A garden is a lovesome thing…

I have been out on foot this afternoon, and signs of spring are everywhere. In the essentially dull streetscape of a northern suburb, the winter flowering heathers and pansies that strove to brighten the dull and sunless days are now past their best, tattered and rusty. The last few stars of winter jasmine fade against brick walls lit by the strengthening sun. An occasional withered spray of berries, spurned by the hungry birds, still glows among the bare twigs. Even the purity of the snowdrops is sullied, and they are in retreat as more colourful blooms venture to the fore. Blue and yellow flames of crocuses thrust through the bare earth, soon to open their petals to show their golden stamens. Early dwarf daffodils are already dancing in the breeze, while their larger cousins show sturdy buds that promise a brave show to come. And overhead and all around, the sound of birds: jackdaws chacking urgently, fussy starlings whistling and piping, great tits cheerfully proclaiming ownership of this garden or that.

And then I return home, and look at my own neglected patch, and now a garden is no longer a lovesome thing, but  a tiresome chore and burden. The grass is neatly cut, but I can claim no credit as I pay someone to do that, even though there isn’t much of it and the exercise would doubtless do me good. As in the neighbouring gardens, a few straggling remnants of winter jasmine and drooping pyracantha berries still show colour against the walls of the unlovely garage. There are even (and the photo proves it) a few exotic beauties like the hellebores in their frost-cracked pot behind the patio table. I can tend a garden – indeed, there have been times in the past when I have put in a lot of effort – but ultimately my resolve founders over the unanswered question that lurks constantly at the back of my mind. What am I doing it for ? Or, perhaps even more basically, what is the garden for ?

I read lyrical accounts of people spending a pleasant summer afternoon in the garden. No biting insect molests them as they lounge comfortably reading; nor does the light glare uncomfortably from the white page. No wasps flock to share their refreshing drink, beaded with pretty bubbles, or crawl over the toothsome picnic lunch attractively laid out on the Cath Kidston cloth over the artfully distressed table. They never anoint their golden limbs with unpleasant protective creams only to have the sun disappear within ten minutes, causing them to return indoors hastily to collect cardigans and change into long trousers.  They enjoy outdoor feasts, prepared over barbecues that function perfectly,  with convivial friends. They never live alone, in areas plagued by cold callers who have been known, if they get no response when they knock at a door, to wander speculatively down the side of the house and look round the back, just in case… No teenagers yell and squabble nearby, and occasionally kick a ball over the fence, shuffling in with sullenly suppressed giggles to retrieve it.

In the garden of my previous house, I tried to make the effort expended seem less pointless by growing produce. I planted and transplanted, pruned and weeded, went on nightly slug patrol, fed, watered and harvested. But inevitably, given our climate, any bounty nature may bestow upon the fortunate comes all at once, in a few short weeks, at the time of year you are most likely to be away. Unlike a cat or a dog, you cannot take a garden to kennels for a fortnight to receive expert care while you are on your travels, and you inevitably return to caterpillar infestations, herb clumps run to seed, rotting vegetables, and fruit that has been enjoyed by every passing bird.

My next house, if I get it, has a small patio, visible from the kitchen window, and that’s it. I think I might just cope…

Just nipping up to t’ Top…

This is a small section of the road on which I was brought up. It’s good to see that local shops have survived, but they are much changed. If I close my eyes and travel back in  time, I hear snippets of conversation like this:

Granny U: Wilfred Allbright were charging four an’ six for a skinny bit o’ stewing steak this morning: what are you payin’ ?

Annie Astin: It’s nobbut three an’ eleven at Bert Jowett’s.

So next morning, Granny U would put on her big coat, pick up her string bag and hotfoot it the extra half mile to Bert Jowett’s. In the 1950s,  you could get almost everything you might need without leaving the Glodwick area of Oldham where I lived, and given that most people had no car, this was an important convenience. Most people went up town once a week, on the bus, but on a day to day basis, they took a string bag or what would now be considered a granny shopping bag, and walked to t’ top  – actually a busy junction at the top of several roads, all with thriving and bustling shops, but so as not to detain you for too long, I’ll just deal with my own road.

Before we even reached the aforementioned Allbright’s, with its hanging carcases and sawdust strewn floor, we would pass Woodcock’s off-licence and corner shop, with the Beech Nut chewing gum machine that always needed checking, just in case, as it delivered an extra packet once every fourth turn when the arrow on the handle pointed forward. Then we’d cross over Tate Street where Granny U lived and one short block further on to Irving Platt’s barber’s in the ground floor front room of the Marlborough Club, where everyone, man and boy, came out with an identical short-back-and-sides in stark contrast to the luxuriant styles of the expensively coiffed and quiffed young men on the faded black and white Brylcreem ads in the dusty window.

Stanley’s next for bread, and if we were lucky – and we rarely were – perhaps a fancy cake. Billy Stanley was our next door neighbour, and got up in the small hours of the morning to bake the loaves, the teacakes, and (I remember with greedy longing) the oven bottom muffins for the day. Bear in mind that sugar rationing did not end till around the time I started school, so fancy cakes in those days were simple and homely: iced fingers, cherry buns, a Russian sandwich with its custard filling and a thin smear of water icing on the top, or perhaps a tiny chocolate eclair – always my choice.

The air in industrial Lancashire in those days was filthy with the outpourings from cotton mills, and “being bad with yer chest ” was an almost permanent complaint ( a doctor once diagnosed me, as I gasped and spluttered through yet another dose of bronchitis, as having “typical south Lancashire chest”) so another regular port of call would be Arrowsmiths for cough mixture – chemists shops made their own in those days. While it was being made up, we could admire the photo of their Coronation window display that had won the Oldham Chronicle prize a year or two previously, with photos of the royal family perched precariously among the Angiers Junior Aspirin and Carters Little Liver Pills.

Now we cross the road and start to head homewards down the other side. Sandie’s had all the jars of traditional sweets that now feature on nostalgia websites, but to us of course they were the norm. However, the purchase there was more often cigarettes, as both my parents smoked in the 1950s, as did the majority of adults: Woodbines for my father, and Embassy (with the excuse that she was collecting the coupons) for my mother. We’d “pay the papers” at Lees’s, surely the pokiest and darkest shop ever, and linger wistfully, knowing it was hopeless, outside Barnett’s chippie – a purchase from here was perhaps a once a year treat at best, and how I envied those children whose mothers (more feckless than mine, she would have said proudly) called in on a weekly basis on payday.

Ladies needed their hair doing as well, of course, and almost opposite Irving Platt’s stood Alise’s (Alice Finch, but presumably she thought Alise looked more exotic). Inside, the smell of ammonia from the perm lotion almost knocked you over, and the ladies who tottered out, scarlet-faced from the heat of the driers, all looked as though they were wearing sticky helmets, such was the quality of the lacquer in the plastic squeezy bottles that dispensed it in drops as big as raindrops. In spite of her Frenchified name, Alise was a down-to-earth Oldham woman and in those days there was no training in customer relations so she told you the unvarnished (or unlacquered) truth: I knew from a very early age that I had floppy hair that wouldn’t hold a style, and big ears.

Right at the end of the row of shops was a tiny pet shop. We only went in for the dog meal, in numbered grades, and dog biscuits (Stamina, Spratts Ovals or Spillers Shapes) that stood in dusty sacks on the floor and were dispensed into stout paper bags while we admired the goldfish and the white mice, and looked around hopefully in case it was one of the days when there was a litter of mongrel puppies or unwanted kittens in the back, and one or two might be brought out to squirm on a newspaper for our delight.

I fear I’ve outstayed my welcome, and yet I’ve only mentioned half the shops on one road: there were others on Brook Lane, a few on Waterloo Street, and more – many more – on Glodwick Road. How times have changed.

Oh for a Muse of fire…

Last Friday, on  a night of gloom and chill,

Did four of us to Salford make our way,

With tickets for The Lowry, there to see,

Henry V, that right good theatre piece

By Shakespeare writ. ‘T was by Propeller played:

A lusty band of men, who lived their roles

With spirit, passion and with energy,

Bringing before our eyes the boisterous sea,

The battlefields in France, royal palaces,

The streets of London town, its taverns rough

With bawdy wenches and ill-humoured rogues.

Pinned in our front row seats, amid the noise

Of drums and blows, of screams, and curses loud,

Full rapt we sat, almost upon the stage,

Watching each face, hearing each gasp of breath

As man with fellow man did bravely struggle;

Smelling the leek, dodging the tennis balls,

Recoiling from the bloodshed and the filth;

Laughing one moment, and then all afeared,

Scarce daring to connect, hiding our eyes

Until the worst was past. A night indeed

Of drama and of  boldly taken steps

Into that world: till all at last was done

And breathless did we sit, to hear

The actors speak with us, and tell us more

Of how the scenes were wrought, and how devised,

To entertain us, woo us and surprise.

Canyon Reflections

 

Some of you will already have read this account of my rafting holiday in the Grand Canyon, in May 2011, but by request, I am making it the first post in the Travel section of my blog. I have adapted it slightly for a more “general” audience, as it was originally intended primarily for my travelling companions from SpiceUK  to read.

It’s 4.30 in the morning, and we are straggling in disorganised fashion through the astonished all-night gamblers on the ground floor of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas, wearing old clothes and lugging our waterproof river bags. As we reach the gloomy corridor to the coach pick-up door, the pop music blaring through the sound system changes and I am taken back forty years. A well-remembered bass line from Chicago Transit Authority… a clarion call of brass… then Peter Cetera’s coincidentally appropriate vocals “Waiting for the break of day…” and, as we pass through the doors to the peaceful semi-darkness outside, the wailing of Terry Kath’s guitar. A good omen, I decide, a good omen. And so it proves to be.

Quiet hours on the bus as it edges into the Navajo Desert gradually strip the tawdry glitz of the city from our minds, and we ease ourselves to wakefulness and the brightness of day with the help of coffee (though that proved hard to find) and the best cookies in the world from a tiny roadside store. And eventually, at Lee’s Ferry, under a sun now climbing high in the late morning sky, it is time to shake off towns and shops, modern facilities, watches, and even the notion of time itself as we embark on our rafting adventure.

This week, canyon time is all that counts. The day starts as the sun rises and in the early light we roll out of our sleeping bags and stumble onto the sand, searching the bushes for the clothes we hung there the night before, shaking them out first for fear of overnight intruders of the small and many-legged kind. The welcome cry of “Hawt cawffeeeeee” draws us to a table near where the rafts are moored, and encourages the last tardy few to start their day while bacon or sausages sizzle and pancakes are flipped for breakfast. The sun, not yet visible to us, rises higher as we eat, betraying its presence by patches of glowing light high on the canyon walls although the lower rocks are still in deep shadow. The circle disperses, we slather on the suncream, pack our river bags, ammo cans (for small personal items) and sleeping gear and hurry to form a bag line to load the boats before climbing aboard and settling in our chosen spot for the day. Should it be Greg’s boat or Jason’s ? The front or the chicken coop ? Riding the horn or riding the wiener ? All are good, all should be experienced. Life jackets are done up – all three buckles please – then we are out onto the water.

The Colorado River, our highway for the week. It swirls and eddies smoothly into bays and backwaters. It stealthily cushions treacherous rocks which in the past have upset the craft of boatmen less experienced and knowledgeable than ours. It races tumultuously around bends, frothing and leaping in cross currents of dancing waves, till the call comes, “Take a two-handed, butt-clenching, white-knuckle death grip !” and with shouts and screams of excitement we hurtle into the exhilaration and adrenalin rush that is running a rapid. Sometimes we feel no more than a few splashes, which dry almost immediately in the hot sun, but in other places the boats plunge right in, the water over our heads and finding every gap in our waterproofs. Some days there is barely time to catch your breath before the next rapid, but from time to time the river slows and broadens, and the engines are cut while we drift quietly, watching the patterns on the water and the colours of the rocks, letting the vistas unfold before our eyes, and the peace and grandeur enter our hearts and souls.

The rocks rise around us, layer upon layer, climbing in fantastic strata of colour and form, enfolding, protecting and finally opening out to the blue of the sky, high above. At times we feel completely enclosed, winding through narrow, shaded chasms that seem almost oppressively cool, but eventually the passage widens and gives us broader panoramas – canyons within canyons – even occasionally a glimpse of the full majesty of the setting as for a short time, and many miles away and above us, the canyon’s rim comes into view.

In the heat of the desert springtime, we slip into a bay and moor for lunch. Time to exchange experiences with friends from the other raft as we enjoy our fresh sandwiches and salads, and to let the warm sand run between fingers and toes as we refresh ourselves with cold drinks. Time to stroll a little way along the riverside, discovering the strange plants and insects, and perhaps glimpsing a bird or two, to be looked up later. And, of course, discovering a suitable spot for a pee !

A side canyon beckons, and we change into land gear to explore. We may find a cascading waterfall, or a tumbling stream, unexpectedly turquoise blue, for swimming. Always there are the showy flowers of the cacti, the yellow fronds of the mesquite bushes, and occasionally we spot towering century plants and ocatillo. ML (Marylynn) is ever eager to explain the geology to us as we marvel at the colours, textures and formations of the rocks around us, and sometimes, in the deep quiet under overhanging ledges, she sings, sweet plaintive songs recalling the first inhabitants of the canyon. Lizards dart across our path, so numerous they become commonplace. Once there is a scorpion, a big one… and another time a rattlesnake. Stones skid and rattle as we climb upwards, clinging to rocks that sometimes seem almost too smooth to give a hold and at other times are so rough they lacerate the tips of our sore fingers painfully. I feel and give in to the panic of thinking I cannot make it across the high ledges, then am warmed and eventually reassured by the unstinting help I am offered to help me to achieve my goals – as the week goes on and we form deeper friendships, we rejoice together in each other’s triumphs over personal fears and demons.

Then back to the river, relaxed and starting to feel tired in the warmth of the late afternoon, but still alert enough to appreciate the sudden sight of a little group of bighorn sheep, or a pair of great blue herons flapping lazily away at our approach, or, on one magical afternoon, to stop again and climb to a high rock ledge from where we could jump into a deep pool of the Colorado itself. Then the engines are cut again – a leisurely curving course from Greg, and a more dramatic “handbrake turn” from Jason – and we are mooring at the next campsite, there to clamber ashore, unload the rafts and choose our sleeping spots for the night. Gasping with the cold, we wash in the river – ourselves, our hair, our clothes – before rubbing soothing lotion (with a fair amount of the sand we have been told we must embrace) into our sunbaked and thirsty skin, battered and bruised, scraped and scratched from the day’s adventures. Another delicious meal further revives us, this time hot and always ending with a cake freshly baked in the charcoal-heated Dutch oven, and once it is cleared away, we enjoy a drink or two as we talk over the day, or listen to Greg’s guitar, or – on the hilariously memorable last evening – perform the No Talent Show.

The light gradually fades, the moon rises and the first stars appear. When it gets dark enough to need torches, we disperse to our sleeping places, spreading first our groundsheets, then our mats and sleeping bags, ready for settling to sleep in the open air – the only night we all give in and use tents is after a day so cold and rainy that we never dry off between rapids and arrive at camp chilled to the marrow. The moon sinks behind the high walls of the canyon, and as its light dims, more and more stars emerge in the darkening sky as we drift off to sleep, waking from time to time to marvel at our surroundings until the deep peace and tranquility around us eases us back to sleep till first light.

 

A room with a view…

This is the view I would like to have, not the view I have as I type. If I look out of my window now, I see first a pair of houses exactly matching my own, and beyond that a garage, and the side of another identical house, and then the roof and chimneys of another… you get the picture. For over sixty years, my views have always been of that kind. I have lived in old terraced houses in Lancashire and the north east of England. I have lived in flats, ancient and modern, in the urban Midlands. I have lived in little boxes on commuter-land estates, and in suburban semis. But now I would like to live in the country. I would like that lift of the heart as I look out of my window, or as I leave the town after a shopping trip and drive towards the hills and moors.

What (not) to wear…

While selecting an outfit – the one shown above – for tonight’s celebrations in Manchester (Mandy’s “Farewell to Cancer”  – yippeee !) my ever-wandering mind began musing on different fashion eras of my life, and settled on a memory of what I had taken away with me as my new, grown up, independence wardrobe for my first term at university, in 1967. No doubt there were more everyday, unmemorable items than I am recalling, but it went roughly as follows:

• two A line woollen skirts: one dark brown, one gingery-brown -  knee-length, made by my mother.
• two botany wool, round neck M&S jumpers: one oatmeal, one mid-brown – to go with said skirts
• one pair of hipster flares: fawn and brown check, to complete the sophisticated mix and matchery – very daring, and disapproved of, and bought at… a boutique ! Yes, very advanced for Oldham at the time.
• my interview suit (grey bouclé tweedy, knee length, bulky belted jacket) bought from a factory shop in Failsworth, just in case
• an emerald green bri-nylon poloneck for under said suit
• a Best Frock: knee-length mauve Crimplene, with long crochet-look sleeves and a high neck.
• a pair of Hush Puppies, keeping the top-to-toe beigey/brown theme going…
• a pair of suede court shoes, with stacked heels, in a peculiar shade of green that went with nothing
• a brown quilted anorak

Resisting the temptation

Having read the title and seen the photograph, I assume you’re thinking I’m going to tell you how to say “Get thee behind me, Satan” when faced with an array of luscious cupcakes. But how, or why, would I do that, when I am certainly not resisting ? I am so far managing to restrict myself to two a day, but that’s as far as my self-control goes.

No, I am talking about resisting the temptation to meddle, to over-elaborate, and that’s a problem I haven’t yet solved. Let me take you back to the beginning of this project, which started very simply.

I had some limes in the fridge that needed using up: although not actually wearing blue fur coats, they were visibly past their best. Browsing through my cookbooks, I found several recipes for lemon cream tarts which would adapt easily to lime. I also found Nigella’s Chocolate Lime Cheesecake, a recipe I have long wanted to make. However common sense prevailed, at that stage anyway. I live alone; it’s not a special occasion. How would I eat my way through a large creamy dessert (well, maybe that wouldn’t be too difficult) without compromising my conscience too much ? The answer seemed to be small cakes – instant portion control, you see. So a-baking I went.