3 May
“It’s like England was 50 years ago.” This is a phrase often used these days to describe our rural idylls, to justify our life-changes, the relocations and ruptures and new starts and beginning-all-overs. You here it said about all those counties on the margins of being fashionable, and sometimes it’s even said about those chi-chi little places that have in reality changed beyond all recognition. It’s said about France, about Ireland, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand. I have no quarrel with the phrase, I’ve used it myself. There IS something quintessentially 1950’s-ish about East Anglia. The trouble is though is that when someone trots it out, I’m never altogether sure what they mean. It’s one of those phrases open to endless meaning and endless interpretation. I have stood in paralysing discomfiture listening to one person rant about the lack of immigrants fifty years ago, or another nod with satisfaction at the memory of the all-white southern English faces around him. I have raised a quizzical eyebrow or stole a surreptitious glance at R when someone has launched into a diatribe about how the summers were hotter then (are you sure about that?), or a reminiscence about the total lack of crime. To some people, fifty years ago means a perpetual rendition of Knees Up Mother Brown in the pub and communal meals on a crime-free (and ethnically pure) village green. I think the majority of us who use the term, however, speak from a broadly similar place; we look back to a slower, calmer way of life, one where we can live simply but live well, hopefully losing some of frenetic elements of two fast-paced careers that are required just to finance a shoe-cupboard in an urban sprawl. We welcome a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sense of living more closely with nature. Whether or not that time ever actually existed is immaterial; nostalgia is rarely fuelled by facts, after all, but by feelings.
I am all for nostalgia, and all for a slower pace of life, but I am relentlessly twenty-first century with regard to my food and my clothes. I don’t want ‘gastro’ in my local pub necessarily, any more than I want asian-fusion from the local Chinese; I’m rarely happier than when faced with a simple ploughmans or a plate of ham egg and chips. Neither am I a fashionista any more (if I ever was) – I was still in my bootcuts long after the yummy mummies had progressed to skinny fits and boy jeans. But I am grateful that we don’t have to buy olive oil from the chemists any more, and I like a restaurant to give a passing nod to parmesan that doesn’t come in a plastic container, just as I like to know I can get a linen shirt or a pair of kitten heels within a fifty-mile radius, if the mood takes me. One of our neighbours, a man possessed of a quavering voice and a stooping gait, but possessed also of a steely determination to get his point across, blithely ignoring whether or not you have the time to listen, once advised my husband on where he should buy his clothes. We visited the shop once, on a whim when we were in town, and immediately recognised that it was one of those places that either makes you want to laugh, or depresses you, depending on your mood. It did both to me; I giggled at it’s total lack of style and total lack of any stock that you would want to buy, but something about it’s musty interior, the piles of polyester trousers and grey plastic slip-on shoes made me sad too. I’m not being a snob, far from it – the stuff wasn’t even particularly cheap. It was just redolent of an earlier, shabbier time – no retro finds here. It made the Grace Brothers store in ‘Are You Being Served?’ look like the Conran shop.
Our local town is set for development and we will shortly be the recipients of a brand new retail development. Despite the instinctive flutter of excitement as I think about lovely posh shops, I have no doubt the costs will spiral out of control and we will be left with one of those windswept and soulless malls that sit so uncomfortably in the English countryside. The store I mentioned above is set for closure, no doubt along with many other high street shops. Suddenly, I want it to be fifty years ago.
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Monday, 30 April 2007
30 April
I love the word Jumble. It makes me think of the dog in the ‘Just William’ books, of huge piles of clothes, of a rush of thoughts all vying to tumble out of our mouths as speech. It’s such an onomatopoeic word. I do love a good jumble sale too, but I’m not so keen on manning a stall, which is what I found myself doing on Saturday. I’d grudgingly agreed to help out (it was run by the school PTA, I somehow managed to end up being both on the committee and a parent governor, very surprising since I’m usually so adept at lurking in the background when jobs are handed out). Anyway I turned up with a bad grace (I know, I know, but it’s only a few weeks since the Easter Fair, and it’s always the same old crowd helping out), and was stuck there for the best part of the day. We were due to open at 2.00, and by 1.00 a crowd was milling at the gates. By 1.50 there was a long queue snaking down the lane. There was a stampede when the gate opened; a jostle of bulky canvas bags, a heaving of flesh and a stretching of seams as people lunged towards the tables. I’ve never seen anything like it. We are a tiny village and this was just a few stalls. I know shopping rage is very 2007, but it’s more the kind of thing you associate with Kate Moss’s collection hitting Topshop, or Stella McCartney at Hennes. I didn’t really think we had quite the same cachet, but it seems I was wrong. I’d positioned myself on books, a cunning ruse, I’d thought, since I hadn’t expected it to be terribly busy and had envisaged a peaceful afternoon browsing and reading. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Towards the end of the afternoon, my hair sticking to my face, my eyes hollow, my throat hoarse, I asked one lady who had bought 36 (!) paperbacks, why she had been so desperate to get here. “There’s money in this village”, she confided. “Word gets out”. There is? News to me. Not round my gaffe, I felt like telling her, and frankly I couldn’t see much evidence around me, either, among the polyester blouses and elasticated-waist trousers, the chipped mugs and grimy tea towels.
Still, everyone seemed satisfied by the end of the day, some clearly thrilled with their new grimy tea-towels and sweat-stained shirts (sorry, but they were), and the school is now richer by several hundred pounds, so who’s complaining? Only me, of course. I did get a good haul in myself – 8 books, some toys for the children and a pretty hand-made wooden photo frame with painted roses, all for about £5.00, and I like a bargain as much as the next person - but I was yet again reminded of why customer service really isn’t my forte. The grim determination of some of the jumble Queens was astonishing. R, a connoisseur of car-boot sales, had warned me in advance, but I still wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of people who would haggle over an item marked as 10p. Some were lovely and polite, others rude and surly, tipping things onto the floor in their haste. Annoyance was catching in my throat after about ten minutes; it was seeping from my every pore by the end. I staggered out, my feet screaming to be released from their shoe prisons, to be confronted by an argument in front of the school. All of the left-over clothes and linens were being stored in the school, to be collected by a charity. We were still left with several boxes of toys and books, however, and since everyone was exhausted and clearly keen to get home, no-one was volunteering to take them to a charity shop or store them in their sheds. One of the Dads turned up; the sort of man who dresses head-to-toe in camouflage gear each day, and has a burning desire to have the biggest of everything - jeep, wood-pile, tool-kit – (clearly insecure about something, I wonder what?!) and he offered to take all the books and burn them. His eyes filled with a revolutionary zeal as he told us how he could build the biggest bonfire. Everyone else recoiled at the horrible idea of books being burned, and in the end there was a tussle between several of us trying to load up the books, and the burning zealot Dad. Luckily, we won, but the boot of my car is now several boxes heavier.
Sunday was much more relaxing, filled as it was by repetitive, back-breaking but soothing tasks in the garden. I’ve never been one for over neat and manicured gardens, but that slightly wild, blowsy look that I aim for is hard to get just right. If you’re not careful it slides very quickly into seedy and weedy, even in April. Couch grass, nettles and dandelions are everywhere; on a nicer note, welsh poppies and forget-me nots have self-seeded all over the place. Early roses are breaking out, alongside the hellebores which are only just starting to fade. The tulips and the cherry blossom have been ravaged by the wind, but I have a pot azalea that is showing an early flourish, and the lavender is starting to flower. It’ll be autumn by June, at this rate.
I love the word Jumble. It makes me think of the dog in the ‘Just William’ books, of huge piles of clothes, of a rush of thoughts all vying to tumble out of our mouths as speech. It’s such an onomatopoeic word. I do love a good jumble sale too, but I’m not so keen on manning a stall, which is what I found myself doing on Saturday. I’d grudgingly agreed to help out (it was run by the school PTA, I somehow managed to end up being both on the committee and a parent governor, very surprising since I’m usually so adept at lurking in the background when jobs are handed out). Anyway I turned up with a bad grace (I know, I know, but it’s only a few weeks since the Easter Fair, and it’s always the same old crowd helping out), and was stuck there for the best part of the day. We were due to open at 2.00, and by 1.00 a crowd was milling at the gates. By 1.50 there was a long queue snaking down the lane. There was a stampede when the gate opened; a jostle of bulky canvas bags, a heaving of flesh and a stretching of seams as people lunged towards the tables. I’ve never seen anything like it. We are a tiny village and this was just a few stalls. I know shopping rage is very 2007, but it’s more the kind of thing you associate with Kate Moss’s collection hitting Topshop, or Stella McCartney at Hennes. I didn’t really think we had quite the same cachet, but it seems I was wrong. I’d positioned myself on books, a cunning ruse, I’d thought, since I hadn’t expected it to be terribly busy and had envisaged a peaceful afternoon browsing and reading. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Towards the end of the afternoon, my hair sticking to my face, my eyes hollow, my throat hoarse, I asked one lady who had bought 36 (!) paperbacks, why she had been so desperate to get here. “There’s money in this village”, she confided. “Word gets out”. There is? News to me. Not round my gaffe, I felt like telling her, and frankly I couldn’t see much evidence around me, either, among the polyester blouses and elasticated-waist trousers, the chipped mugs and grimy tea towels.
Still, everyone seemed satisfied by the end of the day, some clearly thrilled with their new grimy tea-towels and sweat-stained shirts (sorry, but they were), and the school is now richer by several hundred pounds, so who’s complaining? Only me, of course. I did get a good haul in myself – 8 books, some toys for the children and a pretty hand-made wooden photo frame with painted roses, all for about £5.00, and I like a bargain as much as the next person - but I was yet again reminded of why customer service really isn’t my forte. The grim determination of some of the jumble Queens was astonishing. R, a connoisseur of car-boot sales, had warned me in advance, but I still wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of people who would haggle over an item marked as 10p. Some were lovely and polite, others rude and surly, tipping things onto the floor in their haste. Annoyance was catching in my throat after about ten minutes; it was seeping from my every pore by the end. I staggered out, my feet screaming to be released from their shoe prisons, to be confronted by an argument in front of the school. All of the left-over clothes and linens were being stored in the school, to be collected by a charity. We were still left with several boxes of toys and books, however, and since everyone was exhausted and clearly keen to get home, no-one was volunteering to take them to a charity shop or store them in their sheds. One of the Dads turned up; the sort of man who dresses head-to-toe in camouflage gear each day, and has a burning desire to have the biggest of everything - jeep, wood-pile, tool-kit – (clearly insecure about something, I wonder what?!) and he offered to take all the books and burn them. His eyes filled with a revolutionary zeal as he told us how he could build the biggest bonfire. Everyone else recoiled at the horrible idea of books being burned, and in the end there was a tussle between several of us trying to load up the books, and the burning zealot Dad. Luckily, we won, but the boot of my car is now several boxes heavier.
Sunday was much more relaxing, filled as it was by repetitive, back-breaking but soothing tasks in the garden. I’ve never been one for over neat and manicured gardens, but that slightly wild, blowsy look that I aim for is hard to get just right. If you’re not careful it slides very quickly into seedy and weedy, even in April. Couch grass, nettles and dandelions are everywhere; on a nicer note, welsh poppies and forget-me nots have self-seeded all over the place. Early roses are breaking out, alongside the hellebores which are only just starting to fade. The tulips and the cherry blossom have been ravaged by the wind, but I have a pot azalea that is showing an early flourish, and the lavender is starting to flower. It’ll be autumn by June, at this rate.
Saturday, 28 April 2007
26 April
Had a shouty phone conversation with my Grandmother yesterday. Not shouty in an aggressive sense, I hasten to add, but because she’s a little hard of hearing, which is only to be expected, I guess, at the age of 94. Still full of vigour, her days still filled with living, she is missing having her family around her.
To me, her life has been a series of triumphs; hugely bright, but limited by being born into a large family of few means in the North-East, she has lived a full and enterprising life. She set up her own dressmaking business while raising a family, taught herself to both swim and drive in her fifties, travelled alone to Australia in her sixties. I worry that sometimes, in what must be the last slow years of her life, a life now constricted and narrowed by age, that she may see her life as series of losses – she has after all outlived three husbands, three younger siblings, and one son. Such an influential and dominant figure in my life, in recent years I think she has secretly dwelt with the long departed, despite her mental acuity. Her memories quite naturally grope back towards those people in their sepia tints and strange hats, posing unsmilingly for the camera. Those people who flitted vaguely in and out of my childhood, shadowy forms called Bobby and Billy and Jackie, Doris and Evie and Elsie, are more real to her now perhaps than me. How ironic it is, that we have such little interest in family history when we’re growing up; I could never think what to say to these people at the edge of my family circle when I was growing up, teenage awkwardness and constraint robbing me of my voice – now I yearn for the chance to sit them down and chat.
My parents and I tend to laugh when she says she’s lonely – it’s a family joke that she still has a better social life than any of us, a constant stream of people in and out of the house where she still lives independently – but of course she is. Our extended family has been fractured, like so many families, by distance and opportunity. I read some chatroom comments recently (you know where) about second homes, and, without wishing to relive the whole debate, there was one comment which really stood out for me. You have no birthright to live in the place you were brought up, said this commentator (a second home owner, natch), you have to earn the right to live there. I instinctively disagreed with that, as soon as I read it. No, perhaps you don’t have a right over and above anyone else; but you should at least expect a level playing field, the opportunity to stay put, if you so wish. Family disintegration doesn’t do society much good. My own family is no different to millions of others, our history a tale of small-scale emigration and disruption. My parents left the north-east for the south-east and better opportunities, which they found. Much further back, my ancestors came over from Ireland to Newcastle as a result of the potato famine. R and I, whilst suffering no deprivation and thinking that we had the world at our feet, were still priced out of the south-east where we’d grown up (admittedly, we moved for other reasons too, but who knows, if the large family house in Hampstead had been affordable ….!). No doubt my children will have to leave Suffolk, if house prices – from which we’ve benefited, perhaps to the detriment of some local family - continue to rise. Always moving on, in search of the promised land; sometimes we find it, sometimes we don’t. But how we still mourn for our roots, for that sense of belonging, for our history, for our local land. My grandmother is proud of all her family, those still close to home and those scattered across the globe. But I bet there are days when she wishes we were all living 100 years ago, all in the same street.
I just had a thought; my Grandad wore a flat cap and had a funny accent. How marvellous – I could dash off an amusing little piece about a quaint country character like him; I’m sure he even knew what to do about moles. I might even win something! (Sorry, couldn’t resist).
Had a shouty phone conversation with my Grandmother yesterday. Not shouty in an aggressive sense, I hasten to add, but because she’s a little hard of hearing, which is only to be expected, I guess, at the age of 94. Still full of vigour, her days still filled with living, she is missing having her family around her.
To me, her life has been a series of triumphs; hugely bright, but limited by being born into a large family of few means in the North-East, she has lived a full and enterprising life. She set up her own dressmaking business while raising a family, taught herself to both swim and drive in her fifties, travelled alone to Australia in her sixties. I worry that sometimes, in what must be the last slow years of her life, a life now constricted and narrowed by age, that she may see her life as series of losses – she has after all outlived three husbands, three younger siblings, and one son. Such an influential and dominant figure in my life, in recent years I think she has secretly dwelt with the long departed, despite her mental acuity. Her memories quite naturally grope back towards those people in their sepia tints and strange hats, posing unsmilingly for the camera. Those people who flitted vaguely in and out of my childhood, shadowy forms called Bobby and Billy and Jackie, Doris and Evie and Elsie, are more real to her now perhaps than me. How ironic it is, that we have such little interest in family history when we’re growing up; I could never think what to say to these people at the edge of my family circle when I was growing up, teenage awkwardness and constraint robbing me of my voice – now I yearn for the chance to sit them down and chat.
My parents and I tend to laugh when she says she’s lonely – it’s a family joke that she still has a better social life than any of us, a constant stream of people in and out of the house where she still lives independently – but of course she is. Our extended family has been fractured, like so many families, by distance and opportunity. I read some chatroom comments recently (you know where) about second homes, and, without wishing to relive the whole debate, there was one comment which really stood out for me. You have no birthright to live in the place you were brought up, said this commentator (a second home owner, natch), you have to earn the right to live there. I instinctively disagreed with that, as soon as I read it. No, perhaps you don’t have a right over and above anyone else; but you should at least expect a level playing field, the opportunity to stay put, if you so wish. Family disintegration doesn’t do society much good. My own family is no different to millions of others, our history a tale of small-scale emigration and disruption. My parents left the north-east for the south-east and better opportunities, which they found. Much further back, my ancestors came over from Ireland to Newcastle as a result of the potato famine. R and I, whilst suffering no deprivation and thinking that we had the world at our feet, were still priced out of the south-east where we’d grown up (admittedly, we moved for other reasons too, but who knows, if the large family house in Hampstead had been affordable ….!). No doubt my children will have to leave Suffolk, if house prices – from which we’ve benefited, perhaps to the detriment of some local family - continue to rise. Always moving on, in search of the promised land; sometimes we find it, sometimes we don’t. But how we still mourn for our roots, for that sense of belonging, for our history, for our local land. My grandmother is proud of all her family, those still close to home and those scattered across the globe. But I bet there are days when she wishes we were all living 100 years ago, all in the same street.
I just had a thought; my Grandad wore a flat cap and had a funny accent. How marvellous – I could dash off an amusing little piece about a quaint country character like him; I’m sure he even knew what to do about moles. I might even win something! (Sorry, couldn’t resist).
24 April
I am marooned of Suffolk today. I have hardly ventured out of the house in two days, since youngest has been quite poorly, and I’m starting to get the wild-eyed, unkempt look of a recluse. I always quite fancied the idea of spending my latter years in splendid isolation somewhere, the madwoman on the hill instead of in the attic, perhaps, but actually I now feel I may be better suited to being in the centre of the action somewhere. I’ve been jumping on the phone, and gazing longingly at delivery vans passing by – you never know, even if they’re not for me, someone might want directions. At least the weather is nice (we finally had rain in the early morning, hurrah!) and I keep popping out into the garden with such regularity that the birds have perfected their alarm calls at my approach – you can hear the rooks teaming up with the blue tits in defiance at my continued presence. I hear the call of housework to be done, bills to be paid, Things To Do all over the place, but reason that I can’t really start anything, because I’m bound to be interrupted as soon as I do. My daughter has perfected both the pleading, little, tug-on- the- heartstrings voice and the imperious and relentless commands and she’ll switch between them according to which she believes will get the best effect. Since my housework avoidance techniques are second to none, (I will truly never be the sort of person who co-ordinates their underwear drawers), I call happily delude myself that a quick flick here, a wipe there, constitutes a good spring clean, and, since I am also bone-tired, sitting in front of the computer once again appears to be the best use of my time. Funny how I am always trying to pull the children away from screens, whilst hunched over the laptop myself. I did promise myself that I would restrict blogging to once or twice a week, so it’s not looking good already.
My mother is coming over for a couple of hours this afternoon, so I can get to the supermarket (oops - hope Chickenix isn’t stalking us). The very idea feels dangerously liberating, I may have a sensory overload (lights! Noise! People!) and start manically filling the trolley with chocolate, ice-cream and wine. Or talk for slightly too long to the cashier, or start up random and pointless conversations in the car park – something that will mark me out as a little mad, no doubt.
I am marooned of Suffolk today. I have hardly ventured out of the house in two days, since youngest has been quite poorly, and I’m starting to get the wild-eyed, unkempt look of a recluse. I always quite fancied the idea of spending my latter years in splendid isolation somewhere, the madwoman on the hill instead of in the attic, perhaps, but actually I now feel I may be better suited to being in the centre of the action somewhere. I’ve been jumping on the phone, and gazing longingly at delivery vans passing by – you never know, even if they’re not for me, someone might want directions. At least the weather is nice (we finally had rain in the early morning, hurrah!) and I keep popping out into the garden with such regularity that the birds have perfected their alarm calls at my approach – you can hear the rooks teaming up with the blue tits in defiance at my continued presence. I hear the call of housework to be done, bills to be paid, Things To Do all over the place, but reason that I can’t really start anything, because I’m bound to be interrupted as soon as I do. My daughter has perfected both the pleading, little, tug-on- the- heartstrings voice and the imperious and relentless commands and she’ll switch between them according to which she believes will get the best effect. Since my housework avoidance techniques are second to none, (I will truly never be the sort of person who co-ordinates their underwear drawers), I call happily delude myself that a quick flick here, a wipe there, constitutes a good spring clean, and, since I am also bone-tired, sitting in front of the computer once again appears to be the best use of my time. Funny how I am always trying to pull the children away from screens, whilst hunched over the laptop myself. I did promise myself that I would restrict blogging to once or twice a week, so it’s not looking good already.
My mother is coming over for a couple of hours this afternoon, so I can get to the supermarket (oops - hope Chickenix isn’t stalking us). The very idea feels dangerously liberating, I may have a sensory overload (lights! Noise! People!) and start manically filling the trolley with chocolate, ice-cream and wine. Or talk for slightly too long to the cashier, or start up random and pointless conversations in the car park – something that will mark me out as a little mad, no doubt.
23 April
Saturday night was a blast; dinner with lovely friends, who I always want to describe as old friends, because it seems like we’ve known each other for years, although in fact it’s nothing like that long. We talked for too long, laughed too loudly and drank too much; in fact at one point I noticed that we were all talking at the same time, babbling away to our wine glasses. Ever since I first had children I have known that I cannot do hangovers any more; on Sunday morning I really truly knew it. So by Sunday evening, having spent a gentle pottering day, accompanied by the furies flying around in my head, I felt I deserved to have a long bath. So I had the longest, deepest, hottest bath ever. Alone. (If anyone else has read the Jill Murphy books about the Large family, my attempts to get in the bath without the children are broadly similar). The bathroom right at the top of our narrow cottage is perfect for a solitary soak, having a bath but no shower, the shower room downstairs being the hub of morning activity. Upstairs is more of an evening place, and I certainly turned I my ‘quick bath – can you make sure the children are occupied/asleep/not bothering me’ – into a whole evening. If you twist yourself around at a bizarre angle, head at the uncomfortable tap end (I go for the mermaid look, but fear I’m more of a flounder), you can gaze through the uppermost window, to the treetops and beyond. I watched the birds swooping and diving in the vaulted sky until twilight slowly fell and the stars began to shine. My mind could take in nothing but sky and water, clouds and bubbles. If you keep your eyes trained heavenwards, your thoughts don’t get snagged by the sharp edges of earthly mess; the neighbour’s abandoned caravan, the pile of rubble from his extension; the neglected bit of our garden, all thorns and nettles, the pile of towels and clothes on the bathroom floor.
Peace is so fleeting; today youngest is poorly – pale and wan, she needs my full attention. Nothing like a conflict between my maternal instincts and my irritation at my child-free morning vanishing before my eyes. Back to reality.
Saturday night was a blast; dinner with lovely friends, who I always want to describe as old friends, because it seems like we’ve known each other for years, although in fact it’s nothing like that long. We talked for too long, laughed too loudly and drank too much; in fact at one point I noticed that we were all talking at the same time, babbling away to our wine glasses. Ever since I first had children I have known that I cannot do hangovers any more; on Sunday morning I really truly knew it. So by Sunday evening, having spent a gentle pottering day, accompanied by the furies flying around in my head, I felt I deserved to have a long bath. So I had the longest, deepest, hottest bath ever. Alone. (If anyone else has read the Jill Murphy books about the Large family, my attempts to get in the bath without the children are broadly similar). The bathroom right at the top of our narrow cottage is perfect for a solitary soak, having a bath but no shower, the shower room downstairs being the hub of morning activity. Upstairs is more of an evening place, and I certainly turned I my ‘quick bath – can you make sure the children are occupied/asleep/not bothering me’ – into a whole evening. If you twist yourself around at a bizarre angle, head at the uncomfortable tap end (I go for the mermaid look, but fear I’m more of a flounder), you can gaze through the uppermost window, to the treetops and beyond. I watched the birds swooping and diving in the vaulted sky until twilight slowly fell and the stars began to shine. My mind could take in nothing but sky and water, clouds and bubbles. If you keep your eyes trained heavenwards, your thoughts don’t get snagged by the sharp edges of earthly mess; the neighbour’s abandoned caravan, the pile of rubble from his extension; the neglected bit of our garden, all thorns and nettles, the pile of towels and clothes on the bathroom floor.
Peace is so fleeting; today youngest is poorly – pale and wan, she needs my full attention. Nothing like a conflict between my maternal instincts and my irritation at my child-free morning vanishing before my eyes. Back to reality.
21 April
Sun and serenity in Suffolk this afternoon. What a contrast to yesterday's choppy waters - anger all day, followed by sulks and whining at being left out of the party. I made it in the end though, and now I feel like I'm stationed at the door, welcoming everyone in with a gracious wave and thrusting a glass of red at them, as if I've been here all along. The children have been ignored again, although they don't seem to care; I've been fiddling with my new page, proud as a new Mum, and R, never content to let the day pass by in a relaxing fashion, has decided to create a window seat in the kitchen. Very much pro the window seat - I've always missed the one we had in our last house - but slightly startled to see one wall of the kitchen demolished and gaping. We're going out tonight, and I feel quite sorry for the babysitter who will no doubt be taken aback by spending her evening in half a house - the tarpaulin flapping, the owls hooting, and the chill winds blowing ..... it's spooky in Suffolk, you know. I'll leave the fridge well stocked as penance.
Sun and serenity in Suffolk this afternoon. What a contrast to yesterday's choppy waters - anger all day, followed by sulks and whining at being left out of the party. I made it in the end though, and now I feel like I'm stationed at the door, welcoming everyone in with a gracious wave and thrusting a glass of red at them, as if I've been here all along. The children have been ignored again, although they don't seem to care; I've been fiddling with my new page, proud as a new Mum, and R, never content to let the day pass by in a relaxing fashion, has decided to create a window seat in the kitchen. Very much pro the window seat - I've always missed the one we had in our last house - but slightly startled to see one wall of the kitchen demolished and gaping. We're going out tonight, and I feel quite sorry for the babysitter who will no doubt be taken aback by spending her evening in half a house - the tarpaulin flapping, the owls hooting, and the chill winds blowing ..... it's spooky in Suffolk, you know. I'll leave the fridge well stocked as penance.
19 April
I had a friend visiting today, who had driven up from Hertfordshire with her 8 week old baby, and who has only just left. What a surreal day; a very old friend with a brand new baby, and bubbling emotion amongst my new cyber friends. I couldn’t properly give my attention to either, vacillating between talks of broken sleep and routines, and thoughts of competitions and blogs. The moment my poor friend disappeared to change a nappy, there I was, clicking away to see what was going on, rushing red-faced and breathless from the study as soon as she reappeared. God alone knows what she thought I was up to. The baby was soft and downy and fitted snugly into the space between my shoulder and neck, the way they are designed to, her mouth like a rose petal rooting for milk, her eyelids still transparent and veiny, her tiny hands fluttering like a bird. That sweet milky scent, that soft heaviness, the little sighs, that other worldly gaze. I want another one, I thought, I feel cheated. Then I looked properly at my friend. Huge dark circles under her eyes, her face pale and waxy. Her total inability to concentrate or finish a sentence, her thoughts slow, her speech thick and sleepy. Her body still aching and leaky, she still groping blindly back towards adult life, her emotions all jumbled up with the baby. Oh, now I remember. It is her first baby, and I know from my own experience of a mere two that it does get easier. I also know with absolute certainty that she will come through the fog, that she and her daughter will partake in a dance for the rest of their lives, separating and merging, and it will all seem quite normal. At the moment, though, like so many women (myself included), who have their children late in life, compared to previous generations, she feels like she has been in a train wreck. Upside down doesn’t quite manage it; more like spinning frantically in a vortex. She was always the calm one, when we worked together, me the nervy, manic one. Today was different, of course, I was another adult, one who knew, moreover, what to do with a baby, and who could make cups of tea and offer reassuring pats and soothing noises. She sat under the unfurling lilac tree, looking like a weary Madonna, and I felt like her Grandmother. Strange for me, since those days of panic when faced with the fragile limbs and milk-seeking iron will of a new baby aren’t that far behind me. Funny how these markers in our lives change us, transform us into people apparently capable and confident, when inside we still feel ten years old.
She’s only just left, driving off to visit her ill mother in law in Ipswich (which is why she came here, otherwise I would have course driven to visit her, before you all think I’m callous and lazy!). Now I can ignore my own children who are happily engaged in the garden and get back on the site, back to what is increasingly – and worryingly – beginning to seem like Real Life!
I had a friend visiting today, who had driven up from Hertfordshire with her 8 week old baby, and who has only just left. What a surreal day; a very old friend with a brand new baby, and bubbling emotion amongst my new cyber friends. I couldn’t properly give my attention to either, vacillating between talks of broken sleep and routines, and thoughts of competitions and blogs. The moment my poor friend disappeared to change a nappy, there I was, clicking away to see what was going on, rushing red-faced and breathless from the study as soon as she reappeared. God alone knows what she thought I was up to. The baby was soft and downy and fitted snugly into the space between my shoulder and neck, the way they are designed to, her mouth like a rose petal rooting for milk, her eyelids still transparent and veiny, her tiny hands fluttering like a bird. That sweet milky scent, that soft heaviness, the little sighs, that other worldly gaze. I want another one, I thought, I feel cheated. Then I looked properly at my friend. Huge dark circles under her eyes, her face pale and waxy. Her total inability to concentrate or finish a sentence, her thoughts slow, her speech thick and sleepy. Her body still aching and leaky, she still groping blindly back towards adult life, her emotions all jumbled up with the baby. Oh, now I remember. It is her first baby, and I know from my own experience of a mere two that it does get easier. I also know with absolute certainty that she will come through the fog, that she and her daughter will partake in a dance for the rest of their lives, separating and merging, and it will all seem quite normal. At the moment, though, like so many women (myself included), who have their children late in life, compared to previous generations, she feels like she has been in a train wreck. Upside down doesn’t quite manage it; more like spinning frantically in a vortex. She was always the calm one, when we worked together, me the nervy, manic one. Today was different, of course, I was another adult, one who knew, moreover, what to do with a baby, and who could make cups of tea and offer reassuring pats and soothing noises. She sat under the unfurling lilac tree, looking like a weary Madonna, and I felt like her Grandmother. Strange for me, since those days of panic when faced with the fragile limbs and milk-seeking iron will of a new baby aren’t that far behind me. Funny how these markers in our lives change us, transform us into people apparently capable and confident, when inside we still feel ten years old.
She’s only just left, driving off to visit her ill mother in law in Ipswich (which is why she came here, otherwise I would have course driven to visit her, before you all think I’m callous and lazy!). Now I can ignore my own children who are happily engaged in the garden and get back on the site, back to what is increasingly – and worryingly – beginning to seem like Real Life!
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