Eddy Currents

A Blessing, A Birthday & A Band

There was much squawking and flapping amongst the sisters as two family events clashed like thunderclaps and lo, there was much gnashing of beaks. Eventually two camps were established but I just could not understand why both celebrations could not be combined. I gave up trying to establish an entente, having decided myself that I would attend every inch of the whole lot. Hence a frenzy of excitement in our particular nest that could not possibly be matched by any partisan interloper.

 

First up, Simon and Mary’s Blessing. I spent much of my childhood living with the Edsor family and even after the families sold up and moved into their own kennels, we met at every possible occasion, from Christmas and New Year, holidays and birthdays, through to quick pints and grabbed lunches. Sadly Simon split from his missus Marian and my dear mum vanished from the group photos too. Eventually, Marian moved to Spain but Sly got re-hitched, to the delightful Mary and after a register office thingy some weeks ago, marked the nuptials officially with a blessing at the glorious Church of the Annunciation, Marble Arch.

 

The night before untangling the travel knots on the internet was a nightmare. Bloody Thatcher. Where once one glance at a well-thumbed brick of a timetable would secure information. Or a quick troll down to BR for a chat with the jolly stationmaster. Now, we squinted over beers and typed in combinations and wore ourselves out trying to link Dulwich with Marble Arch to Battersea with Nunhead. Still the stuff they peddled us was incorrect or incomplete and we ended up relying on our memory for buses that now run with extra 2s in front of their traditional route numbers and hoping that engineering works did not throw any spanners in.

 

How could my sisters miss this? It was gorgeous. Me and the kids climbed off the 36 while the world whorled like a greasy plughole round Marble Arch. The sun was out and London was gulping down scalding coffee. We stepped from this, bumping momentarily into fellow guests who looked as crushingly smart as we against the backdrop of the Edgware Road, into the quiet street beside the church and then into the vaulted grace of Anglican patronage. It was like sitting inside giant smooth hand made of stone, inverted, safe but not quite smiling. There were flower girls handing out bunches of sweet peas and the men were dressed informally in unmatched lounge. Me and the kids scrub up fine I feel and I did not worry that we were frocked and polished. To my eternal thrilledness, we were seated at the front with close family, our beloved sort of brother Jake and my dear chum Caro, Harry the top boy and Bobbie and Ellie doubling as tasteful bridesmaids. I was going to enjoy this, I could tell.

 

And here comes the bride. Muted, smiling, softly. They knelt, we grinned and then the heavens coughed as the small choir above us on the – insert correct ecclesiastical architectural term here, ahem – beside the organ sang their heads off. Thomas Tallis, I nodded to my eldest sagely. And we closed our eyes and let the prickles march up our napes and over our skulls. I was that close to breaking into applause at the end. There was a hymn we all knew how to sing (those past assemblies at Ashcombe come in handy from time to time), some Corinthians, more exquisite choral gymnastics, stripes of sunlight shyly penetrating the stained glass and painting our faces, then finally, man and wife turned and we peeled out of our pews after them.

 

We needn’t have worried about flagging down a 19 at Hyde Park Corner as clever Sly had laid on a coach and we sailed into the traffic in our finery like  Tudor groupies on a Royal Barge. Bloody brilliant. To Battersea then…

 

Battersea village is about the size of a picnic blanket that has been dropped between council estate, heliport and river. Next to the square with its caffs and the Royal Academy of Dance (where my gels do their exams..), is a little known block of beauty dating back to the Eighteenth century and beyond called Old Battersea House. Owned by the Forbes family of rich list fame, raftered with Victorian pictures and style, we were greeted by Bellinis and smoked salmon sandwiches, and full sun on the lawn. Fred found a football and immediately broke a glass and we found art, art and more art and found we wished we could have it all.

 

Utterly civilised it was, dusted with laughter and silliness amidst some of the more imperial excesses. A Millais here, a pair of the Queens voluminous knickers there. Mary even had one of her paintings on the top floor. Wot an honour, guv’.

 

It was so lovely. Finally, after warming down with tea and cake, we gave them big cuddles, took lots of photos, and drifted out onto the scary main road for a bus. Of course, incorrect information ensured that we couldn’t get our train from Clapham Junction as planned, and we’d overpaid, yet again, on the auto ticket machine, much to the smugness of the inspector guy who admonished us, saying we should have got our ticket from him, and we eventually, via Victoria (ah, had she known how her name would be taken in vain..) we got back to ye olde borough of Southwarke. Some forked left for the next ‘do’ immediately while Constance and I legged it back to swap clothes and get presents.

 

Back across the Rye, heels sinking in turf, limbs unaccustomed to sunshine, motes of dandelion clock buzzing in the breeze that lifted our skirts for the footballers to see, we were met in Nunhead by dear Ed, sozzled sisters, my dad and his wife Debs, aunts, uncles and pregnant cousins and a bunch of food nearly all eaten. An adventure involving an old school friend, a wire basket and 20 bottles of Becks ensued before I could get a drink to begin catching up and then Lummo, my crusty little sister, still living in a caravan in Cornwall, whose 40^th birthday we were all there for, appeared and I haven’t seen her for a year and it was so lovely to squeeze her bones again.

 

And if all this wasn’t enough, the kind of jazz North African fusiony band from next door called Twelve Tone came round and sat under the fairy lights and played the flute and cello and drums and double bass as the sun set and the police sirens rose in the distance.

 

Childish sand dances ensued, with cackles and gags and Ed lit his gas lamps, an honour accorded only to comets and eclipses, and we began to wind down. The kids were exhausted and my feet were bent upwards being in heels. We kissed everyone a million times, squeezed some more and got home before midnight.

I fell into bed thinking what another perfect day.

 

Then suddenly, I was standing in the Harvester carpark at 8.30 the next morning for football.

Snow Blog

 

Was it all a dream? ..see the Friern Road snowteddy.. Back here in the cold covered market being assaulted by Capital Radio, it is hard to believe that I was knee deep in a snowdrift on the Rye yesterday. The Daily Mail brigade that admonished Gordon Brown’s Brits as a bunch of sponging fairies for not opening schools, were not struggling on the ice-rinks posing as pavements this morning to drop the kids off, nor were they gunning their cars hopelessly on South London cambers encrusted with snow and ice as they attempted to go back to work as implored and fend off the recession single-handedly.

But there were some sympathetic friends on the school slither today who claimed they found the last two days stressful and I guess if you were shut in with small children, the frolics and handsomeness of the landscape upon which they were taking place must’ve been claustrophobic, not to mention precarious and a massive hassle.

I, on the otherhand, woke on Monday stunned by the implications of the text messages I was receiving. Calmly, I marshalled the ingredients for a lunchy soup, sorted the laundry and waded cheerfully, feeling blessed by the opportunity, through the entire ironing basket. I even did the t-shirts in there from last August. Then Fred and I had the most magic afternoon in swirling flurries in Dulwich Park, counting teenagers and snow boulders, shaking branches; up at the rhododendrons he said: “It’s like Narnia..”

 

 

With there being no question of slogging over to Croydon for his advanced footy training, it was a light peppering of snowballs on the back all the way home for hot chocolate. Our tummies ached from laughing for four solid hours. Meanwhile, Jon walked to the shop and back but still returned relaxed and early enough to concoct a hearty chicken curry with the Sunday roast left-overs.

Then, as if that wasn’t joy enough, more texts on Tuesday announced more of the same. Bliss. We hit the Rye, if not running, then sliding, and when we were too cold to bear any more pelting, we sunbathed eyes shut at a picnic table, with me pretending just for a moment that I was outside a refugio in the alps, ski poles to my left, slab of hot pizza to my right and mulled wine centre stage. Crikey, think how much would that be at the current rate.

Then later, while the kids thawed out in front of a warm telly, I got a call to say that my swimming teaching was cancelled for that afternoon and so I celebrated by making them a homecooked tea – on a Tuesday!! Then I cleaned the fridge and the food cupboard, sorted the bathroom cabinet and rolled my sleeves up to tackle the teenager’s bedroom. Finally, I sank into a leisurely hot bath stained pink with the cherry blossom salts my sister brought back for me from Japan last year (or was it the year before?) and read the weekend’s papers rescued from the uncollected recycling (though Mail readers note: the milkman did manage to deliver).

Stressful? Two unexpected days of fresh air, exercise, daydreaming, laughing, playing, eating, organising, sorting, ironing, washing, cleaning, chilling (!); two days of intense hard-working activities but after running, running, running,  and chasing my tail for the last three months, those two days gave me the chance to catch up and now I am, for the first time since last summer when I actually wore one of those t-shirts, feeling rested….

Cold Calling

It is the last week of the swimming term and I have that Dickension affliction, chilblains. Those apparently in the medical know recommend that to avoid developing painful, itchy, swollen toes, you should never, ever allow your feet to get cold. Right. It seems I am in the wrong business. Not that teaching is entirely to blame; reckon that standing on muddy football pitches, week-in, week-out doesn't help. Nor does sitting around a covered market blowing into the fingerless-gloved hands and making smoke-rings with any excess breath. I'd wear the spraunzty fur-lined boots that Jon got me two years ago but I can't feel the pedals when I drive in them, the sensation being not unlike having a bucket of warm custard instead of an accelerator, and my Derbyshire christened walking boots are brilliant for slithering down the peaks but remain somewhat unfleet-footed when I'm dashing up Lordship Lane to make the school pick-up.

Staying warm in winter is the swimming teacher's supreme challenge. And you thought it was teaching little Dudley how to do frontcrawl .. Above everything, us waterborn instructors obsess about how cold we are. Even with shorty wetsuits and rash vests, our podgy purple pins poking out and hunched shoulders gives the game away. We don't clap for attention because we are officious, you know. I also break all the HSE and management rules by parking a thermos of tea under the 'no eating or drinking' sign to cuddle when the shivering gets too violent, and have been known to threaten four year olds with a length of butterfly for knocking over my cup.  

Worse is the changing afterwards. You either get privacy in the utterly freezing, unheated and undraughtproofed disabled changing facility  - well, they don't need to keep bits that don't work warm, do they..? But they can get their clothes off in the shower without the world watching. Wouldn't want to offend the world afterall.. Or, you stay warmer in the communal changing rooms but can only have a shower with wetsuit firmly on, unless you want all the dads poolside to see just how purple the rest of you can be. Mindyou, some small, freshly rubbed down and dressed sweetie usually opens the door to the outside world just as I peel my costume down and the people who bought the new flats across the way get more view from their balcony than they were promised in the estate agent's specs.

It is even colder in the private school pool I teach in. At least the water in the state sector is maintained at an even 'tepid'. In the independent shallows, where a profit is required, they leave the cold tap on. Still, stops 'em going soft, eh!

The coldest and wettest I have ever been was in the 80s at the last march for the miners in London; in a deluge no doubt ordered by Thatcher, we trudged down Pall Mall and into Hyde Park, the rain disguising our tears. Later, walking home exhausted and sodden, I stumbled off a kerb in somewhere posh like Fitzrovia, causing a woman in a Volvo estate to brake sharply. Behind her, chatting into his brick of a mobile phone, a classic 80s yuppie in his nice warm, dry Porsche went smack straight into her boot. His look of exasperated disbelief mangled with utter disgust was worth every chilblain that grew on every toe that day.

So, I get back from my classes so tired and chilled that I can't speak and I do the second thing that those in the medical know recommend avoiding: expose the afflicted extremeties to sudden heat. Well wouldn't you? I run a bath, Jon makes me more sweet tea and I shudder as I submerge myself all the way under the surface. And I lie there for a long time...

my new nest

Hmmm. My new nest is a quiet affair awaiting its own blog branch. In the meantime, I'm not exactly troubled by customers here at the East Dulwich indoor market - though there was a flurry of excitement when a squirrel ran in and we all rushed to sell it something. Meanwhile, against all expectation, I've discovered I prefer Steve Wright on low volume Radio 2 to hour after hour of Your Sex is On Fire on Heart FM. God, if ever there was an earworm you didn't want.. Jon was playing Robert Wyatt in the kitchen over the weekend and the resultant Shipbuilding on a loop in my head was a blessed relief.

Outside, the only humans visible are estate agents smoking fags. Smoke, smoke, smoke. I guess they've got nothing better to do than hasten their deaths. Smoke, smoke, smoke. Ensuring that, when I nip out for a stretch and a bag of Bombay Mix (for the squirrel, natch), the cold crisp air tastes disgusting. Up North it was snowing; down here there is a snowdrift of dogends and a bunch of sales negotiators getting yellower and yellower. Still, once they've all gone there will at least be a few more parking spaces on local sideroads - right now, as soon as one branded Beetle leaves, another branded Mini Cooper replaces it - and I might even enjoy a customer or two!

Tidy up time.

I handed my notice in at school last Monday lunchtime. This may well go down in history as a legendary Crow clanger to rank alongside those humungously bad decisions already recently in the bag such as retraining as a swimming teacher to earn some proper money, trying to sell the house (hahahah!) and turning right not left onto the Old Kent Road the previous Wednesday in order to find a traffic avoiding back route to Rotherhithe so that I could return the skinny leg jeans I had kindly bought for my eldest without imagining for a zillion eons that any progeny of Jon and mine’s would have an inside leg length anything over 26 inches. It took me an hour to go from Short, through Regular to Long. Not to mention twenty quid’s worth of petrol.

            No, I returned from resigning vaguely exhilarated, and switched on the radio to hear Eddie Mair with a voice like shortbread petticoat tails herald the end of civilisation, as the markets freefell and the prospect of a million out of work by Christmas even troubled the usually smooth delivery of the continuity announcer (how many of those does the world need?). A clever day to chuck in the job, what!

            It was, it has to be said, only one of my jobs, but a time-consuming one nonetheless. The reason behind my - with hindsight – ill-timed recklessness was nearly four years of classroom distraction that didn’t actually even cover the monthly repayments on my moribund credit card.  When I had kids of my own and went through the bum-wiping, nose-blotting, cajoling, dressing, washing, feeding, reading, writing routine with each, it never occurred to me that I’d  have to be doing it for other people’s kids for a living. But four years ago, in a post-Morrisons apocalyptic Crystal Palace with a one-way system freshly inserted up its backside, it seemed I would never be paid to sell books ever again. But, ever the shopgirl, I adroitly acquired a raft of jobs that ensured that the only time my feet ever touched the ground was when I slung my legs over the side of our manky twenty year old mattress at seven o’clock in the morning.

            The only advantage of working in a classroom full of dinkies  - my other workplaces included a psychotherapist’s consulting room, the bookshop, two municipal pools and two private ones – was that I got to be artistic with the staple gun. However, as a fully paid up charlatan my dedication to Early Years & Foundation Stage education ensured that I absolutely loathed doing anything else, especially the messy stuff (like I hadn’t had a bellyful of that at home anyway) and despite its manipulative, creative and instant qualities as an education tool, my pure hatred of homemade play-dough was sealed and balled up in a tiny brown fist, the day that little Damocles sneezed palably into his lump of cochineal tinted flour and water fun. And then he flattened it with a rolling pin, pressed down on a pastry cutter and handed me a star-shaped snot cookie.

            

No. A nice safe staple gun was where it was at. Gimme all those little darlings’ paper pinwheels, cotton wool snowmen and crayoned depictions of their holidays at Disneyland Paris and I could turn it into a grim Bruegelian grim-scape in seconds flat. Because I’m a good actress – actually it is precisely because I wasn’t a good one that my first career choice in the theatre got its final exit stage left at age fifteen when I failed the audition for the NYT - one of the teachers kindly commented that I would make a good teacher myself, but quite aside from my complete lack of mathematical certification at any level, I couldn’t calculate anything worse. Not that I would ever admit that to a real live teacher with their place in heaven fully booked the day they became an NQT. God, imagine having to follow the curriculum by the jargonistic book. No, it was strictly “inside voice and quiet hands” for me. Imagine carrying the can if I failed to educate. Which, I surely would, given my own record. Or is it true that those who can’t do teach?

I was fond of grumbling that the school had me cheap but that is to flatter myself. No, what I had was the old shopgirl adaptability that meant that I wasn’t afraid to say, er.. yes. My ability to read then, write a sentence (aw, c’mon!) also meant that I could fill out the forms and clipboards and observations and tracking paperwork that the system demands and devours daily, without anybody having to explain it to me.

            

And my acting skills disguised my frustrated despair when I had to hold down untamed, trashing migrant three year olds without the support of any training or guidance. At other times, it helped suppress my revulsion at the unkempt cute tussle of hair crawling with lice or chipping shite off the inside of sad legs because parents failed to admit that their child wasn’t actually toilet trained, so keen were they to get them institutionalised. I’d take my hat off a million times to those who work in schools but I’d never take a hat off to me. I was just a pretender.

(I even managed to rouse the ire of the erstwhile deputy by wearing a hat indoors. True. My line-manager boss had the embarrassing task of informing me that my smurfish headgear was not “appropriate”).

Left to keep a pile of 40 three and four year olds from fidgeting while a story went over their heads in honour of Black History Week, I found myself pulling my jumper over my mouth and nose in a pathetic attempt to stave off the swarm of technicolour germs swarming like dust motes in the Autumn sunlight as they exploded from each little coughing gob. Out of 40, 11 kids sneezed during Anancy’s exploits with the emperor’s new dan dan. Then one little bugger guffed. I sat there trapped amidst the microbes wondering just what it was I ‘d done wrong in a previous life.

            

            I couldn’t justify it, nor stand it any longer. Somebody else more talented and earnest than me would do far more justice to the position of classroom assistant. Someone who would take it and use it “appropriately” by doing something really useful for society, and not just excuse it as an outlet for failed artistic ambition, as well as a means of fending off Mastercard like some hapless liontamer with a plastic chair. Meanwhile, my Uncle Bri went and died at the not-so-old age of 58, which don’t half make you think long and hard about what constitutes the best use of one’s existence whilst everyone else weeps in the chapel.

I mean, somebody else more deserving would never in a million years entertain the consideration that snipping out scraps of fabric and attempting to get tiny people to glue them the right way up on sugar paper outside in a windy playground was an utter waste of time.

And I’d been late too many times. And I was spending a fortune on unleaded going between the bookshop and classroom and pool (I got the shrink job off my chest after a year of struggling up and down the Camberwell New Road). And my brain was atrophying. Which kind of negates the whole motive behind education, huh?

I have no fanciful illusions that I matter to the children who have passed through the last four years of my silly voices, French expletives, over-dramatised storytelling and bizarre playground antics – “Hot Beanbag!” – as, unless they were unlucky enough to have a form photo purchased on their behalf with me in the back row looking like a giant remedial, they won’t even acknowledge my presence by the time they go into the Juniors. I have been that ashamed teenager on Reigate high street who was once greeted lovingly by teacher from my formative years and of whom, to this day, I have not an iota of recollection. But, I will miss being cuddled all the time, inspite of the rules about contact, and above all I will miss being so unconditionally adored. It is the closest I’ve ever got as an adult to being on the stage. The little fools...

It is a time for change then. So, soon after handing in my notice and with Eddie Mair’s gentle incredulity at the headlines he was reading still ringing in my water-filled ears, I took a deep breath and ordered a brand new mattress from Argos. It was delivered yesterday and I can tell you now, as I rub the sleep from my eyes and swing my legs over the side, it is the best decision I have made for a long long time.

             Ps. Sarah Montague says two million out of work by Christmas. I think I’ll go back to bed.

Summer 2009

Sorting through a stack of newsprint for recycling after a summer away, it feels as if I’ve lost - at the risk of sounding like an appalling Bowie lyric (and I own his records) - a slice of time. Or at the very least, it was swapped (I nearly put something about shifting to another dimension instead there, but it too made me think of a clock hurtling through space, before it falls wanking to the floor). The newspapers are charmingly optimistic; the vacuous supplements bang on about festival chic; the critics try to out superlative each other over Wall-e; the broadsheets chat tentatively about Team GB’s chances in China.

My summer began in earnest, after the volley of rain and misguided verbal assault by my sisters at my Dad’s 70^th, and that cold though enjoyable afternoon with Melony observing Neil Young granny groupies refusing to be whipped up into a sexual frenzy by Rufus Wainwright, when my ballet chum Kirsty handed me a ticket for Camp Bestival in the playground.

Me and the kids abandoned the chilly, barely competitive school sports day early and, as if by magic, the sun came out to torture us as we queued round the Dorset countryside to get on to the Lulworth site. Thanks to pop-up technology (there’s a joke there that I can’t be arsed to make), we immediately established ourselves amidst the canvas chaos and lucky Fred went off to see elderly bad boy Chuck Berry (“Did you know he was a legend mum?”). By the next morning, my kids were so at one with their landscape that I just had to let them off the lead. While I sunbathed under our homemade bunting and watched the clouds rush about like stupid Londoners, I added a moment to my perfect collection (see dear Spalding Grey) and then I realised that I had to be responsible and went off in search of the offspring. I found Fred dozing in a hammock in Restival and the girls sewing for England in a marquee full of old furniture and remnants. And I don’t mean smack-head rockers. What kind of a festival was this?

As it happens, it was very English one, with jousting and marching bands and Billy Bragg and Eliza Carthy. And a castle and Bluecoats and my mates from the Dulwich Ukes and a thousand punters dancing upright in the afternoon to The Specials. My Dingaling and Wayne Coyne merely enhanced the eccentricity of it all. Kate Nash turned up to do some anonymous sewing, recognised only when she asked for some scissors. And nothing quite prepares you for the sight of a pair of flamingos unzipping their tent and stepping out. Camp it was. But for camping, it was very Englishly crap too - eight sinks for 8,000 people to do their washing up in? And one of those had a bloke defiantly shaving amongst the saucepans.

When we got back, the images of my ten year old triumphantly exiting the compost toilets with a wooden spoon, of men in wedding dresses rolling fags with their corseted backs against the perimeter and of the sign reading No Pissing Ta X beside the solar powered cinema had barely developed before we set off for Normandy on the night ferry.

A month in Northern France meant that there was plenty of rain pissing ta x, but it also meant that, as we were in the middle of the rural marshes of the marais and only fifteen minutes from the coast, the minute that ole soleil stuck its chapeau on, we grabbed our picnic and body boards. From the cracked rainclouds at the motocross to the sudden gothic storm sending the gargoyles spewing silver gallons onto us at the top of Mont St Michel, from frites at the Fete de Carottes (nothing beats eating chips whilst standing beside the field they were grown in), from dragonflies in the woods to the degustation of locally brewed eau de vie (think Calvados in the afternoon – like sex, only better) served by a man in his orchard who would not be hurried, from hugging a windturbine to ushering baby moo cows back to the safety of their meadow, we took in every single ray the sun deigned to beam down on us. And when night fell, we sat under a night sky frothing with golden stars like a dropped Pelforth.

The roll-call of participants reads like a festival line-up: Brother Jake & the baby Edsors with lead singer Caro, and special guest Jo-Jo; Gedling Hill Billies: Katie & Bob & Sarah; Ronnie & Al Skeletone, in his best shirt, with backing vocalists, Ella and Sophe; And fresh off the barricades of ’68, Nicole & Etienne, Guilliame, and Voltaire the cat (we call him Walter). Other walk-on parts included Tocquai the dog - an intriguing Collie and Dachshund cross - a wasps’ nest under the washing line and some swallow-tail butterflies. Prize for the most amazing sight of all goes, not to Bob in a wetsuit, nor to the photo of Fred in the regional newspaper, but to the hummingbird moths feeding off the geraniums outside the French windows (what else could they be?)

As if that wasn’t sufficient, we got the night boat back after a month and Jon unshackled himself from the till, overloaded the Squashed Tomato and set of like a real live family, all five of us. I had to keep counting just to be sure. When we got there, we discovered we’d cleverly booked into a bijou little campsite next to the Broads, with a quayside tent pitch and a rather tasty Italian in the local town. We cycled ourselves stupid around windmills, seasided at that famous corner of East Dulwich called Southwold, and then, to the smell of fear all over the county, hired a cruiser and gently perambulated in a watery fashion up stream, and down.

Finally, creaking at the panel seams, we headed across the fens and levels to Nottingham for a massive family party that featured the cast of an Alan Bennett special and a sideboard bowing under the weight of desserts that starred more types of oral fascination than the menu outside an Amsterdam knocking shop.   

I did precious little writing then; Camp Bestival was my decompression chamber where I learned to breathe normally again; I spent the first fortnight in France out of focus and the second zooming in on minutiae – moths f’rinstance – managing nowt but a couple of postcards and some enclosed cuttings of the aforementioned French newspaper. In Norfolk, I sat back and let the bookseller think he was skipper, of car, craft and crossword. I recall thoughtfully mustering a congratulations text to my sister, who gave birth to my nephew Bill whilst I dozed in my sleeping bag and listened to rabbits munching grass a foot away from my head. In Notts, I did nothing but nosebag. But my dusty laptop has remained untouched. The shock absorbers on the car have had it though.

As I shovel the more recent deliciously pinko Guardians and Observers – I have also been in plenty of red neck territory in the last six weeks - into their turquoise Southwark sack, it seems the Olympics turned out ok. One doesn’t need to be Rob McCatswee, however, to surmise that the weather in those printed forecasts was not. But me? I had fun at a festival, found sun in Northern France, had a bone fide family hol with Jon, and I became an aunty again. Thus I declare the Summer of 2008, the very best ever!

Ou sont tous Les grownups?

I was looking forward 2 a facefull of dirt in return for some lithe bikers in leathers. Afterall, it had been some days since we'd enjoyed a frisson of excitement at the sight of some Normandy sunshine. In previous years the motocross event in our village had produced some smooth silver haired veterans eager to restate their virility by throwing their   Japanese machines up muddy slopes, followed by some nervously ambitious late teens, much faster & sleeker, & always the sun came out to ensure a little light steam rose from all directions.

So it was hope that accompanied the flask & des biskwee we'd packed as me and Caro, her sister & a happy  gaggle of goslings parked on farmland, the smell of twostroke & the sound of a hundred bad-tempered chainsawsequally balanced on the air.

And there they were, pinging like cochons du sables over the ancient barns - more than twenty bikes hissing blue smoke & ricocheting like frogs on hot metal. Which is essentially what they were.


Overlaying the racket was the customary French commentary, obligatory at all events. By the time we found a ridge above the track carved out of the Norman landscape to perch on, the racers had swarmed beneath the chequered flag and the official's fag back to their enclosure. So we settled down to study the form.

The program looked promising, I remarked to Caro's sister in anticipation of some serious macho entertainment. The announcer certainly seemed to be in an excited ecstacy.

Then came the frenzied revving & coughing before the gates were snapped down and the men and machines released to cascade down a practically vertical incline. Then they left us in a pall of exhaust as they zoomed into the distance.

When they returned, leaping & turning over the hillocks, I made comment as to their daintiness. Which continued as they approached. In fact, our macho bikers were like figurines on a mantel piece up close. Another look at the program  revealed that the objects of our attention, aside from being male, were between 7 & 14 years old. Ahem. I know. It was raining but we covered ourselves up quickly anyway.

At The Hop With Neil.

I renewed my lifesaver’s certificate last Friday, which involved a full day of imagining all the ways your swimmers could die. What larks. Worse, once we’d been scared witless, we had go to rescue them all. With CPR and head splints and bear hugs and bear splints. We go through this every two years and you’ll be pleased to know that the stuff we learn and practise, remains in our brain for about.. ooh.. three weeks, before we become a headless chickens once more. That it stays in our chlorine shrivelled heads for that long is a miracle, in no small part due to our trainer, a stringy patient bloke called Mark.

Then, you don’t see your Rescue Test teacher from two years to the next, and within a weekend you are standing next to him in the pouring rain queuing for Thai curry at the Hop Farm Festival in Kent. How weird is that. And how different we look in our civvies.

There was a ton of queuing going down at Vince Power’s ethically bearable Neil Young Fest, but fabulously, it was all at the kind of food stall you’d find on the front at Hunstanton or, under the arches at Brixton market. Being a total loser, the last event like this I attended was a couple of years ago to see Madness at the Lokereenfest in a Flemish chunk of Belgium of countryside which was branded to within an inch of its redneck life and while the only brown faces visible were those of the nutty boys on the stage, the field was a riot of mega global sponsorship with phone companies and drinks logos all competing fluorescently behind balloons and banners and tarty bints in skimpies, male and female. Here, the Hop Farm sizzled in a veil of rain as old fashioned smelly burgers and fried onion vans rubbed shoulders with headshop tents flogging rafts of legal highs and Kath Kidston style flowery enterprises, all pinnyed up and cheerful, offering the healthy alternative to liquid animal fat in a bun. It was all so low-rise and well, un-balloony.

And that went for the backstage area too; me and Melony – for it was she – thanks to the kindness of a loyal Bookseller Crow outpatient, had passes to the artists’ bar and, ergo, lavs. Aside from some extra bogroll and no holes in the floor, the area was refreshingly unstarry, with no Paula Pryke floral extravaganzas or marquee to marquee sponsored hospitality. Yes, the press were kept away from the creatives and, suspiciously, their bit looked comfier than ours, but it was all reassuringly on message and low-key.

Better still, the famous were forced to rub proverbials with the great unwashed in the arena as there was no VIP enclosure to keep the pristine rich and successful separate from the riff-raff in navy blue gortex. And when they’d done clapping along to the Supergrass refrain, we are young, we are free, they had to queue to get back into the safe chilly bar back with their friends.

The performances were pleasantly measured too. Perhaps it was an anticipatory response to the maestro headlining but the nice plain line-up, with no frills, save a silly hat from Rufus Wainwright, sort of turned the volume up gently. The atmosphere was cuddly in the moshpit (for Rufus? Imagine!) as opposed to heated and this, me and Melony agreed, was down to the demographic. For the crowd was the safest, sensiblist, most studious bunch of olive crunchers this side of Glynde. The place was a sea of green shooting chairs full of sixty-somethings in cowboy hats and kagoules, balancing plastic wine goblets on their Independents on Sundays. Occasionally, a thirty year old yoof disguised as a chav would stagger round the picnic blankets cupping his gonads and pretending to be pissed but as soon as he got out of earshot to the front of the falafel & pitta queue, he let go of his balls and the estuary accent and asked for extra hummous, please.

Me and Melony played a game of Hop Farm Cricket: 2 runs for recognising someone, 4 for somebody you knew to talk to, a bye for an over heard reference to East Dulwich and a wide for someone you hate, and I ended up with a fuckload of runs. And yes, it even went over the boundary rope when I saw a small boy walking behind a small man, calling Dad! Dad! And Bob Mortimer turned round.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally enjoyed the pleasant and organised atmosphere: there was a distinct lack of emaciated annoying smackheads wobbling about; there was barely a curl of fag smoke, let alone good old-fashioned Mary Jane, and the patchouli dipped flower children of yesteryear were replaced by hoards of urchins from Hennes and Moritz scavenging for papercups. At one point I witnessed two lads up to no good – they had pinched the recycling man’s wheelbarrow and were attempting a high-speed chase, but the maze of pop-up pup tents meant the guy in an unlogo-ed day-glo donkey jacket soon caught up and tipped them out petulantly. I didn’t see a single rozzer all day.

Not that there weren’t moments when the desire for recklessness was overwhelming and I wanted Bobbie Gillespie to go naked, wave his winkle and actually persuade the crowd to get their rocks off. I mean, they are called Primal Scream for god’s sake: I needed anguish and passion and blood and guts. The Primals could have squashed  their bums collectively against the cameraman’s lens and provided us with an enormous pressed ham for the big screen on either side of the stage, but I doubt the woman beside us would have looked up from her paperback. Instead, it was like the Carter’s Steam Fair of festivals. No simmering sexuality hanging nonchalently off the sparking pole on the back of the dodgem, but some lovely paintwork on the swingboats.

Mindyou, there I was taking the rise out of the wrinklies in their gale battered Peter Storms trying to suck out a strawberry vodka jelly from a little pot (can you think of a worse way to consume alcohol?), when I stood up to welcome the star of the show on stage, I didn’t half feel stiff.

Neil Young soon sorted the the dilettantes from the die-hards. Two thirds into his relentless set, the pilots left to catch their planes back to the mock Tudors in Thames Ditton. I’m glad he didn’t play Southern Man. It would have seemed like too much of a commercial gesture. Instead, the number before the encore was vast, and long and totally intoxicating and those that had come for a colour supplement version of Woodstock, simply didn’t have the legs. The effect of this authentic behemoth wildman, both lost in and in command of his sound, magnified by the screens, was of an ogre roaming the cloudy top of the beanstalk, whilst we tapped and swayed in our mediaeval village below.
 

Afterwards, the surge to the gates was an orderly nylon swish. The bit where I truly wished that I was a barefoot twenty year old again again, was in the effing fiasco of actually getting away. In the distance I spied Mark the Lifesaver buying a hotdog from a lone ice-cream van while we were gridlocked in our VW Transporters and 4x4s, Kas and, in my case, a third hand Squashed Tomato, our engines and expletives polluting the planet for the next three hours it took to get out of the field. In the old days, I would have given a finger to the flock of sheep piling out of the pen. I would have stuffed work and Monday morning and hunkered down under a coat on the back seat, swigging Jack Daniels and kipping through the chaos. But as a fully-paid up welly-wearing square and grown-up, I just wanted my bed. And Neil? I bet he went back on his horse….

We came, we saw, we played boules

We came, we saw, we played boules like right ruddy trendies on the front at Aldeburgh. Dad’s 70^th has been and went, after weeks of worry (interspersed with accidents and weddings, exams and the odd collapse in negotiations on the house sale).

And I got back and everyone pronounced: You had a nice day for it!  as I watered my gasping tomatoes and windows pots, the latter having been transformed from soft fuzz of flower into heaps of broken straw. But we didn’t. The sun may have glinted off the ocean at Bluewater as we paid our quid to go under the Thames but when we got to Colchester  there was a swaying weather front straddling the A12, like an Essex boy checking his crotch and widening his gait to hold himself up after too many Magners & Schnapps on a Friday night. Then he turned away from sunny London and pissed all over Suffolk.

As the stairrods continued into the next day, it was fortunate that the old man had sorted out an awning to collect the deluge as we drank champagne. Every so often, a witty male wrinkly in a linen suit would point a finger upwards and release a torrent next to an unsuspecting old dear in a flowery frock. Meanwhile, the road was flooded and late arrivals were forced to circumnavigate Thorpeness in their heels down unmade lanes and through alleys that, unfortunately, weren’t as wide as their umberellas.

After the lunch, we sploshed back our rented gaff where the gazebos had been slotted together and decorated the previous night during a window in the typhoon, to prepare for the informal evening party me and my sisters were organising. Good job we went for the bbq option. Much less work, argued my road crash sister. And easier to clear up, argued my pregnant one. If only we could strike a match.

That we were arguing at all was in itself a minor miracle as it seems that the gun sights were well and truly aimed between my eyes - probably because I smile too much – and after the telling off I got from my beloved siblings the previous evening, it is a bloody wonder I didn’t chuff off back Dulwich as soon as lunch was done. Weird things, sisters. You think you know ‘em and that they know you, and then something reeeaaalllly simple, that even a bluebottle could grasp, is beyond their comprehension. I won’t go into the flyblown details suffice it to say I was still retching up the injustice at midnight. Meanwhile, sister number three’s response, as the family crusty on a string, was to load a pipe and say in with her elegant Reigate vowels, as crisp as a giro: “Smoke this and it will help clear your head…” Her misguided logic that being fuddled as well as baffled was the best way to mollify my hurt feelings was kind, but about two decades too late. 
   

Eventually, one of my accusers came up and offered me a big chocolate – “the best one” – as an apology. That I rarely eat chocolate from one year to the next is testament to the depth of sisterly insight at that point. Yet I accepted it without snatching, and then shoved it in my handbag when nobody was looking.

Fortunately I had a witness to keep me sane. My sort-of-sister-in-law Caro (see blogs passim) had seen the attack (actually there had been several small ones preceeding the main offensive) and where as crusty-on-a-string sister had breathily pleaded hormones and pain on their behalf in mitigation, Caro was in awe of its ferocity.

Wallowing in Caro’s sympathy and still sore, the image of a fledgling heron being attacked by crows on Peckham Rye that I’d seen on the way to teach swimming the previous week and another worse one, on my way back from the pool, of a crown of long grey feathers on the grass where the baby bird had been, returned to me under the awning at Dad’s lunch while they were being all smiley and nice to me. Shudder.

At six, it stopped pouring and at seven the bbq agreed to light. At eight, the birthday boy arrived thrilled by our efforts and at nine, the grandchildren sang happy birthday at the tops of their voices as in trundled the cake Caro baked (poetry in motion!); by ten Dad was in bed and by eleven, so were my sisters. I turned out the lights at one am when the final guests – my fantastic cousins - left to wade through the lake at the bottom of the lane.

The change in the temperature was heralded by a balloon popping beneath my window at five in the morning.

We cleared up and headed for public embarrassment in the hot sun at the petanc pitch in Aldeburgh. Thankfully knocked out in the first round, I stretched out on the grass and relaxed for the first time in weeks. Then pregnant sister took crusty-on-a-string sister away and road crash sister buggered off with the boyfie without bothering to say goodbye. What is it with them?
 

This chipped away at me as I filled the final binbag at the rented house, had a last gasp of beach, a cuppa and a slice with the old man before me and the kids went back down the A12, finally swooping down alongside the Rye where there was no longer any evidence of the heron’s demise.

Back home, thankfully the pecking at my brain grew weary. I unpacked with shoulders smarting from too much wasted sun in the fast lane while I competed with Somerfield lorries. As I tipped the rain stained fancy clothes into the machine, I decided that I was not going to let them get to me. Even though I am the eldest, they have made it clear they have no intention of giving me any credit for my experience. The blasted spoilsports. But then I thought, get over it woman. The last stray sock went in and I went off to find my phone to let at least one of them know that I got back safely. And I found it in my bag, next to my iPod. Which was coated in rank melted chocolate liqueur.

And there hasn’t been a dickie bird between us since….

Bloghenge

In the barely cracked creases of our dusty carte touristique, the M4 counts an exotic adventure, and so it was that last Friday that me and my girls found ourselves hurling down the tarmacked corridor delighted, if a bit chilly about the shins, to be on our way to a family wedding in the West Country. White-knuckled in the Squashed Tomato, we shrieked at the slightest hint of a landmark ethereally materialising in the reams of grey behind the backdrop of a cardboard countryside. Look, Windsor Castle! Oh, it’s gone. No, there it is. Nope, gone again. Look, an air traffic control tower! Chieveley Services! There’s nothing like a scenic route, eh? And this was nothing like one. Then no sooner had we finally glimpsed the honey coloured metropolis of Bath on our right, our hearts fluttering like bonnet strings at the sight of the crescent that is perfectly arranged like stained false teeth on the hill, than we were plunged into the green cleavage of Wiltshire and the frayed charm of Orchardleigh House.

Thanks to the lack of a real road atlas – ah! Just throw a dart at a globe - coupled with me not reading instructions about the closure of theA36, we didn’t have much time before we slotted our cold feet into our heels and boarded the incongruous hopper to the candlelit church on the estate to join the stumpy gene pool in all its wobbly finery.  The organ struck up with barely a rizla paper’s width between bums on pews and my cousin Amanda appeared on my Uncle Dave’s arm looking as if she should be turning in the porcelain cabinet at Allders. Her exquisitely sculpted white gown smothered and suffocated the flagstones one by one as they made their way down the aisle towards the groom, and the chapel rang out with the peal of fake digital camera flash bulbs. Meanwhile, my dad’s box brownie was distracted by his sister-in-law’s superb headgear that resembled a proud upright toffee paper: “Terrific…” he mused like Bailey as he got it at various angles.

After Debbie, my dad’s wife, sang us all off the park from the hymn sheet, we waddled outside, happy and humbled by the quiet lake and Duckworth headstones, and viewed the impressive turnout that consisted in part of various versions of ourselves – the Mallen streak was present in erstwhile dark hairlines; broad beams and bosoms creaked in good bits of cloth; almond eyes had crinkly twists; legs the polite side of bandy shivered; there was a familial pull away from the other invited friends, and the tall, good looking bunch Amanda was fortunately marrying into, and eventually we Crows clumped together like frogspawn.

Teeming contentedly back to the big house, where our bride risked going up like an Amoretti biscuit wrapper as she passed the roaring fire in the lobby (it is May afterall), ostensibly for champagne and kisses and canapés, the familial pull was now in the direction of a drink. There was a bouncy cah cah cah castle for the kids and we went outside to watch the photographer trying to persuade the reluctant newly-weds to slither about shoeless, and then there was loads of banter as the bridesmaids’ bouquets were fed to the stone raptors on the grand steps and we shouted “Eagles!” to the patient Man Utd contingent who accompanied the groom. And they had bona fide Northern accents.

The girls and I basked in the business of ‘being family’; there we were, adjacent to the top table – smile and wave – and it felt good to be related, to be significant and loved and introduced, but regardless of where we were instructed to sit, there was the unmistakable skein of saucy laughter looping round the tables, running through us like the number 60 bus route coughs through the Croydon suburbs.

Later, the generous wine kept up the pace as the dancing on the parquet grew more and more elaborate. As she is still stuck in the Middle East with a broken pelvis, we missed my sister Bex’s famous palm tree dance but yelled a chorus of “Broccoli!” to the tune of “Valerie” in her honour, and the day began to slide down the tapestried wall. Then, as the DJ skewed toward the maudlin, we headed back to the littered tables where the North South exchange got interesting. Backward and forwards it went until finally, at ten to two in the morning, my third attempt to escape was successful - the previous two being foiled with terrace style chants of, Where’s She Going? Where’s She Going? -  and I made it the stable boy’s room (Ya, ya in one’s dreams, darling.. All the rooms at Orchardleigh have names like that. Wouldn’t that be flash though? Quiet rub down under a blanket ma’am? I’d put my riding boots on for that) whilst downstairs continued the tinkle and thump of my cousin Dan hammering the tablecloth and shouting to the Mancs: “Balls to football! Give me art, give me poetry! Give me flowerssssss….”

The next morning when Willa and I got up to explore, we could hear nothing but ducks and wood pigeons. And a distant vacuum cleaner.

We’d already worked out the shortcuts and passed a Model T Ford under a tarp, and two low sportscars, modestly wrapped, parked amidst the motley guests’ motors, their shapes belying their pedigrees.

God, I could be rich. I could really get used to a fireplace in a hallway, and a double butler’s sink, and to double butlers, and stable boys. And a Ha-ha. I loved that. We picked our way down the discreet steps from the formal apron and stood in the rough, studded with marguerites and spent cowslips. Our feet were drenched and we hadn’t even got down to the lake.

Slowly there were signs of the house rousing in the wisps of fag smoke round the statues, and breakfast resembled something out of the Bonzo Dog Doo Da back catalogue as sausages and scrambled eggs skittered across plates with quivering hands over miraculously clean linen. Finally we squeezed round each table to say affectionate goodbyes. There was little sign of Manchester United to wave off so I figured they were still hiding their hangovers under the quilt. But as we drove back down through the estate, silly old soft Southerner me should have known they’d all been out on the golf course since sparrow’s fart, working the links like film stars.

Then Willa shrieked: “Horse! A white horse!” and ecstatic with space and adventure, we drove towards the hill where the giant equine leaned. Then busting with intrepid Englishness, I decided to drive across Salisbury Plain to show them glorious Stonehenge as well. And it was still there where I left it twelve years ago.

Only this time, the West Country flavoured FA cup was about to kick off so it was unusually quiet. Just us and a hundred Germans and Japanese. We trod the mown path, reverently listening to the commentary on our handsets, completely absorbed by the landscape, stones, light and our place in it all. The sense of belonging was overwhelming. We were even nearly tempted by the t-shirts that read Stonehenge Rocks!

Eventually, we climbed onto the A3 and trundled uphill. Serene and weathered, we dawdled through Wandsworth and Clapham in stubborn traffic a thousand years old and still calm, turned on to Acre Lane. We were on our way home in dear, dear Southwark, still warm from the greater nest, still shaking feathers from our crevices. And a filthy great Tesco lorry thundered up our outside at the lights by Lambeth town hall, and took our bloody wing mirror off.

Welcome to Sarf Lundun.That’ll learn us to be filled with a sense of belonging….