willo's wispas

On sleeplessness and the prospect of being a pink-shelled tortoise...

2012-01-04T02:50:00.000-08:00

Right now, I am deliriously 'Alicia in Wonderland', brought on by sleeplessness, lack of sun and my latest bespoke KnitWillo order, a cloche hat for my ex-mother-in-law, Betty to wear when she walks the cat.

I was awake, again, until three thirty this morning, having consumed the last third of my bottle of Benylin non-drowsy cough linctus straight from the bottle which was still inside the box.

In the light of the jar of violaceous fairy mist, a Christmas present from daughter Charlie, I eye the new pink wheeled suitcase bought from the cheap shoe shop with the Christmas money from my parents, wondering whether I'm the only fifty-one year old who's still saving for things I need rather than buying stuff I think I want. Not that I want your pity. It's the way that Life should be for me. I don't want to be harnessed by a love of worldly goods or shod with other people's expectations; they just restrain me from walking barefoot and roaming free.

Not too far away awaits the home I should be renting very soon if Life really is to be Alicia in Wonderland. A very small, but perfect formed place which rests beneath the branches of a large wych elm tree. Wych elms are one of my top ten obsessions. And the roots of the tree gently nudge the decking closer to the back door and it is a ship waiting to be up-anchored and I want to be its figurehead. It will be sailed by Captain Happenstance and we will sail for a year and a day on the Ocean of What Will Be.

I look again at the suitcase, bought not for clothes and holidays but for carrying KnitWillo stock to craft fairs. If I could work out how many crocheted teddies will fit within its pinkness, might the goddess of making deals with myself let me get the little house? I am filled with a sense of homelessness which gives me heartstones. I imagine myself a gypsy tortoise; my carapace a cheap pink suitcase in which thirty-five plump crocheted bears wrap themselves in bargain M and S knickers as they sledge on the photos of my beloved children. Perhaps I might even find myself a ginger cat, like Jackie Morris' Elmo. I wonder whether Elmo can speak Welsh?

I will live in the Chapel of the Charnel, Bury St Edmunds along with the bones of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold whose expeditions carried the first English settlers to North America and who named Martha's Vineyard after his daughter. I will spend my day knitting gravestone cosies for my near neighbours in St Mary's churchyard in neutral stripes of latte, eau de nil and cream. I will trade legwarmers in exchange for eggs from the free-range chickens who peck at the grass on ancient grave stones. They are the great-great-great grandchildren of the second cousins thrice-removed from the chickens which once grew fat on the pork-stuffed, port-soaked meat of the freshly buried menfolk of Bury St Edmunds and their pretty little wives. I will feed the chickens crumbs from the Eccles cake which 'Eck as like' Larkin buys me from the bread and cake stall on the market. Will he still buy me Vera Wang body lotion? I think perhaps the folk of Bury might donate more cat food to my ginger kitten if I smell sweet.

But now the fairy mist is fading so I light the room instead with BBC Radio iPlayer on my laptop. It's 'One Foot in The Grave'; the one where Victor can't sleep and ends up with a dead hedgehog on his foot. I don't think he washes his foot before getting into bed again only I can't quite concentrate because his wife, Margaret is talking now. About their son who died and icecream. Once upon a time I had a son who died. Only before I can remember whether he loved icecream, I am asleep.

I wonder whether I should finish the hat with a ribbon or a button? The hat which my ex-mother-in-law will wear when she walks her cat?

Chasing rainbows, but finding semi-precious stones

2011-07-08T00:52:00.000-07:00

I get through Life by prospecting for the treasure at the end of the rainbow. Sometimes, I fail to see the beauty in the earth I dig. I need days like yesterday when a heavy cloud of sadness hides the rainbow of big ideas and ambition; so that I put down my spade and take the time to sift through the soil at my feet to find new pearls of ideas and notions and semi-precious memory stones.

I have snipped away yesterday's mesh of grief around my heart and replaced the leaden stones of hurt with amber and amethyst remembrances while peridot dreams and fresh new plans sing in my pocket. And I am glad to be alive.

Cementing Cracks with Maybes and Might Haves...

2011-06-21T23:35:00.000-07:00

Edward-mope creeping into the cracks because dating men can never cement the fissures of his loss.

This morning, I am weighed down by the promise to my dead cold as marble on a July day son that I would keep his memory alive through my writing.

Imperfect mothers should never make promises they can't keep to just-dead sons.

Preparing for my nest to be empty

2010-05-30T04:00:00.001-07:00

I think, perhaps, the whole thing has been worthy of a David Attenborough documentary; a sad old bird picking over the few eggs left in her nest; hopelessly trying to keep them warm while she muses over her little chick who fell out of the nest and her beautiful fledgling, now ready to fly.

I am no longer a mummy with a child at school; I am soon to be an empty nester. And while I always knew it wouldn't be easy, I never quite expected it to be this hard.

Dead crows and unforgiven sins

2010-05-16T00:50:00.000-07:00

I was raised by a mother I adore and she was raised by a mother who knew that God was omnipotent and omnipresent. I understood from a very early age that he saw everything I did and would, therefore, punish me for at least half of it.

And then, when I was about six, I pretended that I had cut my right temple; put a plaster on it and went running, screaming to my mother. Ripping off the plaster, she reminded me that it was a wicked thing to do and that God had seen me and would punish me.

A few days later, I got knocked unconscious playing 'British Bulldog' in the playground. I still have the scar on my left temple to remind me of my original sin.

Petal Stones

2010-04-16T03:29:00.000-07:00

Do you remember? We took you to the hospital for your monthly check up as usual, except it wasn't quite as usual because it had been Bank Holiday on the Monday so we took you on the Tuesday instead, plus we had baby Charlotte with us and it was the first time you were showing off your new baby sister to the doctors and nurses at the hospital and she was wearing that little pink dress with matching frilly knickers. Do you remember? Okay, so it isn't the done thing for boys to remember their sister's matching frilly knickers, so let's just scrub that out and just agree that you were proud to show her off to everyone.

That was the hardest day for me. Trying to smile when I faced you for the first time after finding out that, yes, I had been right all along, it wasn't post-natal depression and you weren't just jealous of your baby sister. Only this time it had spread to your brain as well as the second relapse in your bone marrow and we were passed over to the symptom care team and kept away from the other parents. We didn't see many of those parents again and I suddenly realised what had happened to those other parents who went through the consultant's door never to be seen again.

We came home. Do you remember? Because I don't. I can't remember the journey home at all. Did we stop as usual at the burger van? I'm sure we must've done because we were trying our hardest to pretend that things were normal. Tea from polystyrene and still my bone china smile.

I remember getting home and not wanting to get out of the car. I wanted to drive you away to wellness. And then the breeze blew the trees and the blossom was falling and you said it looked like petal stones. And we got out of the car.

Nasturtium seeds

2009-11-20T01:42:00.000-08:00

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

2009-08-07T02:51:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-11-11T04:26:00.000-08:00

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.

In a quiet country churchyard...

2008-10-08T02:12:00.000-07:00

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.

Aqua Manda Moments

2008-10-06T01:31:00.000-07:00

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?

If I'd listened to my nana more when I was little, would I still be posh but poor?

2008-10-02T02:28:00.000-07:00

Can you tell what it is yet? And yes, to those of you who recognise it, I borrowed a catchphrase from Rolf Harris.

I wouldn’t normally borrow catchphrases or sayings. As a family, we have enough of our own. I wouldn’t dream of ‘spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’. I know that ‘don’t care was made to care’. As a child, if I asked what was for tea, I was told ‘bread and pullit’ although that one was lost on me because I mistakenly thought it to be bread and jam.

My nana (my maternal grandmother) used to tell us that if we sung at the table, we’d die in the poor house. I’m guessing that when my nana was a child, it was a scary enough threat to ensure she and her siblings didn’t sing at meal times. Families would be split up on entering the workhouse, men one way, woman another. Children were separated too unless they were babies. Life was purposefully harsh, just in case anyone thought it was an easy option and inmates were shamed and humiliated. Some families would never see each other again.

By the time, I was born the threat of the work house had diminished, having been officially abolished by the 1930s, although I was surprised to discover that hospitals maintained casual wards for vagrants until the 1960s. I have to say, a piercing glare of my nana's china blue eyes, was always more scary to me than any threat of the poor house. But I sometimes think about it now as I sit here knitting and wonder if, as a child, I hadn’t hummed inside my head at her dining table, I would be a bit richer now.

Ohmygod it's my birthday...

2008-09-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

When I was 18, I knew that, one day, I'd be famous.

I knew that by the time I should've been 40, I would be gloriously dead, having written a bestselling novel of great literary standing. And in the days when a WAG was still the name for a person who made facetious jokes, I intended to find myself a world-ranking footballer with a bit of a brain and really good legs.

So how the heck did someone as young as me get to be 48? With a published novel that sank without a trace and without a bean to my name, let alone a footballer to share my bed. Instead, that space is filled with knitting needles and yarns and all sorts of cliches to which all ageing aunts are prone.