House

As you'll know if you read this post, my mother has just moved out of her house, downsizing and moving near to my brother. She and my father moved into that house in 1963, so it has been the family home throughout all my life. It's a characterful old house, a former farmhouse, in a beautiful setting. I was down there for a week over half-term, with Husband and the children, and it was a good week, albeit a heavy one. I wrote some reflections.

Look. There's me. I'm being born. November. Half past six in the evening. I'm being delivered by my grandmother and the community midwife. My parents' bedroom. Two windows, one facing west, one facing south. I wonder what my first sight is, when I open my eyes. The midwife? My grandmother? My mother's smiling face? Or the brown wooden railings of the bedhead? That bedhead is still there. Maybe that bedhead, which now sports a sticky label "Bedroom 1", was the very first thing I ever saw.

Look. There's me. I'm two and a half, and my brother is being born in his turn, in my parents' bedroom. My grandmother is here again, and the community midwife, but they can't both be with my mother. My grandmother has to spend precious moments with me. I know something is going on, and I want to know what. I want to see. I want to go into my mother's room. I won't settle in my own bed. There's my grandmother, singing to me, stroking me, outwardly lulling me gently, but inwardly hard urging me to sleep.

Look. There's me. I'm sitting up in the big Silver Cross pram, opposite my brother. You can take a square section of the floor out, leaving a well for a child to put their feet when they sit upright. My feet are in the square, but so are his, and I'm kicking him. It's fun, but I'm annoyed with him too. My mother is stopping us. "Behave, or we won't go out." This is my earliest memory.

Look. There's me. I'm at school now. I'm in my blue school uniform, and I have a brown satchel, which I like, but not as much as my friend Catherine's one. Mine is a dull brown, but hers is a shiny chestnutty brown. On summer days, we walk home from school through the orchards, kicking the cut grass with our school shoes.

Look. There's me. I'm jumping around on straw bales  in the farm with my brothers, sister and cousins. We know we're not allowed to climb on the machinery, or go into the cow pens. But we're allowed on the straw bales in the barn, and there's a lovely shivery feeling of danger and strangeness in that big barn, which is so empty and echoey and huge, and it always feels as if we're naughty interlopers when any of the farmhands come by. They know us, though, and leave us alone. My mother rings a bell out of the kitchen window when it's time to go home.

Look. There's me. I'm doing my O' levels and I'm sitting at my desk, working. The garden is hot outside, and I can hear the lazy hum of a bumble bee as it drones past the window. I have the Capital Radio Daily Top 10 on the radio, which I let myself listen to every day, before turning the radio off to concentrate more on my books. Just under my window is the porch over the front door, and when I was younger, I used to think it fun to go out of my bedroom window onto the porch, and into the bathroom from there. Of course it wasn't allowed. We did it anyway.

Look. There's me. I've just moved to London, and started work. The city is big and lonely, and I feel I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't really understand my job, but I'm meant to be good at it, as a graduate trainee. I come home often for Sunday lunch, and somehow the comfort of it makes Monday morning less intimidating.

Look. There's me. It's the 'do' after my father's funeral, and we're outside in the garden in the sunshine - which is odd, come to think of it, since it's early March. I don't really want to talk to anyone, but I have to. Someone asks me whether my mother will stay on in the house. What a strange question to ask someone at a funeral.

Look. There's me. I'm sitting in the garden in the sunshine, more than 41 weeks pregnant with my first child. That last contraction made me shift in my chair. This really is it. My mother has friends round, and I don't want to be dramatic, but my sister-in-law notices and, eyes wide for effect, mouths "GO HOME!" at me.

Look. There's me. We've been back from America for long summer weeks, based at the house, and returning to it from trips elsewhere round the UK. We're all packed up and the taxi to the airport will be here soon, and I'm doing 'the sweep'. I walk through each room, eyes travelling across every flat surface, including the floor, looking for stray items. I think I'm pretty good at the sweep, opening drawers, crouching down to peer under beds, but we always leave a few items: laundry in the airing cupboard, favourite toys under pillows, books under piles of newspapers. My mother holds them as hostage till the next visit. I hate the sweep now. Gone are the days when we're only heading off a few hours away in the car, when the pride of maternal efficiency is the main emotion. Now I can't even meet my mother's eyes as she greets me in the hall with her "Got everything? Well done! You're so organised! " It feels like I'm sweeping away the whole summer, leaving it behind us as we return to our lives in America. Our other lives.

Look. There's me. Back for another summer. Sitting in the garden with Paradise. She's a blogging friend, and I've got to know her so well through emailing, pouring out our expat woes, me from America, she from Albania. Here we are, meeting in the flesh, in real life. We share a long, lazy afternoon, in the sun, our children happily playing together. We'll be heading off in different directions, me to the West, Paradise to the East, but for these few hours, the strings of our lives knot comfortably together, a fixed physical event that tethers the part of my life that is lived in cyberspace.

Look. There's me. I'm sitting on the floor with my mother, sorting a box of old toy cars. I'm taking a few, and we're dividing the rest between two bags, one for the charity shop, the other for the rubbish. I take my favourites, and then the ones I can see my mother is struggling to part with. How do you sift and prioritise memories? These Matchbox cars are the ones that I used to pick for my team, zooming them round the house with my brothers, wearing out the knees of our trousers. I know the feel of them in my hand. I know which doors open, and which wheels are missing. They all had names, but I can't remember those. My children come into the room. "Oh, the cars! Are you giving away these?" The cars are holders of two generations of playtime memories.

Look. There's me. I'm lighting the candles on my son's 16th birthday cake. We're telling him the story of the day he was born, how I sat in the sunshine with my mother and her friends. It feels like a strand of life has joined up into a full circle. I think of two friends who have sons with birthdays on this same date. One is in America whose son is 11, and the other a blogging friend whose son is 2. I reflect how my life has oozed out in various directions, from this place. Sixteen years. And here we are again. Only one more day in this house.

Look. There's me. I'm getting into bed beside Husband. I whisper "This is the last night we'll ever spend in this house", but he's asleep. I bury my face into the back of his warm neck and drape my arm over his body, and I think to myself that I'll never manage to get to sleep. But then it's morning.

Look. There's me. I'm doing the final sweep, and I'm bidding farewell to the house. I go into each room, and say goodbye, out loud. No hostages this time.

Look. There's me. We're in the car, and I'm crying, and I can't stop. I wave out of the window, because that's the ritual. "Do the beep-beeps" says one of the children from the back, and Husband beeps the horn twice. In the wing mirror, I can see my mother waving, and there's something deeply, deeply familiar about that exact way she's standing, the angle of her arm, the movement of it, the position of her head to one side... And the house, standing behind.

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The Music of Christmas: Part l

I love Christmas. I always have. I think I've mentioned that before (and since a quick check reveals that I've written 18 posts to date with the label Christmas, I expect I have mentioned it more than once). And one of the best things about Christmas is the music. I love Christmas music. I love it all.

I love the familiar favourites about Santa and snowmen and reindeer and children, rehashed in scores of ways, played over wobbly sound systems in shops, abused as the background music to adverts on tv, warbled by children in school concerts.

I love the jolly ancient songs about wassailing. They make me think of our medieval forbears cheering themselves in the dark, dank, muddy, winter days, with a wassail bowl and a hog roast and a roaring fire. (Oh, thank heavens for central heating, fast food and shopping malls.)

I love carols, careful carriers of theological truths down the ages before most people could read and write. I used to love my 12" black vinyl record of carols, with a picture of snow-laden Christmas trees on the front. (I wonder if I still have it somewhere?) I love all those David Willcocks arrangements from Carols for Choirs. What a genius that man was. My favourite Christmas hymn is Of the Father's Love Begotten, which we had at our wedding (in January, not quite Christmas, but still Epiphany and therefore seasonal). It's based on a hymn written in the 4th century. It's old.

I love the Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve. I sat and listened to it with my grandmother in the last month of her life in 1983. I had just got a fancy radio/cassette player which I was rather pleased with - it had two built-in speakers, taking me to the lofty heights of stereo sophistication. She needed an oxygen mask on during parts of the service. It's one of my loveliest memories.

I love modern classics, All I want for Christmas is You, Santa Baby, Let it Snow, War is Over, Slade's So Here It Is - all of them. My favourite in this category is Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime. There's something about that song that just gets me between the ribs.

I love mystic-sounding madrigals on CDs which have the word Celtic in the title, with pictures on the front of people in hooded garb, gazing mysteriously across misty landscapes. (Incidentally, don't you think the current iPod generation misses out, with downloadable music which has no need of album covers?)

I even love the offensively vacuous Kidz Compilationz CDs we have. I'm going to have to use the word 'festive' at this point. You know the kind. Lots of jingles and jangles and a good strong beat, where Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer morphs into Ding Dong Merrily on High which segues into We Wish You a Merry Christmas which blends into Away in a Manger which transmutes into Deck the Halls. We have one version in which they sing 'bows' of holly instead of 'boughs'. Falala-lala to that.

Ah yes. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the music. I love it all. Well... Almost all...



NB I've sent this post to Notes from Home for her Christmas Carnival. If you're writing about Christmas, why don't you join in too?

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Iota goes to a football match

I’ve just been to my first ever professional football match. I added in the qualifying “professional”, because it wouldn’t be fair to say I’ve never been to any football match. I just haven’t been to any in which all the players are over the age of 14 and unrelated to me.

My father-in-law is making Hull City supporters out of my sons, having himself been a fan for literally decades. He got four tickets for the pre-season friendly against Liverpool, and I surprised the family by saying that instead of Husband going along to represent the middle generation, I’d like to go. I thought it was a bit of a shame to get to the age of 46 without ever having seen a football match. In my defence, I nearly got to a match once. In 1990, I went with an Arsenal-supporting boyfriend to an Arsenal v. Tottenham game, but being a local derby, it was totally sold out, and we didn’t get in. (“… local derby…” Impressed by the football lingo there?) After a mere 21 years, I decided it was time to have another try.

I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. I really did. Hull City won 3 – 0. A good result against the big guns of Liverpool. Yay, Tigers. Oh no. Hang on. That’s in America that we say Yay, isn’t it? What do we say here? Jolly good show, Tigers. No. That’s not quite right. Um…

Anyway, it was a good result, and a deserved one. The Tigers did play very well. Especially number 2. Whoever that was. Well done, Number 2. You were very fast and sprinty. If you keep it up, I’m sure you’ll be number 1 before too much longer. The goalie played very well too, though he didn’t control his defenders very tightly. He didn’t communicate much with the back four. That is my considered opinion of his performance. (It’s also what the man in the seat behind me said to his friend.)

The event was rather more intimate than I’d imagined. There were nearly 21,000 people there. That's a lot of people, but it didn’t feel as overwhelming as I'd expected. From watching football on tv, I thought the pitch and players would seem distant, but I felt close to the action. I confess that the pitch seemed smaller than on tv. I suppose they have to have the cameras an awfully long way up, which makes the game look smaller and more distant than it is to the spectators, even those of us in row DD. In all, it felt rather less intimidating and more… what’s the word?... more domestic than I’d anticipated.

If there was any disappointment on my part, it was that the Hull City fans were a little subdued. The Liverpool fans were in good voice, chanting and singing. The Hull fans gave encouragement by way of the odd roar or burst of applause, but they were relatively quiet, even though their team was triumphing. It felt rather over-polite, and they didn’t sing at all. Compared to the Liverpool fans, they were, frankly, a bit girlie. According to my father-in-law, that was because it was a friendly, and at home. Apparently Hull City supporters are known for their singing at away matches. I’ll have to go to one of those next. I suppose I was secretly hoping for the opportunity to find my inner raucous shouting self, but that will have to wait for another time.

It was something of a grand afternoon out, what with driving across the beautiful Yorkshire wolds to get there, and sitting in slow-moving traffic through Hull with Grandad pointing out landmarks from his youth.

“My school used to be right in the middle of that roundabout. Before the roundabout was there, of course. That’s where I used to jump on the bus. They were open at the back, with a pole to grab on to. Saved me 10 minutes, catching it as it came round the corner instead of going down to the bus station. Meant I could go home for lunch. They used to tell me I’d meet my fate, jumping on those buses as they went round that corner, but I’m still here… I used to go to the football with my big cousin. I was probably about your age, 10-yo. I always stood in those days. Never had a seat. You’d get to the front, if you were small. People let you through so you could see.”

I looked round, and saw the boys on the back seat looking out of the car window as we crawled along. Good for you, Grandad, for being more interesting than a DS and an iPod. And good for you, Hull City, for getting the season off to a cracking start.

Bloggers of yesteryear

I was e-chatting to a blogger the other day, as you do, and the subject of the North East of England came up. “Wife in the North country,” I said. “Wife in the North?” came the reply. “I don’t know that one. Have to look it up.”

I have known for a long time that I am an Old Blogger, but it was with that comment that I realized that a whole generation, maybe two or three, of bloggers have emerged since mine.

I started blogging in May 2007, and it was very different then. That was in the days before the explosion. There were no groups to join, and you found new blogs to read via the blogrolls of your favourite blogs, or by following up comments. So it was important to be on blogrolls, and to keep your own one up to date. You had to make your comments sympathetic, witty, insightful, perky, intriguing, inviting (no pressure, then) as they were your opening gambit in the conversation, and there really wasn’t any other route.

No-one in the UK was making any money from their mummy blog, and there was much more talk of blogging as a guilty pleasure. People would regularly say "I should be doing the ironing/playing with my children/walking the dog/working on my new world peace project, but here I am blogging again." It was a little like being in a club, and confessing to a naughty secret.

Twitter didn't exist (yes, really). You didn't know who your followers were, and feed-readers were for the advanced. Anyone who had a Sitemeter button on their blog was pretty sophisticated. Uploading a picture was a skill that new bloggers sought help for, and were congratulated on when they’d mastered it. If we’d known vlogging was only a couple of years away, we could have called putting a picture up, “plogging”.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being cliquey, or competitive, so I don’t want anyone to feel excluded here. But I got a little nostalgic, and I started thinking back to the old days. Any other Old Bloggers out there, I thought I'd invite you to accompany me down Blogging Memory Lane. (And I'm not really worried about being cliquey here, because I don't think most people would feel hard done by, for not being part of a group of shamelessly backward-looking old fogeys, in today's forward-looking, punchy, dynamic, multi-media blogging world.) Trouble is, as I wrote this, it stopped being a trip down Memory Lane, and became a visit to Bloggers' Graveyard. That's the thing with blogging. Most of us are doing it for a reason, and that often also means we are doing it for a season. A lot of people whom I was reading two years ago are no longer blogging. Some people announce they're leaving (and some then in fact come back), but most just post less and less frequently, until the last post is up there for months on end.

Wife in the North was, of course, the big name at that time, but do you also remember Strife in the North? That was a spoof blog written by Rilly Super. On occasion, Wife in the North would write a post, and within a day, Rilly Super would have written on the same subject. One or two people suspected Wifey of also being Rilly, but I didn't buy that theory. One blog is time-consuming enough...

There were other Northumbrian bloggers who I enjoyed: Mutterings and Meanderings, and then a couple who have disappeared completely from the blogosphere: Mutterings from the Mill, and Over 60 Now, whose blogs don't even turn up on google now.

Then there was Stay at Home Dad. In those days, a daddy blogger was a very rare creature, almost mythical in status, and because he wrote so movingly and sensitively about his daughter, lots of us had a virtual crush on him. Oh go on. Admit it.

I miss Rotten Correspondent, with her tales of life as a nurse in a busy ER. I was actually in her town a while back, and we could have met up, but I didn’t discover till after the event that that was where she lived. What a waste. And what about Blooming Marvelous? Remember her? It was through her blog that I learned that marvellous is spelt differently in American and British English. Who knew? I thought she’d disappeared for good, but she left a comment recently, so she must still be reading occasionally.

Ha, and what about Omega Mum? I used to laugh out loud at her descriptions of school assemblies. Never understood her blog title though: 3 kids no job, since she did have a job. Maybe the blog came first, and the job came later. Then there was Beta Mum, who went all off-shore on us and moved to Jersey.

It’s a pity I didn’t keep a copy of my blogrolls (is there some way of accessing old versions?) It would have been interesting, and I know I’ve missed a stack of excellent Old Bloggers. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip with me, though, and please feel free to add any other lost old favourites in the comments. There ought to be some way we could have a get together. Class of 2007. Perhaps there's a niche for a website here: Bloggers Reunited, which would put our anonymous virtual identities virtually back in touch with other anonymous virtual identities.