely foods on offer at the moment with the Jubilee parties going on.. mmm, I love raspberries..

JB has made Colin a cake this afternoon for his birthday tomorrow.. ahh, and the Queen gave us a day extra to celebrate!

365/155 Gate.

I haven't really been out today, bar playing teen-taxi as I call it and it's been a quiet day here, I appreciate all the fuss everyone is making of the Jubilee and I think it's great that everyone has embraced it across the country, but personally I am left a bit numb about it all.. perhaps I have done too many fetes, too much organising of charity events and cake stalls and I am now just a jaded and tired old boot.. I dunno! 

My favourite bit so far was the old singles Jeremy Vine played on his show while I was taxi-ing.. 1964's 'You Are My World' (when Prince Edward was born by all accounts) and 1969's 'If Paradise is Half as Nice' (Man landing on the Moon and incidentally me buying this as my first single ever.... my dad had died earlier in the year and the outpouring of effort to make life a little nicer for me brought me a Dansette Record Player, second hand from ETS, via my dear Uncle Owen..oh and we got TV and a cat..!)

But I digress..

There is a live music thing in town tonight and the best bit sounds like the tribute band doing Blondie, the Clash and stuff, so maybe we will drag ourselves there and retrieve the moment.. bah, humbug!  It's Col's birthday Tuesday and he is in danger of having a ten minute home-made card and a jumper if enthusiasm levels don't improve.... maybe I just used up all my enthusiasm points for May while the family had its' get togethers!

And so to 'Gates'.. I played lazy I'm afraid and opted for a nice oldie.. it beat this little picture of 'White Gate' in Penberth, which in fact is not much of a gate picture, in that it is obscured by wild rhubarb plants and only those in the know (Penny and Sarah) even know what I am on about....oh yeah, you can just see the corner of the gate.... it was a point in the road used by Teddy and I when doing bike races and stuff.. and where I fell in the river once.. on his bike!

 The chosen pic also beat this one which for a moment was going to be 'the gate picture' because it was funny for a moment to have a snow pic today.. in June... but not so far off the mark, it is grey and windy outside in fact!

So here we are.. (this fairly famous picture now.. amongst those of us who collect such memorabilia about our homeland.. haha, home cove maybe)..our beloved Auntie Elsie outside her cottage with my brother Ken and cousins Mark, Keith and Penny. 

She was the lovliest lady, from Co. Durham and that lovely accent. I think she had been a school teacher and then married my Dad's Uncle, and cared for his mother for many years. She loved to have us kids around and she used to let me wash her step and clean all the amethysts and semi-precious rocks beside the step.  The house was full of stuffed birds, foxes and other small animals, probably trophies of hunting done by the men..I think she must have been sad not to have her own children but was like a favourite Gran to me, and was such as your Gran should always live just up the road shouldn't she?

I think Auntie Elsie was probably only in her 50's here as it was in the 1960's and she was still alive and well and teaching herself Russian when I last saw her when Ross was a baby in about 1987.  Amazing what fashion and hair dyes have done to make us ladies keep hold of the years now eh?

My other abiding memory of the house was the outside toilet with wooden bench type seat with two openings, I remember thinking it must be very odd if two of you were in there at the same time!!

(Well must go, the intention was a quick picture and note, I've now droned on for an age but somehow I feel like I have done the virtual nostalgia tour.. and I am heartened.. xx)