Nasturtium seeds

Mum kept them for ages. The nasturtium seeds. The ones I took to her to ask whether these were what Daddy gave her when they wanted a baby. I know now that babies aren’t made from the seeds of nasturtiums but I can’t shake the notion that Life is as random as the sprinkling of a packet of seeds. I don’t know whether it’s a gardener, the wind or a little bird carrying me in its beak that ensured that I have a warm bed, food to eat and people who care for me, but I am grateful for it and spare a thought for the seeds which fall on stonier ground or those that fail to flourish at all.

On being a girl Kemp and the game of cricket

My earliest memory of Test Match cricket is being excited about visiting Nana and Grandad Kemp in their bungalow. Mum and Dad must have been distracted and didn’t notice me running into the house. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark as I dodged the big dark brown box which dominated the sitting room. ‘Get out of the way of the television,’ Grandad Kemp, Uncle Bobby and Jip the dog snarled in unison. My parents sat me down and gently told me, ‘You just don’t do that sort of thing here’.

And then there were the Summer Olympics at Scotney’s when us cousins played cricket while the grown-ups did boring morning things. I wasn’t allowed to bowl because I was a girl and I wasn’t allowed to be wicket keeper either. I was always deep cover i.e. somewhere in the stinging nettles in the ditch or beside the swimming pool (oh yes, girls were allowed to swim). And when it came to batting? While the Aussies may claim to have ‘invented’ sledging in the early sixties, I’d argue that cousin Michael was its chief practitioner by 1968. Invariably he got me out, l.b.w., for a duck.

Of late, there’s been much written about the Barmy Army. ‘Boorish and chauvinist’ Dominic Lawson calls them (he of, ‘It’s no criticism of women to point out that they are physically incapable of propelling a cricket ball at 90 mph,’ fame). Stop being so namby-pamby Lawson. You ain’t seen boorish chauvinism unless you were raised a female Kemp.

I guess the biggest difference is that we kept our drinking strictly après-cricket. Drips of vodka and gin slipped scrumptiously into the cans of generic cola as soon as the grown-ups had drunk enough not to notice. Stephen and Alan teaching us the F-word (and advising us to use it whenever possible in front of our parents ) as we listened to their tales of the zombies which lived on the disused railway line at the back of their house.

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow...

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Lt.-Col. John McCrae

However busy I might be, along with millions of others, I always stop for a few minutes at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in remembrance of those who gave their lives in war.

As I grew up, I knew my Uncle Donald only through the memories of others as he was one of those who died during the Second World War. I imagined him as some great hero who readily gave his life in the service of others; someone who must have faced his death with quiet acceptance as he sat trapped in that plane as it sunk beneath the waves.

Then I read some of the letters he sent home. And suddenly it dawned on me just how much he wanted to live; how scared he must have felt as he realised that he was going to die. And somehow that's made him even more of a hero to me.

Why is it...

...I'm scared of spiders?

Oh I know there's some anthropological/physiological reason to do with the importance of our forebearers being scared of things that might hurt them and survival of the fittest, but my ancestors lost all powers to make a wonderful outfit from woad and a bit of animal skin many years ago. As for my abilities to keep the leaves swept from my cave dwelling? Okay, so that's not my fault, you'd have loads of yarn all over your carpet if you had a hoover short on suck like mine.

This morning's spider wasn't exactly massive but it had those beady eyes which you can see watching you as you shower. I mean, what sensible spider would choose to crawl up the shower curtain anyway? Unless it had an ulterior motive? Even when it crawled over the top, I could see its outline in the shadow which the bathroom light threw on the wall. Just like in those scary movies. When the killer stands behind the door.

In the end I cut short my shower. Came downstairs and got a glass. Crept up on the creature. Only it turned round to face me. Man to man. Spider to woman. And suddenly I was back in my caved dwelling filled with unswept leaves, that bit of badly-dyed, cut-about animal skin hanging over the back of my boulder chair.

Even so, I put the spider carefully out of the window, where I'm sure it watches me with beady eyes still.

In a quiet country churchyard...

In a quiet country churchyard, there are two gravestones. One for a Lord who died aged ninety-six in 1998. Next to him, a smaller stone marks the burial place of Edward, the boy who died aged six years and five days in 1992.

Lord Sainsbury became joint managing director of Sainsbury's in 1938 after his father, the eldest son of Sainsbury's founder had a minor heart attack. At that time, Sainsbury’s was a chain of small traditonal grocery stores. After World War Two, he went to the United States on a fact-finding mission to learn about frozen food and saw his first self-service supermarket and the Croydon branch of Sainsbury's was converted to self-service in 1950. It wasn’t popular with everybody. One customer threw a basket in Alan Sainsbury's face as he handed them out on opening day. But he went on to pioneer fresh and frozen foods, and increased Sainsbury's own label range. He was created a life peer and became Lord Sainsbury, in 1962.

While Lord Sainsbury was known and admired by many, Edward was beloved by the few that knew him. He went to school for just a year. Lewis was his best friend, but he was good friends with all the other boys. The girls, of course, all mothered him for his 'fuzzy-felt' hair. On what was to be his last day at school, although no one knew it, he insisted on finishing a special bit of work even when his teacher, Mrs Triggs told him he could leave it and listen to the story with all the other boys and girls.

He knew he wanted to be a farmer like his dad. And a fireman. That’s why he really loved Fireman Sam. He had a proper helmet from a visit to the firemen at Bury St Edmunds. He liked his clothes to match, preferring chinos to denim. He loved Lego, Mrs Triggs and Eileen at the Malcolm Sargent Holiday Home. He adored stew and dumplings and his sister, Charlotte. And got so annoyed with his mum and dad because it took four days for them to decide on her name.

I knew of Lord Sainsbury through his benevolent support of village organizations. Without him, the village youth club, I helped to found wouldn’t have even got off the ground.

I loved Edward because he was my son.

In life, they were worlds apart, Edward and Lord Sainsbury. In death, they share the same quiet corner of a country churchyard. That man known and admired by many. That boy, beloved by those he knew.

My eyebrows as economic indicators

Each morning, I wake up to the news on the radio. Which means, at the moment, I pretty much wake up each morning to bad news about the economy. If I'm not biting my nails over our own FTSE, I'm worrying about the state of the economy in Germany. Even Iceland. And how the heck can we all expect things to get better in the US, until the voters get to choose whether they want McCain or Obama to be the one to make things right.

I have my own measure of the state of my own economy. The busier I am with willo, the less time I have to primp and preen. We're talking hair-removal here. OK, so the legs have tended to be a bit less silky smooth since I began sleeping alone with my knitting needles, but I've always prided myself that my eyebrows are 'stubble-free'.

So for those of you who, like me, worry about the economic situation, I'd like to offer one positive bit of news which you wouldn't have heard on your radio this morning. My eyebrows are BIG!

Aqua Manda Moments

How many of you remember this perfume from the 1970s with it's orangey fragrance and it's almost William Morris style lid?

Remembering my own Aqua Manda moments brings a lump to my throat. I was at a small Grammar School for Girls. We were allowed to go into town on Friday lunch time (if you had a note from home). I would buy my Aqua Manda from The Pharmacy of Morgan, then we would pop into The White House to look at their latest smelly candles in the days when scented candles were still an exotic treat. Check the market for a tee shirt. Check our watch because we wouldn't dare be late back to school.

And later, the butterflies in my stomach as we walked into the disco in the local village hall. All cheesecloth and high hopes. Going home feeling deflated because it was your best friend who ended up snogging your favourite boy all night.

I spent quite a lot of money last year buying a full bottle of Aqua Manda in its original box. Just smelling it takes me right back. I sometimes wonder what I would say if I had the opportunity to talk to that chattering girl as she stood in The Pharmacy of Morgan.

Would I tell her what Life had in store?

Would she listen to what I had to say?