THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHILDHOOD?

Childe Hassam

Time I put a new posting up. It seems ages since I wrote one, but I have been so busy getting the Daisy Lupin Poetry Fest Website up and running. If you haven't seen it yet click on the link in the sidebar under the little girl reading or follow this http://daisylupinpoetryfest.blogspot.com/.

It is fascinating watching the poems come in and seeing what people's favourites are around the world. So many people have had a childhood of Walter de la Mare and R. L. Stevenson poems and they are such wonderful children's poems, though I don't know what today's children would think about them. Some people have picked other favourite poems of mine and some have picked poems I don't know which is a good way to learn more. Please keep sending them in, you can post more than once, if you think of more poems or another one you wished you had chosen.

Annette Mills with Muffin the Mule

Reading the poems and watching a series of programmes last week on television has got me thinking about childhood. The BBC [public broadcasting] ran a series of programmes, every evening on one of its smaller channels about the History of Children's Television. It took every decade and showed programmes made for children and discussed them. My decade was the 1950's, as the older I got the less I had time for television. What struck me most about these early black and white programes from the BBC were two things. How class conscious they were, and on the other hand what an innocent world it was. A strange combination. The programmes were solidly aimed at 'nice' middle class children, showing them how to behave and what to think. Everyone spoke with these strange strangulated 'BBC perfect English accents' of the time. and if they interviewed children, the poor children sound so pompous, more like middle aged people of the time. Then ITV arrived, the channel funded by advertising, it was not bound by the mores of the BBC and had what was called at the time a 'commoner' approach to children's programmes. At least the kids acted and sounded like the real children you met at school or in your neighbourhood.

I think the thing that fascinates me is that at the time, I didn't get these nuances from the BBC programmes, but was often annoyed by them without knowing why and the patronising attitude of the presenters. I am afraid I was not a Blue Peter kid, but a Magpie kid, some people will know what I am talking about, as they were two opposing channel's magazine type programmes for children.

Apart from the above, I do look back with a rosy and golden glow around my childhood. I was always a bookworm, and had a father that loved reciting poetry to me. I know I played out a lot, alone in the garden, making gifts for faeries etc, or outside in my garden or neighbourhood with my friends. Yet I can never work out where in amongst all this I found the time to read as much as I did. I got four books out of the library every Monday evening and returned them the next week read. If it was rainy weather, I would go top a friend's house, or a child would come to my house to play, so where was my reading time? I feel I must have read secretly for hours after I had been put to bed.

Helen Bradley

My favourite reading time of all was on Sunday afternoons. What happened on a Sunday was at midday we would have our Sunday lunch. That is the works, every Sunday without fail, Roast joint of Beef, Roasted potatoes, Yorkshire Pudding, two or three types of vegetable and gravy. Followed on by something like apple tart and custard or rhubarb crumble and custard. Then the dishes were washed whilst I was sent to clean my self up and My Mum, Dad and I, would then go to my Grandmother's [my Mother's Mother] for tea. At 2.00pm we left our house, and this is the amazing thing. as long as it was fine we walked there, a good hour's walk. I can't imagine anyone doing that these days, but lots of families were walking to various places at that time.

Jessie Wilcox Smith

We would arrive at my Grandparents, my Aunt would already be there as she lived at home still, she married late in life, when I was about twelve. We would all sit down with a cup of tea, never coffee, and a glass of juice for me and talk about the week that had past. I was asked about school and anything else I had been doing. After about an hour of this I was allowed in the garden to play, there was a big lawn, and lots of flowerbeds, paths and a vegetable garden to be turned into wild places by my imagination. Unfortunately, the Avenue my Grandparents lived in had no children in it at all, mostly older couples whose children had left home. But I enjoyed my solitary time in the garden and would construct tents out of old blankets or make dens and generally play imaginary games. I did also have some old toys of my Mother's that I loved to play with there.


Then I would become aware of the women, my Mum, Aunt and Grandmother, moving around the kitchen, I could see them through the kitchen window, this was the beginning of getting the tea ready. The talk in the kitchen would become whispered and gossipy, but it is surprising what 'little ears' heard as I popped in and out of the kitchen. Let me tell you, children miss nothing. My father and grandfather would talk men's talk in the main room, though I don't think they had any interests in common, which every Sunday would end up with a tale from my Grandfather about the First World War. He would never tell of the horrors of the trenches, but talked about his comrades or about the time when he was a Prisoner of War. He was placed on a farm, where he was very well treated by a pair of German Farmers, and he was together with another English man and a Russian. It all seemed so very civilised, unlike the Second World War. He kept in contact with the German couple for many years and the Russian, until he disappeared into the upheavels of the time in Russia. Consequently my Grandfather could speak German and a smattering of Russian. Unfortunately his lungs were damaged by gas in the trenches and that seriously affected him as old age struck. I often wished I had been more interested in his tales, as I then thought them boring, but now I realise what a wonderful insight into history it must have been.

S. Derbyshire

The table was set and we all went through for tea at 5.00pm. My Grandmother was an expert at teas and a traditional Sunday tea at my Grandparents was as follows. There would be two types of sandwiches, probably, egg mayonnaise and come type of cold meat and mustard or pickle. A cold sliced beef mince pie and a cold sliced egg and bacon pie, a plate of fruit scones, always a plate cake [ tart] with fruit in season ie apple, blackcurrant, gooseberry. a sponge cake either victoria or chocolate then something like a coconut cake or maderia. My Grandmother did all this baking herself, the only concession to Sunday was a plate of 'fancies' [ fancy cakes she had bought at the bakery]. All this was washed down with gallons of tea. Imagine though, all this was after the large Sunday dinner we had eaten at midday.

Van Gogh

After tea, I didn't usually go back into the garden, the Sunday had left the lawn, and I was supposed to let my tea digest, so I was allowed to go into the formal sitting room, and snuggle down on one of the deep comfortable chairs that were part of an art deco three piece suite, how I wish I had these chairs and settee now! This was when I brought my book out and would spend an hour happily immersed in its story. All my Famous Five books I remember reading in this chair. At around 7.00 we would leave my Grandparents and if it was Summer and a nice night we would walk back home instead of getting two buses to go home. Probably all that walking on a Sunday helped us burn up the calories from our two huge Sunday meals. Home again, meant, for me, immediate bath, a plain biscuit and drink for supper and to bed, for a sneaky read.

I suppose when you look back in this way childhood does seem a golden time, as you probably remember the sunny days best and the mostly happy family days, not days or rain and crisis which happen occasionally in every family.

MEMORIES FROM A 1950'S CHILDHOOD

Some more days of beautiful Spring weather with the birds singing and the trees now bursting into leaf. I thought we had collared doves or wood pigeons nesting in the upper storey of our barn using the square opening which is the dovecote entrance, that was until yesterday morning. I went down to have my early morning check on the garden for new growth, and found a trail of large [and I mean large] branches across the garden on the roofs of the two small outbuildings and actually one half sticking out the dovecote entrance[which is large enough for a cat to get in]. How strange I thought and sat down quietly at the garden table to wait. Then I was rewarded a large black crow with twigs in mouth swooped down and flew into the barn. Our barn residents are black crows, maybe hooded crows, I am still checking. How amazing is that? There I am, at the moment, working on the Chunky Crow Book, and suddenly Crows have decided to live with me. By chance or what?

There is a lull in the garden at the moment, yes the plants that are established are pushing up and growing, the magnolia is blooming and some beautiful tulips, weeds have been tackled but there is no actual planting to be done until my plant order arrives later this month, then it will be full speed ahead. So there is time for now to sit at the table working on various projects, enjoying the sunshine and just generally chilling out and being at one with the garden.



Also time to think about gardening in my childhood. I began to remember gardening at my grandparent's house in the Spring. I can remember sitting in the old shed with grandfather, the door would be thrown open to the mild weather and the air was permeated with the shed smells, linseed oil, potting compost and the heavy sweet aroma of my Grandfather's pipe its smoke twirling and swirling out towards the door. My Grandfather would sit at a makeshift bench glossy redbacked notebook and stubby pencil in hand making a list of needs for the garden that summer, grass seeds, seeds, bedding plants etc. He would then give this list to my Grandmother who would take it into the Seed Merchant's when she visited the town for Saturday shopping and the garden goods would be delivered in the Seed Merchant's van. How civilised!



The above memory of my Grandfather and his garden led me on to thinking about THE SATURDAY SHOPPING TRIP [yes, the capitals are because it was a most important day].
From when I was a small child until I was about ten years old, every Saturday, I remember we went into the town for the SATURDAY SHOP. This is how those childhood weekends went.
On a Friday, my Mother would go to the local grocery store with a handwritten list which she would hand over the counter.

This was before we had supermarkets in our area. Though I do remember when a supermarket did open in our area, opposite the local grocery store. I was so excited, I thought 'wow this must be like shopping in America'. Unfortunately, housewives did not have their own cars, or even drive, so it was soon discovered that the downside was having to carry your shopping home. As I was saying, before I got waylaid, on the Friday evening the door would ring and there would be a delivery boy with your box of weekly groceries where upon my Mum would get her purse and pay for the groceries. So that was all your dried goods etc so Saturday would be the weekend fresh food shop.

Entrance to covered market

Every Saturday my Mother and I would get the 8.30 bus into the town and we would meet my Grandmother outside of the covered market. Before we go into the covered market, let me tell you about the Seed Merchant's. At this time of year my Grandmother would drop my Grandfather's order off at this shop. To me it was a very boring shop, not a lot of stock, but bays full of various grass seeds with a large metal scoop and a huge set of scales. The grass seed would be weighed and put into a sturdy brown bag and marked with type. I used to love to look at the packets of seeds in the racks, lovely colourful packets promising such wonderous glories from such tiny hard objects. Only later in the season did the shop become interesting when the annual bedding plants filled the shop to the brim. There were also stacks of things such as onion sets, gladioli bulbs and seed potatoes. Then towards the back of the shop were the bays of fertilisers and potting composts a mixture of pungent musty smells, of fishand blood, bonemeal, and john innes compost. The items on the list would be picked out, weighed and then delivered later in the day to your home.


Down into the market

Then it was on to the covered market. On a Saturday morning huge trestle tables were put up in the aisles of the market and the country women straight from the farms would come in to sell their wares. Everyone seemed to have a favourite lady and if you were a regular anything she did not have a lot of would be kept under the trestle for you. These were no fay earth mothers but rough hewn ruddy cheeked farmer's wives with short sensible haircuts, rough hands, berets and sensible belted overcoats and laced up brogues who spoke with broad Cumbrian accents. I remember huge wicker baskets of eggs complete with the odd feathers, Madge the farmer's wife would sometimes pick an extra brown speckled egg out and say to me ..and here is an extra one for you tea missy. We would also buy in season freshly picked vegetables and in spring she would have newspaper wrapped plantlings for our gardens, such as calendula, nasturiums and bunches of yellow daffodils. There would be freshly churned butter and seasonal items, bunches of holly, and in February when you just began to think Winter would never end she would bring in bunches of beautiful white snowdrops, my Grandmother always bought me a bunch of the first snowdrops, and I loved to sit and look at them in a lovely topaz coloured bowl my Mother kept for snowdrops. After the farmer's wives it was straight to the butcher to pick up the Sunday joint to roast and some other cut of meat to keep going until the Tuesday, when my Mother would return to town again. We would finish off at the fruit stall and last of all the bakers, where I could choose a cake for tea.



When we returned home we would eat our lunch, my Father would get ready for an afternoon of sport and my Mother and I would return to the town, no sturdy shopping bags this time, this was a more genteel outing. This time we would meet my Grandmother and her sister, and her sister's step-grandson outside Marks and Spencers, which the adults browsed around while the boy and I became engrossed in one of our imaginery games, were we in a store, no way, we were superheros battling to save mankind amongst the racks of clothes. Then came the highlight of our afteroon, we would retire to a cafe for tea and toasted teacakes, though in our case, Lemonade and a chocolate biscuit or in summer ice-cream. The grownups would drone along gossiping whilst we brought out our treasures....American Comics, both D and I would avidly swap these, we were American Comic fanatics, he had many more than me, but apart from Superman and Batman I used to love Casper, Lulu, Little Richie and my favourite and I can't remember her name, she was a little witch with a red cloak. After the cafe there was more shop browsing whilst we resumed world saving, then the final highlight of the afternoon, a visit to the one newagents in town that stocked American comics. Should it be a Superman or a funny? What did that one say Superman's dying from Green Krytonite, it's got to be that one, yes! Oh the delicious agonising thrill of trying to decide which one to buy that week, it was almost, but not quite as good as my weekly visit on a Monday to the library. Then goodbyes were said and home we went for tea, me clutching my new comic. Those were the Saturday's of my childhood.


I note there is a challenge going around for an old photograph of yourself. Well here goes! Above is a photograph of my other half and myself in September 1977 [Yes it is another of those strange photos that have turned pinky brown over the years]. It is a momentous photograph, I think we have both just sold our souls and become part of the system, the hippy dream faded away. My husband no longer had very long hair and a beard, he just has normal length hair for the time [the moustache has long gone thank goodness]. I had just had my very nearly waist length hair cut and styled and I was pregnant with our son. That is our beautiful cat Jasper, who lived to a ripe old age of thirteen. We look as though we are taking life very seriously. I may publish some more photos next posting, to show how you can watch my hair grow bigger and bigger!

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A CHILD

I have been doing a lot of thinking about childhood, obviously many, many memories of childhood have come flooding back to me with all this sorting I am doing. It got me thinking about how strange a child's perspective of events and even their visual images of events can be.
Three memories in particular made me start to consider this. [Explanations of the photographs are given directly underneath them in different colour and font.]

A very disgruntled and fat faced me with her ever faithful Jacko the monkey [ I still have the sad remains of him, motheaten hands filling missing out of arms bare patches] sitting in her pram in the park.

I have said before about my first memories and how I can just remember being in a carriage built pram, I have now found a photo of me in this pram, but a memory I didn't mention was one that even now I cannot get a true perspective on what I was doing, and the images from the child's eyes do not really help. I know I was in my Grandfather's garden, right down at the bottom of it. beyond the lawn and flowerbeds, past the vegetable patch, the raspberry canes and the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes, into the the wild part where the compost was made and spare pieces of wood and out of use glass cloches were kept. The grass was very very high [so it was probably about knee height on an adult]. I am wearing blue play dungarees, these were cotton dungarees that children who were toddlers wore over their day clothes to play out in, the idea being it would keep their clothes clean. I am walking about but not steadily, slightly drunkenly, and in front of me is a vast machine, I search the ground for tiny little stones which I gather and push down a sort of spout or funnel on the side of the machine, then I wait until I hear a really satisfying plop noise, and start the process all over again. There seems to be a lot of grass and wood around me. and I have a feeling a slightly older child was with me.

In the front garden, when I was about eighteen months old. I hope you like my terrible twinkie curl, you know you could buy a preparation to make the hair stand up like that, very punk.

I have often asked about what there was there, in that part of the garden and have been told again and again there was an old zinc or tin boiler, the sort that is kept in a outdoor washhouse, and my Grandfather used it for steeping various plants and leaves in to make liquid fertiliser. What I see in my mind's eye bears no relation to this, but I think I must have been pushing stones into a part of it that let them fall into the liquid inside, hence the 'plop'. The glass and wood was apparently part of a dismantled greenhouse that was secured to the fence. Apparently, there was an older girl of about four that lived next door that used to play with me. This explanation never satisfies me as I always see the much more wonderous picture of a magical world with strange glass houses and machines.

It's old one eye closed again on a donkey when on holiday at Scarborough. Was this the one that ran off with me on it?


The second memory is a rather whimsical one, I must be about five or six years old and am besotted with fairy tales. My favourite fairy tale is The Twelve Dancing Princesses and I am convinced that I am one and must search for my eleven missing sisters. The time is the summer and when I am put to bed with the curtains drawn and the night still light outside, I wait a while and creep out of bed on to the ottoman beneath my window and stick my head through the curtains. In front of me are the front gardens, the road, the front gardens of the houses on the other side of the road, then behind them two more rows of houses, but if I look up into the distance over the three green fields, I can see the late evening sun shining on tiny little men in brilliant whites playing cricket. Behind the men are many trees and poking out through the trees are two round towers like in a fairy tale, and there seems to be a large brick building between them. I am convinced that this is my castle. I often dream there is a door in the wall of our living room that will take me to the castle, the door is invisible you have to know where to find it. The best time to find it is when the morning sun shines in the room, and you can see a faint oblong outline on the wall, that is when to run your hands over the wall whispering magic words. No, the door never opened for me, but I was told off for dirty handprints on the wall. The outline was a reflection from the sun of one of the living room windows, oh, and the magic castle across the fields, I wasn't much older when I found out it actually was, as they were called in those unlightened days the local mental hospital and lunatic asylum. I am still looking for my eleven sisters though so we can wear our shoes out dancing all night, are you there anywhere?



The third memory, is actually a sequence of memories. Every family has instances over the years that a veil is drawn over, and are never mentioned in public. I know every one of these family crisises in parts. Just a few months ago my Mother was telling me about my Father's brother and how his wife left him for a while in the 1950's. My Father's family lived in a large village that had a majority of Irish Catholic families and this would be a great scandal in those days. I told my Mother I knew about it, she told me I couldn't have, I was only four years old, I then went on to tell her where my Grandmother, Mother and Father were when they were talking about it. She was astounded that I was right, and I went on to repeat other small nuggets of information about the whole family I had collected in my childhood when adults thought I was otherwise occupied. I never had the whole story of these different incidents when I was small, but I am well aware of when different family crisis occured. I must have just had the knack of looking as though I wasn't listening, in fact, I would go as far to say that I wan't intentionally listening, I just absorbed it. I only remember once my other Grandmother saying 'careful ears are flapping' her signal that they were being listened too. Was anyone else as a child aware of undercurrents and crisis?

I always loved hats, gosh it's actually sunny in this photograph, Scarborough again.

I just want to finish off by talking about the naming of objects. Have you ever as a family given a familiar object a family name for it, so that if you mentioned it to anyone else they would have no idea what you meant. One of ours is 'you better go and fetch the boozy'. No, it is not an aged drunken relation, but a high kitchen stool. It was my son at four years old that named it boozy. Why boozy? who knows it is lost in the passage of time, it was a stool he loved sitting on at his Grandma's table, it gave him extra height when he was little. Then my daughter used boozy, and it finally ended up as a spare seat if there were too many at the table. It is never called the stool always just boozy and I am proud to say I have now taken charge of boozy and he shall reside in splendour in my cottage.

A Summer holiday in Scarborough, Mum, me, Grandma and Auntie, yes it is summer, even thought people seemed to be dressed for winter, and look how formally dressed everyone is, you think they were visiting the Queen not enjoying a holiday.

Well this has been a long rambling posting about memories and childhood but I am pleased to write them down so that I will always remember them and I look forward to knowing if anyone else has rather peculiar memories such as these or was I just a rather odd whimsical child. Also hope you have not been bored by this, but if you are you won't have read this far!

A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

Yesterday late afternoon, I attended the funeral of my best friend's husband. It must have been one of the coldest days in the winter, and we all waited outside the crematorium for the hearse and family to ride up to the entrance. Thirty minutes in the freezing cold because we new it would be a busy funeral. Tony was an inspiring teacher, who often asked to be year tutor to the most awkward and naughty classes. He was a very strict teacher, but fun at the same time, by the end of the academic year these bolshie teenagers always came round to liking and admiring him. He could have invented tough love long before it became a buzzword. As a reward at the end of the year he always had a 'do' whether a meal or a barbecue for his then ex pupils. Obviously, many of them turned up for his funeral. He taught them to aim higher than they thought they could and started many on their paths to a good career. He believed in them and showed them how to believe in theirselves.

It was a wonderful, funny funeral with lots of laughter and a few tears, as I said a contradiction in terms. As we went in Carole King was singing I've got a friend, which I had to admit nearly broke me up as it is one of my favourite songs. Lots of funny stories were told about him and the crematorium rang with laughter. It was not a deep religious service just a celebration of his life really and the coffin disappeared as we sang Jerusalem he was a great sportsman, and Jerusalem was picked for the English Rugby Team and then there was the theme from Z Cars, an old 1960's police programme that his favourite football team, Everton, run out onto the pitch to.

When we were standing in the courtyard and it started to snow on us, people were laughing and saying it must Tony organising it, it was typical of his sense of humour, he would have been amused that the snow fell just as we came out. We followed on to the wake where again, there was a frame full of pictures of him with his family and a compilation tape constantly playing of his favourite music. I decided to send my friend a large shrub to grow in memory of her husband for her garden, instead of sending flowers on the day. I am so glad I did because the flowers will not have survivied lying out on the cold frozen concrete with snow falling on them.



Next important event on the horizon is my mother is finally moving into her new flat, next Thursday, so it is all systems into first gear now, what with me finishing sorting and packing, my husband organising the decorating of the flat, and my son coming up gather up a van and a friend to actually do the move. Then any volunteers to help unpack? Sweetpea? I shall take my time getting my own house reorganised, with its extra furniture and baggages after the move. I don't care if it takes me until Easter, because what I want to do most of all is get down to some of my projects and start firing things out in the post. Luckily the ideas are all there it is just the actual making to do. I will be posting on my site as and when I can, during this coming seven days, probably won't be making my way round the blogs much either, but don't worry I will be back properly after 1st February. I have already got my Crow Chunky Book Page just about worked out in my head, and my Frida ATC's.



I noticed Judie, was asking in my last comments section how do I find the time to do all these things. Well, first of all I don't sleep a lot, probably about five hours a night, and maybe on a quiet day I take a catnap in the afternoon [ especially on cold winter's days or hot sunny days in the garden]. Then some of my activities because I live in England are seasonal. Once I get to the end of October, I don't think about my garden again until March, only to browse plant catalogues. So that always gives me extra craft time. I don't go berserk with housework, as long as I am not ashamed to invite people inside I am a happy bunny. I don't dust and hoover as part of a daily ritual, only when I see it is beginning to need it, but my biggest time saver is, and I don't know if any other countries do this, I do my grocery shopping once a month, on line, and have it delivered to my door. I have done this for two years. That saves half a day every week, so it gives me two more free days a month. The first time you shop online and go through each department with all the pictures of the goods, it takes ages but after that you have a list of your favourites, takes no time and you can still use coupons. This just leaves me to pick up milk and fresh produce locally.

Things you find when sorting. I found two holiday photographs the other day, which follow on from my postings about childhood holidays, so I thought I would upload them here. I had forgotten that when I had my photo taken as a child and was looking to where the sun was I used to close one eye, it looks so funny now, when I see these photos. Looking at these photos of holidays, in the mid 1950's I am constantly surprised how formal people are on them, nearly all the men have sports jackets and shirts and ties on, the only casualness about them seems to be a pair of sandals. I can remember on the beach you didn't see people, such as parents in clothing such as is worn today. I seem to remember gatherings of women in cotton dresses and sandals and men dressed as my father is, although they did take their sports jackets off on the beach and roll up their shirt sleeves. There doesn't seem to have been a cult of beach clothes in England or perhaps the east coast was too windy and cold for them. I am wearing my favourite royal blue dress with white spots on and a white plastic belt in one photo amd a lemon nylon dress and beige cardigan in the other. I seem to have shoes on here, but I do remember as a child being bought new t-bar sandals at the start of every summer. usually in red, and the first time I wore them was always told '.....and don't scuff your new sandals....' and by the end of every summer, copious amounts of cherry red polish were being brushed onto the scuff marks on the toes. Oh and note on one the photographs I am feeling very grown up as I am carrying the binoculars in their case!



I had a lovely surprise in the post this morning, a package from Pretty Lady, with some beautiful fairy cards in it. I have posted an example of one of them above. This unexpected package got my day off to a good start, it was so kind of her to remember how much I love faery things. Thank you Pretty Lady.

THIS SHOW IS WELL AND TRULY ON THE ROAD

I am now well and truly immersed in moving my Mum to her new flat. At last she is showing signs of being a little bit excited at somewhere new to live, though she cannot cope at all with the packing so just sits in her living room and lets me get on with it. This is a boon, to me, she has told me, I am just to do exactly as I want and take any decisions I feel justified in taking. This is making life a lot easier, though I am living in a fog of exhaustion at the moment. She has specified the items she wants with her, such as favourite ornaments, pictures,and photograph. The rest I am packing taking home and there I will sort through them. She will have moved, hopefully before the end of the month, then I will spend a couple of weeks finishing off the packing in her old flat.



The move will be in two stages, my son and I are in charge, and I spent thirty minutes on the phone to him in London last night, planning our strategy. He takes after me in his organising capacities. He is coming up from London next weekend for the first part of the move. I think you would all laugh if you could see the notebook of lists that I am carrying everywhere with me. The other thing connected to the move is pleasant and fun. My mother will need new curtains etc as she has never had windows this shape and size before, so I am to undertake a shopping expedition on her behalf and buy her various new household items. I am picking them and organising them so its a bit like playing interior decorators, that will keep my inner child happy. I love advising people about rooms and decor.



When this move is completed, what I want to do more than anything is to go to my workroom and create, create, after sorting black bin liners. The best thing about this move is that I have come across much fabric and vintage material that I can use. Also, I found a couple of boxes of old greetings cards from the 1950's, put together with the buttons, ribbons, threads and broken beads I have sorted, I am going to have some wonderful treasures for collage and altered art.



The other evening when I returned home from sorting, had my dinner and settled down in a chair with my candles and incense, there was a real treat on television for me. I don't watch a lot of television, and sometimes forget to look at the listings, luckily my husband had spotted this and told me. It was a vintage Joni Mitchell concert from 1970. It was a small studio concert in London made by BBC television [ our public broadcasting station]. It was just so good to hear her play all the very early work, accompanying herself on guitar, piano or dulcimer, especially as she played my favourite early song For Free. I do hope they repeat it again sometime. When I first bought her albums in those far off days I also bought her songbooks as well and used to spend many a happy hour playing her songs on the piano and warbling along with my playing. At some point everyday out would come the music books and plink plonk on the piano I would go. [Big secret, I still have them and my dream is to find a piano again sometime and resume playing them]



The next evening it was a Neil Young concert from the same time, that pleased my husband as well. It was good too, but he was so totally out of it, he forgot the words to one song, couldn't decide which guitar to use and had a pocket full of harmonicas. The few songs he did were fantastic but was guy was sooooo stoned when he did that BBC concert. I think they have been putting these concerts on as they have had a documentary series on about the musicians of that time that hung about LA. You know the Byrds, Crosby Still Nash and Young, Joni etc. - Fantastic!



When I was writing my last posting about long ago holidays in Scarborough, I was wishing I had to some photographs to hand of that time, there was one in particular I liked of me sitting on steps with the Boarding House's Jack Russell Terrier. The strangest thing happened, I was sorting out another bag of my Mum's paperwork last night and there in the middle of old receipts etc was the very photograph I had been thinking, amazing. I have posted it above, I think the dog was called Pickles. I was so pleased to learn on my comments site that another blogger had been on the Hispaniola voyage and had been frightened as well, though she doesn't remember digging for treasure, maybe as the years went by they changed the concept of it. I am sure there must be more people that remember it. Glad to here I was not the only child with a vivid imagination, Tinker, seems to have had a similar experience with a wild west theme.

OH I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE

After finding that vintage postcard of Scarborough, uploading to my site and mentioning the many happy childhood holidays we had there, plus the fact that Mis Robyn has just returned from a seaside break, I decided to take some metime to remember those holidays and then post about them.

Apparently, though I only have cloudy memories of them, my first two holidays in the first two years of my life were taken in Southport with just my Mum and Dad. Thereafter, we went to Scarborough, the three of us, and my Aunt and my Mum's parents. Every year for one week at the height of summer, July, you would find us there, except for one year, when inexplicably, just my Mum, Dad and I went to Morecambe. It can't have suited for we never went back again, and every year after that Scarborough in Yorkshire was where you would find us.



Oh how I wanted to live there all year round, the sea, the sand, the stalls selling cups of wonderful seafood such as fresh prawns and shrimps to eat as you wandered round the harbour and what in the world tastes better than salty crisply coated fish and chips eaten straight out of the greaseproof and newspaper wrapping in the salty air, ah the kiss of salt on your lips. Of course, during the late 1950's my Mother thought it was 'not quite nice' to be seen gorging on food outside the home or a cafe, and so we were led down the backlanes, byways and snicks of Scarborough to eat them, but what a way to learn the true historic Scarborough.

There were always highlights to look forward to every year, a variety show with comedians and glamourous kickline dancers, the delights of Peasholm Park, the esplanade and the prom, the donkey rides and of course, the best, the Punch and Judy shows on the beach. There was one attraction that I was taken to once and never wanted to go again, although I was excited when I first heard I was going - Treasure Island.

This is how Treasure Island worked, just outside Scarborough there was a mere [small lake], near to Oliver's Mount and some enterprising concern had set up a trip by boat around the mere based onthe book, Treasure Island. The idea was everyone boarded this boat, I am sure it had masts and sails, like a true tall ship, The Hispaniola, naturally enough Captained by a man pretending to be Long John Silver. We were taken around the mere, now I am not quite sure whether there was an island in the middle of the mere or we were just dumped at the other end of the mere and there all the kids had to set to in the sand to dig up gold doubloons, in the middle of all this Ben Gunn appeared and there were more amateur dramatics. Some lucky children went back with a 'gold' doubloon, but every one received a tattoo [ink stamp] and a certificate stating we had all sailed on The Hispaniola with Long John Silver.

Don't you just think what a wonderful idea and adventure that was? Well everyone did apart from me, I was such an imaginative child I thought it was all for real and sobbed the whole of the trip. I have been told since, and this makes it worse, that the man playing Long John Silver, a real onelegged ex sailor, was really sorry for me and tried to help me find a doubloon, but that made me scream more because I thought he was kidnapping me. I still feel embarrassed about the way I carried on now all these years later. I often wonder if it was as colourful and as realistic as I thought it was or is that the mind of a child. I have never met anyone else who has taken a trip on The Hispaniola.



A highlight I loved every year was Peasholm Park[photo above], where on the lake every Sunday there was a mock battle of ships. The ships were just large enough to have a man hidden inside them them and every Sunday afternoon, there was a naval war with plenty of smoke, large bangs and flashes of fire. On other afternoons, you could row round the lake in a boat. But, the best part of Peasholm Park was that there was a large island, well it seemed large to me, in the middle, connected to the shore by two quasi japanese style bridges, there were trees on the island and a walk through them. In the evening the walk was lit by pretty coloured lights and hidden amongst the tree were models illuminated within of animals such as squirrels in the branches, rabbits, between the trunks, and fairies in the boughs. I just adored it and thought I was in Fairy Land, and the most exciting thing to me was if you walked around the lake before paying to do the island walk you could just see hints of the delights in store amongst the trees on the island. It seemed such an enormous magical island, I often wonder just how large it really was! At the same time in a chinese pagoda type structure that was floated out into the middle of the lake their would be musicians playing and concerts would be performed.



We stayed in the same boarding house every year, and the owners became family friends. The owner was the best cook I have ever known and I can still remember her strawberry pies, fresh lobster or crab salad and amazing full works roast beef and yorkshire pudding Sunday dinner. It was on a road, I think, called Castle Road and just about three doors away was an amazing, to me, toyshop, whilst the grown-ups were getting ready to go to the beach, I used to be allowed to go and look in the window of it. There was also down one of the twisty back streets, an amazing Chinese shop that sold Chinese rag dolls, made by Chinese refugees. It was run by a little old bent Chinese man [very Harry Potter] who wore a little hat on his head. I used to buy a small cotton doll every year, until I had a family of them. Unfortunately, I lost them a few years ago when we moved, and I have never seen anything similar elsewhere.



Well, I could go on and on, but I'll leave you with the memories above and maybe another time I will sit down and dredge up some more childhood holiday stories.




Just before I go, the last two evenings I have had trouble leaving comments on a few blogs, in fact some just told me I was forbidden to view site! and others said there was a blogger error! I will be getting round the blogs as often as I can in this very busy month, so don't think I have forgotten you if you don't hear from me as much as usual and don't forget me, I'll be visiting as much as possible.