The World According to Autumn…

‘DEMETIA & SPAM’

Autumn we call that a stage in life too… It has been a hell of a year so far! It’s quite poignant for me as I have been dealing with some of the elder members of my family, some of which are just forgetful and others suffering from memory loss or dementia.

Yesterday, my phone rings again, I am on the phone to someone else, but this won’t stop him. I flick the red ‘ring-off’ button and carry on my phone call. And the phone goes again, I ignore it, only for another bling to go on my phone and it is a text telling me I have a voice mail message. The fourth message in the last ten minutes, I ignore it and carry on with my call even though I am distracted. When I finish my legitimate call, I look at the call log and see they are all from the same person, from him, an elderly relative. I no longer listen to the answer phone messages as they are always the same…. ‘Hello…. Hello… Natalie is that you…. Hello’ … I just delete them off. Depending on what time of the day it is, I either put the kettle on or open the fridge and pour myself a glass of white wine, on this occasion, before I finish pouring the glass the phone rings again…. I pick it up ….

‘Hello…. Hello… Natalie is that you…. Hello’ …. I respond that it is me, but I think this time they are not sure …. So we have to go through a few more Hello’s until he is satisfied with the fact he is now talking to the real me. I have stopped saying to them - just leave one message and I will get back to you… Because they don’t remember - so there is no point…. They are like an insistent child that wants a biscuit because they know they will get one if you are on the phone, and he is the same, he wants to talk to me now, so he just keeps ringing until he gets an answer from me.

When I ask how I can help him, it foxes him and he has a little giggle to himself, ‘Now what did I want? What did I ring you for? …. Two ticks …. Two ticks.. it will come to me… Hang on a sec Natalie … ‘ And there is silence whilst he thinks about it…. The silence on the phone suddenly throws him after a bit …. ‘Hello…. Hello…. Are you still there Natalie … Hello… ‘ I reassure them that I am… ‘Oh that is nice of you to call Natalie, how are you?’ Whatever emergency he had has gone and he is just happy to have a chat. This ‘chat’ is on a loop as it goes around and starts from the beginning again and the same information is repeated. He is at the moment, totally fascinated by how old he is… ‘How old am I Natalie? .. I forget… ‘

‘You are 87’

‘Good Gracious… Well that is a good age… I am an ‘old boy’ … I’ll be … I’ll be …. ahhhmmm…’

‘90 in three years time.’ I know he likes this conversation …

‘That is good, Natalie .. I think I have got another good ten years - ‘innings’. I think and I will go and live in Venice… Did you know I was going to live in Venice? I have to write things down now .. I forget … How old am I?

I don’t tell him he is repeating himself, I just start back at the beginning again, which seems to keep him happy. I have learned this type of memory loss, dementia, for the most part the person is the same, if anything this ‘old boy’ is nicer, kinder than he used to be, but something in his brain has just put him on repeat. Having listened as required for a while I find a reason to come to the end of the call and that is that for the time being, unless he forgets that he called me and the whole thing starts off again, which is happening more frequently. Of course it is very sad and must be very frightening for them, but mostly he does not remember. Thank Goodness. We can hit on a subject that he enjoys and we can have a really good laugh - I like hearing him laugh... I am not sure I could cope with it .. If he were sad… Occasionally when he is a bit more, shall we say ‘testy’ … Hammering home his point with gusto on the usual loop, I just try and placate and agree with him, recently he had the audacity to tell me crossly - ‘You already said that Natalie!’ .. And I have to apologise for repeating myself!!

At the moment - I don’t only have one relative with this issue, I have acquired a few! They are all at different level and stage and all require quite different handling. My eccentric aunt, truth be told … I have quite a few! She refuses to move out of her enormous house which is unsuitable for her and is falling into rack and ruin, she has annoyed her own children with her ‘curious’ and unacceptable behaviour so much that they refuse to talk to her, so for the last ten years and more she only has me to speak with, outside of social services who think that she might become a danger to herself. Her obsession is with filing any bit of paper that she can find in this big house, she has lived there for about 25 years and she and her husband had a habit of keeping every scrap of paper, her husband has long since died, but she insists that she must file all his papers in order; some papers date back to the 1980’s. I try and tell her to just throw them away, but she won’t have it - she is convinced that the are of historic value and that her children will want to read them at some stage. I can promise you they won’t.

Along with keeping bits of random paper, she cuts out articles from her beloved daily paper and places them in the piles around the part of the house she is living in, their are paper stacks everywhere, in the hall, in the rooms, open the cupboards and you will find even more, God forbid there is ever a fire! She believes that the future recipient of ‘said’ pile of paper will find the article very informative - She believes that she is the only one with any ‘proper’ intellect and infantilises anyone else with her superior knowledge, which is another reason her children won’t talk to her. She can be exasperating…

Fairly recently she sent me a newspaper cutting about the actress Beryl Reed and actor Hugh Paddick, she insisted that my husband was related to him - ‘He must be related Natalie … It is the same surname … You must know … Paddick … Paddick .. It is the same surname!’ I tell her that they are not related, she starts getting quite cross and so in the end .. I just either put my foot down and change the subject or I agree with her and she seems satisfied, and tells me with a giggle that is the replica of my Grandmothers, ‘I told you so .. Natalie..’. The phone calls can go on for hours and if I try and get off the phone she will hold fast and try and find another subject in which to clutch onto the never ending conversation.

Social services are another one of her bug bears - she loathes them as they are in her ‘lofty’ opinion like everyone else ‘below her intellect’ and she can’t understand why they won’t help her with filing her piles of paper - ‘after all Natalie what else have the got to do? … If they keep turning up they might as well do some work!’ Needless to say this type of approach does not endear her to them. She has ways of dealing with them if she is bored of them being in her house; at the end of last year her small fridge gave up the ghost and she left the food in it and got another new fridge, when she got around to dealing with the defunct fridge the food had rotted and the smell was disgusting, so she removed the food and kept the fridge in the kitchen, but shut, and for many months if the social service lady irritated her too much she would open the fridge door in the full knowledge that the smell was so revolting the lady would have to leave. Mad … But I have to admit rather canny!

Over the summer social services rang me to complain that my aunt had behaved very badly! It turned out that she had been told that the water board were coming to her house to undertake some vital work as there was a serious leak in her grounds that needed mending. I had reminded her of the date so that there would be no confusion. However on the day, the workmen turned up they found her sunbathing in the nude! The lady next door was called over and she tried to persuade my aunt to put her clothes back on… She was having none of it… It was after all a lovely sunny day! My phone went and I was asked to tell my aunt to put her clothes on so that the men could work - unimpeded!

She was loving all the fuss - ‘Natalie it is fine .. I have put my top back on and I am talking to the men from behind my bush!’ She knew exactly what she was saying, but pretending to be all innocent as she conducted the call from behind the Rhododendron bush. I was quite busy that day - so I sharply told her to put her clothes on and eventually, some normality prevailed, and the workmen finally go back to work - Hopefully not to traumatised! My aunt likes to take her clothes off, she has been doing it all her life. One late night conversation with her she suddenly told me that, I should always put a piece of Blu-Tac over the camera on my laptop… I asked her why? ‘So the Russians can’t spy on you when you are in the nude on your computer!’ ….

‘I am sorry??? But why would I be in the nude at my computer talking to Russians?’

‘Natalie …. You should have been around in the 60’s everyone was taking their clothes off then! And the Russians spy on you via your camera'! They are always looking at me!’ I tried to tell her that the Russians actually don’t spy on people like us, they are not interested … I mean what would they be looking for on an old ladies laptop? But she wasn’t having any of it and I agreed to get the Blu-Tac out!

There have been some really challenging times this year, when one elderly relative signed over his Power of Attorney, Will and a Trust dead to a scammer! It was utterly terrifying to deal with and I only found out by coincidence what had happened and had to fight tooth and nail to get all the documents back. Or dealing with my dear aunt, who is convinced that her telephone company, have employed a bunch of teenagers who’s only job it is, is to cut her off, there is no point telling her that a big corporation would not be interested in her telephone account, she won’t have it. I keep telling her it is because she has not set up her direct debit correctly, but she won’t have that either and she is cut off again and again. So in desperation and fear she called 999, asked for the police and an ambulance, both of which blue lighted to her property only to find a frightened old lady who wanted them to put her phone and internet back on for her. Eventually after much negotiation on my part with the local council I managed arranged for her to have a alert button that she could wear around her neck if she had any further issues, this would alert the local authority that she was in trouble, she like the idea when I first discussed it with her, that was until it was organised and OF COURSE - she refused to have it! ‘Natalie I am not ready for something like that!’ It is exasperating!

My mother, who is in her middle 80’s and I am glad to say does not suffer with any illnesses, However she has always been more than a bit ‘whacky’, but is full of good advice to me on how I should be dealing with all these aged relatives, ‘Natalie the only kindness, would be for ‘them’ all to quietly pass away in their sleep… that is the what you should do!’ I don’t think she means murder them, but I can never really tell with my mother! My mother completely disregards that she is of a similar age to them and is in denial of her own age, if my own age is ever mentioned, she will argue that I am not the age I am, ‘Don’t be ridiculous Natalie - YOU ARE NOT THAT AGE!’ I have given up arguing with her over my age, I realise that if she takes on board my age that would mean she would have to calculate her own age - ‘AND SHE IS NOT HAVING THAT!’

I did have a curious conversation with my mother over the phone this week. I was telling her that one of my elderly charges had somehow got hold of counterfeit stamps and I had to pay an extra fee of £2.50 for a document that they had sent me. My conversation was distracted by my mother using her mobile phone, she is not tech savvy at all, so will walk around whilst using it and it keeps cutting in and out. ‘Mum, are you moving? You keep cutting in and out … Stay in the same place … Please!’ Her response was my mother classic!! ‘Of course I have not moved .. Natalie! I just walked into another room, I would tell you if I have moved!’ I don’t bother to respond, ‘ There always seems to be something wrong with your phone Natalie! Whenever I use my mobile…. Your phone does not work, you should get it mended!’ I carry on with my story about the counterfeit stamps, ‘I wonder mum, where did they get counterfeit stamps from?’ My mother has now lost interest in this conversation, for her it is boring, it is about old people and not something more exiting. ‘What are you saying Natalie? What are you talking about?’

‘Counterfeit stamps - Mum… ‘

‘Counterfeit Spam - Natalie?’

‘Stamps … Mum … Stamps … Can you hear me?’

‘I can’t hear you Natalie … I have told you, you need to get your phone sorted out..’

‘No mum … Can you move back into the other room there is better reception… And I am talking about … S…T…A…M…P…S….Stamps!!’ She thankfully moves back into the other room … ‘Can you hear me now mum?’

‘Yes Natalie, I can hear you now … Have you changed your phone, it is a much better line? So why have they got counterfeit Spam, where did they get it? We used to have it in the war…’

I know that I should not get irritated, but I do…. I have to re-explain that I am not talking about Spam, but Stamps and by the time I have explained it to her … I really wished I hadn’t started … Sometimes after a day of it I start questioning my own cognisant behaviour. Me and my husband have become hyperalert, to any of our own language or memory lapses ... I sometimes think it is me that is going mad ….

Someone I am not responsible for is …. My eldest uncle 94, who has full blown dementia and is in a home in Australia, his devoted elderly wife goes in to see him each week. One week when she was unwell and did not want to take any germs into the home, being tech savvy enough she set up a zoom call to my uncle. The nurses wheeled in the large computer screen on a trolley and set it in front of him, my aunt happily spoke to him via the screen covering various topics of joint interest including the day to day minutia of life, including news about their children and grandchildren. My uncle watched the screen with interest, his eyes widening at times in response to what he was seeing on the big TV screen in front of him; having covered all the general points of interest she thought she would bring the conversation to a close. She blew him a big kiss and said ‘Good Bye my love for now… ’ My uncle who had not said anything for the entire Zoom conversation eyes bulged in outrage. ‘How dare you Madame …. I am a happily married man!’ He turned to the nurses, ‘that woman on the telly is making a pass at me!’….

The Wheels keep on turning ……..

TWO SHOTGUN WEDDINGS …

‘THE BATEMANS & THE JONES’ –

AND HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR KNICKERS IN A CRISIS!

Chapter 3

Natalie publishes chapter 3 of her stories about Weddings based on ‘What’s in a Snowball?’ As she explains some of her childhood experiences of her childhood home

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My mother, Josephine, youngest brother Bruce was a twin; he was the first born and was placed downstairs in a pram, out of the way, whilst the midwife dealt with the second more complicated birth of his sibling, which sadly did not survive.

There was a huge amount of commotion and panic going on upstairs when Josephine came into the kitchen and came across this small being in the pram, pink and wriggling. A girl in her early teenage years she decided that she would take the baby for a walk to take it away from all the drama that was playing out upstairs. Walking the baby along the road she entered the gates to the park and followed the foot path alongside the brook, stopping to cuddle the baby in her arms and chatting away to him. The little boy had been tightly wrapped in a blanket to keep him snug. Whilst playing with the baby Josephine was unaware that the blanket had begun to unravel and become loose, so as she tried to get a better hold on the baby the blanket became completely loose and the baby fell free, in her panic grasping and grabbing at the child he was propelled into the air and straight into the fast running brook. She watched as the baby went underwater before bobbing to the surface of the water again, face down. The small creature bounced along following the water. Fortunately for my mother, who could not swim the stream was relatively shallow at this point, so she jumped in, soaking her shoes and the bottom of her dress and chased after the child. Grasping out at the baby and making jabs at his limbs but unfortunately was unable to get a good hold on Bruce, if anything her attempts were propelling the infant forward out of her grasp. Splashing around in her panic chasing down the stream she made repeated attempts to get a hold on the baby but his skin was wet and slippery. Eventually she managed to hang onto one of Bruce’s legs and hoist him upside down out of the water, pulling the bundle to her chest with both arms she waded back and scrambled onto the bank, with this now screeching baby.

Josephine quickly wrapped him back up in the blanket and put him back in the pram and walked him at fast pace back home with the baby still howling. Arriving home she hastily put the pram back in the house and went off to find her other siblings leaving Bruce, unhappy and alone. In my mother’s retelling of this story she remembers that the ‘grown up’s’ coming down to see the baby and could not understand why the child was freezing cold and wet, she never owned up to what had happened. Bruce never stopped screaming and grizzling for the next few years causing a visiting aunt to observe; “does that child ever smile?”

Josephine is the eldest sister to five unruly brothers, ‘the Bateman boys’. I am told that she had a metal rod that she used against her brothers if they stepped out of line. They were at best a handful, rough and ready and uncontrollable, quite the opposite of their delicate and demure mother, my Nanna, the family of eight squeezed into their 3 bedroomed semi-detached Barnet council house, 178 Fallowden Way, London, NW11.

178 backed onto the ‘well kempt’ Northway Park Gardens, a beautiful large green space with a bubbling brook running through the grounds, here the children had lots of places to run free and play, hiding underneath the beautiful weeping willows. Fortunately for the Bateman children there was a large tear in the wire fence at the bottom of their long garden allowing them immediate access to the park all day until the park warden chased them off home in the evening back to Nanna, their adoring mother with her blond curled bob, slim fitting clothes. She was a beautiful woman, who when I remember her had very slightly bow legs and a small pop-belly, due most probably to having so many pregnancies, her hands had been damaged by years of working to feed her family in the freezing butchers department of Waitrose / John Lewis giving her arthritis. She was the happiest person you could wish to meet, simple, kind and joyful, she loved her fashion and was always well turned out in the styles of the moment, or her interpretation of those styles, she always wore the brightest of colours mostly made of nylons. Her nails were always painted and she liked her sparkly makeup. Because of her financial circumstances, Nanna was a fan of a thrifty purchase, which meant that she quite often bought things on price not necessarily on their suitability, which was to amusement of me and my mother in later years, for example she had purchased a pair of mauve sling backs in a sale, and they were shinny with a kitten heel, on one of our many visits to John Lewis Partners, Peter Jones, Sloane Square, Chelsea, which my mother adored to go to and trawl the floors, for necessary items to buy. Which was encouraged by the fact that Nanna had a John Lewis partnership card which meant a good discount. My mother’s idea of heaven! After an extensive route march of the shop, Nanna was complaining that her feet were sore, and she was visibly walking differently. So we found a place for her to sit to take her shoes off, which she did. Josephine shook the shoe hard and a number of squashed up cotton wall balls fell out of the shoe. It transpired that Nanna had like the shoes, but they were not in her size so she bought them and had stuffed cotton wool in the toes so that they would fit her, this apparently had worked the first time well, but Nanna had forgotten that she had put cotton wool in the shoe so she had stuffed more in the toe, this meant that the shoes were actually too small for her, hence the pain in her feet! We had a similar experience with a pair of boots that she had bought, somehow she hand managed to spill a bottle of pills in them, so that when we investigated what the problem was that time it turned out to be squashed powdered pills all attached to her feet.

Nanna, despite some of the antics of her sons always remained soft natured and sweet, which to me was unusually considering she was married to Ted. Edward was to me a mean character out of a children’s TV series, his face was hollowed and his mouth always ‘very’ turned down and shiny because it was always wet, he had a salt and pepper moustache which was in a sort of elongated Hitler style, he was very pale and his hair that was sparse and greasy in a comb over style. He was to me a tall man but his frame was eaten away by illness, he too had bow legs? He was fiercely jealous of anyone that was near his wife, even his small grandchildren.

It was never really on the books that my Nanna would marry, she was the daughter of a bank manager with two older brothers, she was the apple of her father’s eyes, but was considered to be perhaps too simple to marry and was content to spend time living with her parents. She told me stories about her childhood of sitting on the stairs, watching large platters of food going up and down the stairs to the dining room above, where her parents would be holding parties. When plates come back down stairs to the kitchen the cook would allow her and her brothers to clean up the rich pickings of leftover food. Grand times indeed!

Sometime in her middle to late 20’s she was on a bus this was where she meet my Ted, against the odds, considering Ted’s lack of charm, however love blossomed and subsequently they got married. Nanna’s father was not particularly keen on the union and was concerned how Ted was going to look after her, given his background.

From what I know Ted he was the son of parents that worked on the trains dealing with the coal deliveries. As a small child when entering my great grandmother’s house in Cricklewood, it made a great impression on me, the house was situated on a grey dusty street, that even to my small view on the world, appeared as if everything was created in miniature and in hues of black, grey and white, these tiny terraced houses had been stained by years of being backed onto the railway tracks were trains brought in the coal, backward and forward. When you entered the tiny house, it was truly from another era, in the small living / kitchen room there was a tiny open grate with embers shinning, a pot on the side that whistled when it was boiled, lace curtains at the window, that had seen better days and to the left a stairwell with an open door and a curtain hanging over the entrance to the steps. Everything in the house had been tainted with soot dust over the years and nothing appeared in colour, there was a small table in the middle of the room where we were going to have our lunch, which I was very dubious about. My great grandmother, tiny, stooped with her hair in a thin bun at the back of her head, barley acknowledge us, she just went over to the grate pulled out some wood from a scuttle bucket at the side of the room and snapped it in half over her knee and threw it on the fire, this enthralled my brother Laurie, who took it upon himself to take a piece of wood and try and do the same. It was clearly a skill as Laurie bash and cracked the stick of wood on his leg, unable to dent it let alone break it! When she turned around she took the wood from Laurie and snapped it with ease over her knee and threw it on the fire. I think she smiled at him I am not sure as there was the most enormous sound of a beeping horn and then the dirty dense acerbic smell and noise of a chuffing train arriving at the back of the house behind the wall, blowing air into the house via the back door, which lead to a minuscule cobbled yard. It was like a scene from a Hitchcock film, everything rattled and the tatty lace curtain quivered in the breeze. Great Grandmother never heard a thing she was by that time quite deaf, and most probably immune to the regular arrival of the foul smelling train. Ted’s father by this time had died and I never met him, to my knowledge, but was told by my mother that he was the nicest of people with all the time in the world for his granddaughter Josephine and her siblings… So no-one knew where Ted’s grumpy nature came from.          

Ted and Nanna went off on their honeymoon and that night her father died, and so she was now left with the miserable, ill-natured, bad tempered Ted. They started their married life living in rented rooms in a large house. Within the first year of their marriage they had Josephine my mother; over the years it became obvious to me that Nanna did not like anything sexually orientated, I am not really sure if she really, at least initially understood how babies were made, she was and remained completely unworldly. If an advert came on the television about women shaving their legs, she would start to sing in order to divert our attention! Sex was an enigma, this was really a mantra amongst my parents and grandparents. It was something to be frowned upon at all times and was only used as a form of procreation – if indeed that is how babies were made. It was an every present underbelly of something that was quite disgusting!  Yet there was all these children!

Nanna found herself at home alone with this small bundle, my mother, doting on her feeding and singing to this new beautiful child, but she had no real clue on how to look after a baby. Fortunately for my mother an early intervention by an aunt saved my mother’s life, she came to visit and view this new child, looking down at the baby the aunt realised something was very wrong. Josephine was puce and having difficulty breathing, she asked Florence what she was feeding the baby. “Milk and little bits of chopped up liver.”  The sweet and kind hearted Florence, had assumed that she was doing a kindness in feeding the baby small pieces of liver, as you would do to perhaps a weening puppy. My mother spent days in hospital recovering and Nanna was taught how to feed a new baby, which was good news for my mother’s five brother’s survival!

As time went by and Ted’s health deteriorated, so Nanna had many jobs to help bring up her large family, one was working at the local bakery, where there was another staff member also called Florence, so it was decided that Nanna’s new name would be Jean, I never heard her called Florence by anyone including Ted, who liked to shout her name a lot, in gruff unedifying sneers; ‘Jean, Jean! For God sake Jean, where are you woman, Jean you are so stupid”. And on it would go.  Jean would come running, “Yes Ted, what can I get you?” Nanna always at his beck and call always wanting to help, Ted never ever with a kind word for her. Smelly Ted was always there wheezing away, I say smelly Ted, because he would come close to your face when he wanted to talk and his breath had a sort of sweet antiseptic smell like old fashion ‘TCP’, which was a medicine that you gargled if you had a sore throat which had an overwhelming smell. Ted by this stage was suffering from a non-curable emphysema a lung condition causing shortness of breath. He was always gasping for breath and as time went on the condition worsened. When they used to visit us at our home Dutch Gardens, Nanna would arrive all happy and Ted by then would arrive in his wheel chair with his enormous heavy metal canister of oxygen being wheeled along behind him by Nanna. It was believed that Ted’s illness was caused when he worked in the upholstery industry where it was believed that he ingested fibres that caused his ill health condition after that he never worked again…. He just shouted at Nanna.

One of the more peculiar things I remember Nanna telling me, a story about the next door neighbour, a young man who had taken a liking to the young Florence, they used to chat convivially over the garden hedge, this young man was looking after his elderly mother, when Ted became aware that they were talking he would call Jean away and tell her not to talk to the young man. As time went on the young man would wave at her over the fence when he was in the garden. One day there was a large attendance of police in the garden of the house next door, apparently ‘the nice young man’ had killed his mother cutting her head off and leaving it in the sink? I never made head nor tail of this story as it was such an out of character story for her to tell? She was usually full of silliness, fun and kindness. So much so that even my young cousins would try and differentiate between their two grandmothers, my aunt’s mother smoked a great deal, I heard one cousin saying to the other, ‘which one? Who are you talking about Coughing Nanna or Silly Nanna?’. Which kind of summed her up, she wanted to make people happy.  She was incapable of being anything but nice. She scrimped and saved all her life, when her children were small, she did her best to make it a home, she was a terrible cook, couldn’t sew, in the winter the pipes would freeze and burst so that the children would wade through icy water across the kitchen floor. Nanna believed her boys where the sweetest things, in real terms as they grew up they were part of the swinging 60’s and as wild as they came, happy to be in a pub drinking the night away and never shy of a punch up at the end evening.

When Ted died, it meant that Nanna had the house to herself, which allowed her the freedom to indulge her love of all things pretty and developed her interest in interior design, she had always enjoyed decorating the house, when her children were younger she would even use wrapping paper as wall paper and flour and water as glue to brighten up the house. One particular design that I remember was her Edwardian look. She redecorated her lounge area, over the electric fireplace she had hung six gold sprayed picture frames set in a circle. She had cut pictures out of her Edwardian magazine and put them in the gold frames, at the top was an elegant picture of a young Lady, representing my mother and then the rest bar one were of male figures, representing her boys. The bottom picture was of another female. I asked who the other female picture was supposed to be. She told me that there were not enough images of men in the magazine so the other female picture was of Chris, this was a great source of amusement to Christopher her son. 

In her later life she developed dementia and eventually needed to be put into a home. One afternoon when she had been unwell she was being helped by one of the staff in her room. Her boys came to see her and were invited to sit in the old peoples lounge and wait while they sorted out Nanna. They quickly realised that there was a free open bar for the elderly residences. For the next hour or so they ‘piled’ their way through the alcohol and in the process got rowdier and rowdier… Nanna upstairs in her bed, turned to the nurse and said, ‘what a lovely sound of my boys playing downstairs’! As a result of this particular event and to stop Nanna being thrown out of the nursing home, my father Trevor was quick to restock the bar and buy the nursing home two large TV’s, one for the residents lounge and one for the matrons office! There were many occasions like this with the Bateman boys and it was not at all unusual for Trevor to receive a call to his office asking for one or other of them to be bailed out of the local ‘nick’!

My mother was quite a different character to her brothers, like her mother she too liked all things pretty and beautiful, having lived with all these boys, she wanted another lifestyle, like her mother was stunningly beautiful, but Josephine had a will to change her future and she was bright. She won a place at a secretarial college, to learn touch typing and Greggs shorthand. She went to the top of the class, but there were some small fees to pay to meet with her studies. So Nanna took the ‘boys’ around the local area carol singing to raise cash for their sister. It was at Greggs secretarial college that Josephine met Elvira Jones, who came from Neasden NW10.

Elvira Jones, was the third youngest of seven surviving children, five boys and two girls. The fourth youngest being Trevor, my father. On a journey home Elvira brought her fellow student back with her, and so Josephine meet Trevor Wynne-Jones.

The Jones family were worlds apart from the Bateman’s. Well educated highly pompous and highly motivated, they are all dramatic and highly strung. The Jones siblings were extremely strong characters and were exceptionally competitive against one another, which has continued throughout their lives. The eldest son Ivor, a tall man, a whopping 12lbs at birth, became the youngest ships captain in the Navy, he was the favourite of his mother’s children and the two girls Elvira and Dilys idolised him. Elvira a strong bright and independent woman who was Trevor’s nemesis, married into the film industry, lived in a whopping house near Brighton where I spent many happy months marauding around the grounds with my cousins, building dens and finding hidden cupboards in the old house. Hilbrey and Roger, were as thick as thieves and had both been evacuated together, their endless conversation took the form of a sort of desperate comedy duo act on speed, both bouncing off each other, making stupid digs at their siblings, eyes popping out of their heads. Roger and his wife Barbara emigrated to Australia, turned into Mormons and had seven children, whilst Hilbery joined Trevor his younger brothers construction company, where there was a falling out between the two brother’s and for years they never spoke again, nor would Hilbery and his wife Nora come to any family event that my parents were at! Eventually they emigrated to Canada. Trevor, a maverick, a schemer and a tactician, was his mother’s least favourite, always at the front of the deal, he manage to get himself a scholarship to the London academy of art, but his father Harry said, ‘no’, he had to get himself a proper job. So he did a sales apprenticeship, which he excelled in and launched himself into the construction industry making himself millions, not always in the most moral way! The youngest boy Ellis, extremely highly strung and nervy, like all youngest children desperate to follow and emulate his older brothers, particularly Trevor, which in his young life got him into all sorts of complex trouble, not least in steeling lead off the local church roof! Ellis emigrated to Canada. And then the baby Dilys who all the boys and parents doted on, she was indulged and simply went along with the rest of the brood.

Their mother, my grandma Pidgie, Doris Margareta Jones, the daughter of a Swedish master tailor Carl and his wife Rosina, my name sake, who I am told was Italian, was one of his seamstress’s. Carl Franzen had fled Sweden in the First World War and set up shop in London. They had three children, the youngest of which was my grandmother, Cyril her brother was a renowned gambler who had houses all over the place in order to hide from any potential creditor and or wife/girlfriend and their older brother Leonard was some sort of steward of car racing tracks. Doris was well educated, beautiful and very strong willed. She was a first class pianist and delighted in all things that were wild, being a young woman growing up in the 1920’s. Some of Doris wilder behaviour upset her mother Rosina. According to Grandma Pidgie, she was part of a swing band, which used to practice in a shed in her parents garden much to the irritation of the neighbours. She played sax and piano, she also used her piano skills in the local cinemas for the musical accompaniment of the black and white films.

Doris fell in love with one of the other musicians, who she claim to have lived with for a while, [not at all sure how accurate this bit is?]. He died of tuberculosis on Friday 13th – a date that she hated and it was on the re-bound she met up with a handsome ship’s captain, Hugh Jones who she fell in love with. His ship sunk and he was lost at sea, so again on the re-bound she fell for Hugh’s brother Henry, Harry to all who knew him. She fell pregnant with their first child Ivor, so Doris and Harry were married, a shot gun wedding. My paternal grandparents the Jones. If you are wondering why she was known as Grandma Pidgie, the reason is because my mother did not want me to get confused between my two grandmothers. Grandma had a cat called Pidge and so my mother referred to her for my understanding and clarification as Grandma Pidgie as opposed to Nanna! Yes I know what you are thinking, I thought the same at the time even though I was small. It makes no sense as neither name nor person were similar – but somehow it made sense to my mother, so I did as I was told. 

Doris and Harry could not have been more different if you had tried to make them so. She was very highly strung, intelligent, socially educated and part of a London crowd. Harry a complex man was from the North near Newcastle had simple values and found his wife demanding and hysterical. Once Doris left Harry at home to go to the shops, when she came back she found him washing down the hallway, having been in the navy, he was slushing down the hall with buckets of water and a brush, pushing the water into the hall then brushing it through from the front door to the back. Doris was not amused!

Grandma reminded me a little of the cartoonist Giles depiction of a Grandma, she was small, a little round and had as she called them Charlie Chapman feet, both turned out, she was very proud of her turned out feet. Her hair was auburn, wavy and long tied in a bun until she had an accident damaging her shoulder and decided to have her hair bobbed. She wore to my mind grandma style practical clothes, there was always a flesh colour girdle with suspenders attached hanging drying somewhere in the house. Grandma was highly industrious, always doing something, mending, making and creating she had an artistic flair. Her main hobbies were knitting and crocheting at super-fast pace whilst watching the television or having a conversation, often I would stand hands out stretched holding her wool whilst she turned it into wool balls. There was always a project on the go, knitting something for someone, quite often for my mother.

At Dutch Gardens our new home, my mother went through her decorating a toilet roll phase, my mother has many design phases, this was one of the earlier and less successful ones, in all the bathrooms and toilets with the exception of my brother’s and mine, Grandma had been deployed to knit flamboyant woollen dresses to fit over hideous plastic Cindy dolls, the dolls legs were then shoved into the centre of toilet rolls and their dresses were used to cover the main body of the toilet roll. They were knitted out of odd bits of wool that were left over from other projects, one had a silvery purple and red dress, and even to my young mind they were revolting in the extreme.

These creations were used mostly for the spare roll that resided on top of the loo. The problem was with these creations, that once the spare toilet roll was needed the dolls would lay prostrate on the toilet showing their bare bottoms, legs akimbo, at parties when the Bateman boys were in the house, we would find the dolls all over the house in the most unflattering poses! So thankfully after a season or two the dolls were disposed of, thank God!

In my mother’s mock Victorian lace period, Grandma was billeted into crocheting lace tablecloths, these were the most elaborate creations, with lace flowers attached to more lace flowers, some so complicated that they were raised, they were deposited all over the house on tables of all sizes that my mother had acquired, once my mother gets an idea she takes it to the maximum. The tablecloths dropped to the ground, you had to be careful not to catch your shoe in them, when you walked by. They could be really irritating, you had to be really careful how you put a glass or a plate down as there was not a level surface to be had in the house, quite funny if they were entertaining as wine glasses would be falling all over the place.        

Outside of my paternal grandparents having all these children they never saw eye to eye on anything, she was a Conservative and he was pro-Labour, which would cause all sorts of problems. Once my father was on the phone to Grandma’s best friend Mrs Fox a spinster and she made the mistake of saying to Trevor – ‘I really don’t understand why they dislike each other so much, they must have liked something about each other look at all the children they had!’ This was met with short shrift from Trevor! But let’s face it Mrs Fox had a point!

5 Mead Plat, had two bedrooms and a box room upstairs with a bathroom and separate WC, so very modern by comparison with Nanna’s house in some ways, which had an outside toilet and a tin bath under the kitchen sink, the Bateman family must of taken their lives in their own hands bathing in the tin bath because all the electrical appliances were plugged into one overhanging light bulb in the ceiling!

Downstairs at Grandma’s house there was a front room which was Grandma’s and a back room which was Grandpa’s with a separate kitchen all separated by a freezing cold hall as there was no central heating in the house and a small pantry at the front of the house, which grandma kept her collection of crockery and other special items. When visiting my grandparents in Neasden there was order, no attempt at interior design, I don’t think the council house had been decorated since they moved in, everything was in its place and it was spick and span. In Grandma’s room there was an old fire with green tiles, which was her only form of heating, an old wooden extendable dining table with a white lace table cloth place on it at an angle so to show the corners of the table, plot plants on the window sill and a large glass ashtray in the middle of table, even though she did not smoke, it was a curtsey for guests and also served a purpose of keeping the table cloth in place otherwise it would have slipped off the highly polished wooden surface. There were a couple of worn out arm chairs, a leather Moroccan style pouffe, which I loved and her upright piano. Grandpa’s room was always freezing as he rarely had his electric fire on. He also had a wooden dining table and chairs, his arm chair in the corner next to his huge wireless which he used to listen to military music, against the wall by the door was a cabinet with pictures of both his daughters when they were young, Dilys and Elvira, none of his sons. There were other military pictures doted around the room. We didn’t very often go into this room, unless it was Christmas then all hostilities between the two of them, ‘in the main’ had to be put on hold, because all the grandchildren would be there, this meant my grandparents were temporally allowed to go into each other’s rooms. Christmas dinner when I was very small was served in Harry’s room. Grandma’s room was where all the Christmas decorations and tree was housed and where we would open our presents and mostly sit. Grandma had hundreds of decorations and stings and strings of electric lights, I particularly remember the pink prancing reindeer that would dance around the room. Every Christmas without exception there would be a ‘pop’ and to me the lovely smell, like at lighted match and the house would go black. One of grownups would run to get the electrics back on whilst the rest would pull plugs out all over the place. Then started the process of plugging each string of lights back into the plug until they worked out which was the culprit string that has a blown light, once identified, and the electricity had been turned on again, Grandma would rush off to her pantry and return back with her huge tin box full of spare fairy light bulbs and the process of unscrewing each bulb and putting a new one in to check if that was the blown bulb would start, blowing the electricity each time until the culprit bulb was found. It was not unusual for this process to happen a few times over the day. It was a hard day for Grandma when she was finally persuaded to give up her Christmas lights as they were quite frankly a fire hazard.  

Outside of those early Christmas’s strict rules were kept at all times at the Jones house, there was no fraternizing with the enemy. Grandma’s favourite saying when referring to Harry was that ‘he makes me spit’, she said it at least once a day and on bad days a lot more. As a child this was extremely exciting to think that my grandmother was going to do something quite so disgusting and I would wait with excitement to see her do it, she never did, it was just something she said and her own children never even batted an eyelid at the comment, she had said it so often. After a very serious accident, which left Harry unable to speak, such was the severity of his injury, he would stammer and get so frustrated, Doris took it upon herself to teach him to speak again, she would write out great lists of simple arithmetic and spellings and leave him at his table, to do the maths and copy the spellings, sometimes, rarely he was even allowed at her table to learn all the work she had set for him. It took her well over a year to get him able to speak again and as he got better, and when she would infuriated him, he would whisper under his breath, so both she and I could hear, ‘bloody bitch and bloody Swedish bitch’. Nothing had changed, you could think that in the end this was a great show of love on her behalf, but it turned out that she could not stand the idea of him being totally reliant on her, so he had to get better, which he did and that meant that their ridged regime of how they lived their lives and all hostilities could continue, as before.

Harry, when he was younger looked to me, like Stan Laurel from the old black and white films of Laurel and Hardy, but a bit broader set. As an older man, he was to us grandchildren a strict man, ridged in his habits but not unkind, he would frog march Laurie and I out the house around the streets and we would end up at the pub where he would go in leaving us in the car park on the North Circular road, whilst he nipped in for a quick pint, before marching us back, quick pace home to Grandma for lunch. As we got older, I found him quite funny, his knowledge of London was immense, due to his many years as a bus conductor, once when we were at the top of the post office tower in London, now BT tower, I stood outside on the balcony and he could tell me all the history of the city, I joked with him, that his knowledge was via all the pubs. This would cause his typical, hissing laugh through his teeth and his iron grip would grasp my arm, this was all part of his character as was his desire when we were out to shout at the top of his voice to his wife when he saw a sign to the ladies toilets. ‘Doris there is the lavatory’… only to be followed by … ‘he makes me spit!’… Then would come his hissing laugh.

He died a few years before Grandma in his late 80’s, but up until then she made his egg and bacon every morning which would be delivered to the door of his room, always begrudgingly. Then at about 10:30 he would either cycle or get the bus to the local bus depot, were he had worked all his life as a bus conductor, he never learned to drive himself. At the depot he would chat with his mates and colleagues, have a ‘light’ boiled egg and toast and make it back to grandma for his lunch, usually meat and two veg followed by pudding, in the afternoon he would sit in his chair, listen to his rousing military music on his large radio, early afternoon he would walk to the local pub, have a pint and a chat with whoever was there and make it back home where Doris had prepared his second meal of meat and two veg with pudding! Delivered begrudgingly to his door.  A simple life some would say!

I think that in my younger life it was coloured by grandma’s animosity toward him, and he could be very difficult, however in the main as I got older I realised that he was a man of his generation, ill-suited to someone like Grandma as she was to him. He was extremely knowledgeable about history and politics, he loved the program ‘Spitting Image’, no irony there! And would try and engage me in conversations on topic. He would sit in his garden which was split into two, one half a small lawn with a tree, the further part of the garden was dedicated to growing vegetables, which must have been necessary to feed his large family. There he would listen to the bands of my generation playing at Wembley Stadium as the sound would travel to his garden and when he saw me next he would give me his opinion on the performance.  

I have fond memories of him standing with one foot into the door of Grandma’s room, when I used to visit, she tooting loudly that he was anywhere near her room, he smoked rollups which he had a little machine to make them, but he would say to me ‘what about one of those cigarettes for you grandfather’, I smoked at the time, I would offer him the packet and he would take two cigarettes, put them in his top pocket and Grandma would want to spit and he would be delighted and go off back to his room, with his hissing laugh.

There was something for me as a child that was magical about Grandma, she was the centre of everyone in a way and as pivotal to what went on in the family. She would encourage me to be creative and would always have a story about everything. I felt safe around her. She was in a way always there. She would give me advice on just about everything, and she would be comforting in a crisis. She had time for me, she could also be quite stern if she felt the need. She was her own person. Some of her stories were quite out there, which I suppose is what made her interesting to me as a small child. She would repeatedly give me advice on things, such as, ‘if I was ever in an accident, to make sure I had clean knickers on; keep a spare pair in your handbag’. When she first told me this, I just took it like much of the things she said as ‘verbatim’, but as time went by and she repeated it as ‘sage advice’,  I couldn’t help wondering why after an accident anyone would be looking in my knickers? Surly they would be more interested in dealing with any wounds I had sustained? Also it confused me as to how I would know the moment before I was going to have the accident which would then prompt me to put the clean knickers on, or where I was going to change into them? And as I got older I just hoped that if I had an accident that anyone that was trying to help me was not a raving pervert! Another ‘sage advice’ was, ‘if your knickers ever fell down when you were walking along the street, just step out of them and keep walking, if anyone catches you up and tries to give you them back – just say politely they are not yours’. Again I could not see a situation where my knickers were going to suddenly fall to the floor and I thought it absurd that anyone would want to pick them up and run after you and offer them back?

So, after Elvira’s introduction, the relationship between my mother and Trevor continued to blossom and Trevor bought a tandem bicycle, and he and my mother would go on cycling holidays. Honestly, if I had not seen the black and white pictures I would never have believed that you would get my mother on a bike. At some stage they decided to get married and my mother had a wedding photograph book with a big padded cover that I used to look at when I was little. For some reason my mother would always comment when I was looking at the album that she was 18 when she married Trevor, she was quite persistent, so much so that when I used to show the album to anyone else, the minute I saw my mother I would point at her and say she was 18. In real terms it made no odds to me, but it was something she was very keen on me understanding. When I was about 11 or 12, I was looking for something in the cupboard and came across the album again, leafing through it, I started to notice a few things, like my aunt Dilys who was younger than my parents, however if she was as old as she looked in the pictures how could my mother be 18? I flicked though to the back of the album and there were various telegrams with dates on them wishing the happy couple good luck, I then did more sleuthing, of which I was particularly good at. Found some other dates in the album and … ‘Bingo’, I realised that my mother was in fact 20 years old. Then being the sort of child I was, mainly I think because there were always secrets in the family, I did a few more calculations. And I realised what the situation was.

   My parents were home this particular afternoon, which was rare. I marched up the stairs with the album under my arm and presented my case to what to be fair were my bemused parents. The date had been drummed into me that my mother was 18, was because she had actually married Trevor when she was nearly 21, pregnant with my brother Laurie! Trevor was ‘sort of amused’, my mother was not at all amused, I was ejected from the room and told under no circumstances was I to tell my brother that he had been conceived out of wedlock! A second shot-gun wedding. I was impressed. I never did say anything to Laurie. Not really sure if he knows now?

Opening Christmas presents at my mothers house, much later in their lives….

Where did the time go … And Who Am I?

Photograph on a mug taken at Hamley’s sits in my dressing room…

I kissed him goodbye, then a big hug… Then everything I had been practicing all morning, well for the last nearly 26.9 years, really ..Which is Not to cry! .. To keep it all in proportion … I was lost… As a huge supressed, blub forced its way out of my mouth without my agreement… He laughed, “I will be back soon Mummy” said our beautiful middle child, our son … I thought to myself - For God sake Natalie, I know this … I know how to do this.. Pull yourself together… I pulled away .. dabbed my eyes, right that is it, I went left and he went back upstairs to continue his ad hoc packing.. Last minute as ever, which is his style. Time was ticking before he had to leave to go and stay with his sister in Newcastle…  I had planned how I was going to deal with this latest exodus of one our children, the last one that was living at home. I was going to go shopping so that I would not see him leave, not see him walk out the house, leaving me behind… God knows I have done that enough times before, watching them walk away … That is hard… It does not matter how happy you are for your children as they move forward in their lives.. I feel that I am left behind wondering ‘Who am I?’ without them.

Seven years earlier we had done exactly the same thing for the first time.. Walking away from our 19 year old daughter in Westfield shopping centre when she moved to London to study English Literature at University. We had been sitting in a restaurant, just before, whilst she ate ‘mac & cheese’, we had just finished set up her student bed-sit and went for a bite to eat. I knew we were going to have to walk away from her and leave her to start the beginning of her own semi-independent life… She was full of anticipation, nervousness and excitement.. Thankfully when we were setting up her room earlier, one of the other students in the quarters had called to her to come into the kitchen and have a drink with him… Our daughter is nothing if not a socialite … She has always loved people, getting to know new things about them, embracing them into her life… So it gave me comfort to know that once she had finished her food… She would walk away from us and into something new, with someone new… Standing outside the restaurant, we hugged her goodbye with our backs to the way she was going to walk, her father released her and she walk in a semi-circle around us away down the concourse of Westfield … I walked forward my mind scrambling but trying to be strong … But then like a strong magnet pulling me and forcing me to turn my head to look back in her direction, she too had turned to look back in our direction and our eyes met… I smiled a strong smile, nodded with a bit of a wave and forced myself to turn away again.. It was a long journey home.

So today, I was not going to be in the house when he left… Four days before today, we had been saying goodbye to our youngest son for three months as he does a trip with the army to Kenya. The night before he left we had a big adult hug.. Me being as strong as I could, his enormously long arms wrapped around me, I left the room as fast as I could and the quiet tears rolled down my cheeks by the time I got to the top of the stairs… It is gruelling saying goodbye. The next morning when he left I had decided to stay in my bedroom so as not to upset him with any emotional goodbyes. I lay in my bed at 5.00am…. I had been awake for hours … Waiting for our beautiful youngest boy to leave the house and disappear on his exciting trip… I listened as he charged at full pelt from his bedroom flying up the stairs into the bathroom … At equal speed he flew back down the stairs to the front door, glazed doors were ripped open then the front door and out onto the street the door clunking behind him… I listen to the footsteps fading away into the distance … His gone…

All of your life you are encouraging your children to go forward in life to try things – be bold don’t miss the opportunity to try something new, driving them all over the place, cheering them on to embrace a new and exciting experience, encouraging them to be a happy independent person … But when they leave it is hard… ‘What is my purpose?’

Having avoided the last goodbye I find myself in a daze as I walking around the supermarket looking at all the things I usually buy, pizza’s that they can chuck in the oven when they come in hungry in the early hours of the morning after a long night out on the tiles, only to find when we come down in the morning the tray sitting in the hob, with bits of cooked cheese still stuck on it, left for us to wash! In reality this irritated me, now I am already smiling at the memory. I turn the corner and walk down the next aisle, I resist picking up 5 packs of bacon and the huge joint of meat that would feed us all to a good Sunday lunch with plenty of left-over’s to use in various ways and or for another midnight/early morning feast for the children. That is my job, isn’t it? Feeding the household making sure the fridge is full for any potential raiding that may happen day or night. I look down at the ‘small trolley’ I am now pushing, another first – the small trolley! I have put some organic Earl Grey tea in the trolley, I have no idea why, I don’t drink organic tea usually?  I wander up the next aisle – the booze aisle. This reminds me of the many, many parties and celebrations that we have had over the years and the fun and laughter we all had together; on the other hand it also reminds me of the children arriving back at the house long after we had gone to bed to party somewhere within house with their friends, these clandestine parties mostly start off good naturedly, with hushed voices and the odd loud giggle, but as the drinks flow the participants begin to get louder and louder and the traffic to the nearest loo takes on a stampede, with the endless sound of a flushing toilet from some corner of the house. I have never been a good sleeper until I know all the children are in the house, and by this I don’t mean all the young adults in the local area, which sometimes happens, I mean our children. So I lie in bed and hear the party getting revved up, I try and be a laid back parent and think ‘let them have a bit of a party, their friends will go soon’, but the party continues and I watch the clock as the hours tick by. My husband has an uncanny knack to be able to sleep through these events or so he says! Because in the mornings he looks just as knackered as me! I think he just says he sleeps - so he is not the one that has to go down and tell the revellers either shut up or ‘bugger off’! I do the ‘bugger off’ bit in a huge white towelling dressing gown with the hood up. This look has become synonymous in the children’s view to a horror event – I am in effect the white version of Grim Reaper coming down to ruin their fun!

Our youngest child was given a part in the Nativity play in his first year at primary school, on the car journey home from school, he announced that he had a great part in the school play… the Grim Reaper! I was obviously a bit confused by this revelation, but thought that perhaps the school was very progressive taking a more ‘ultramodern’ approach to the festive period? He was very proud of his character casting. His older sister was obviously as bemused as I was and continued to question him about the part, this investigation by her went on over tea, until she finally worked out what part he actually had – not the Grim Reaper but the Inn Keeper! Being only five he had never really come across an Inn Keeper, but we had had enough Halloween parties for him to identify what a Grim Reaper was. She naturally corrected him – He was utterly dismayed and cross at what he thought was a down-grading of his dramatic role and refused to play any other part other than the Grim Reaper, so when the time came for his dramatic performance with the tea-cloth on his head and dressed in robes with his shepherds crook, he was in his mind the Grim Reaper! A year later he was given the part of playing God. This meant that he had to stand on a chair with his arms held out. When I asked him at the end of the play if he liked playing God – He said ‘no it makes your legs hurt being God!’     

Now I was staring at the olives and hams, which are a favourite of our middle child, who really has quite the ‘fine palate!’… Of course, like any family there have been trauma’s along the way and many trying times – But much more funny memories..  Our middle child learning to ride a bike, the frustration that he found in doing it, backwards and forwards down the road trying to gain his balance and learning to ride in a straight line, not weaving all over the road…. ‘Come on you can do it ….’  We both shout at him… And then he did … Brilliantly, however, by this time he was so irritated by the whole process, that he suddenly executed a perfect stop, dismounted from the bike throwing his leg expertly over the bike… Bent down and with all his might picked the bike up in the air and threw it over the gate and into the field!... Which we found hysterical which irritated him even more…

One house we lived in had a long corridor, our daughter who was and is an avid reader knew that all the adult books were kept in my office which was at the end of this corridor, she was about 12 at the time, we would be sitting outside in the courtyard adjacent to the corridor and we would watch her sneaking along the corridor ducking down at each window to get to my office so that she could take one or two of the books upstairs to read secretly, on this particular occasion it was, ‘the silence of the Lambs’!

I have walked around the supermarket and managed to fill my trolley with a few bits and a great number of bottles of wine. Now queuing at the checkout still over thinking things and being very self-indulgent in wondering what the point of me actually is now? The tears started to well up in my eyes. I had to pretend that I was going to sneeze, when the cashier asked me if I was alright.. Really I am too pathetic…

Back home putting things away and pottering around the kitchen it is so quite I can hear no noise, no eruptions like our youngest bursting into the house at break-neck speed and charging up the stairs. There is no loud music coming from our other son’s room whilst he does his workouts. No daughter sitting in the kitchen regaling me with all her news and gossip.. All the plates are in the cupboard and the cutlery is in the draw as it should be, when they are here I am constantly telling them – dramatically – ‘I can’t cook if no one brings their plates, knives and forks back down here, where are all the glasses?’ The more I think about it the more -  I feel redundant…

I turn to the fridge it is 4.30pm, I am not the type of person who waits until it is six o’clock for a glass of wine.. 4.30pm is fine for me today… Before I get to the fridge the phone rings, I look at the screen – it is our daughter – I pick up .. ‘Hello Mummy – I am just ringing you to tell you that I have booked my flight to come back next week and we are all coming back with some friends to stay for ten days, there are some Halloween parties that we want to go to…’ We had a long conversation about everything she and her brother were doing in Newcastle and planning to do. I had to smile to myself… I realised that, of course they will always be back and I am so very thankful for that … Even though it will be party central here once again and the cutlery draw, particularly with forks will be empty  … It is who I am their mother … And so proud to be so …      

There’s Always One!

What is in a ‘Snowball’?

A story based on Bridesmaids & Weddings

-        It is not as dull as it sounds! -

Chapter 2…

There is always one!

I have been an actual bridesmaid five times in my life as well as playing many other ‘bit parts’ along the way! There was always a wedding going on when I was younger, huge great events with all the pomp and ceremony thrown in! My mother is the eldest and only girl of six children and my father - Trevor is one of seven his place in his brood was number four. So there was always the possibility of a wedding amongst the family and failing that, you could always rely on the extended family friends to supply the nuptials! We were never short of a wedding to attend!

Weddings are weird events if you think about it, all rational thinking goes out the window. Sometimes, quite often really, you find yourself at a wedding, that really is not a good fit in terms that you have attended the wedding because of a family connection even though you have no real ‘connection’ with the people that are getting married, or because of past connections with a person and a past life that has since faded, but you still feel that you should go to the wedding for old time sake.

I am always surprised by the way people dress at these occasions, don’t get me wrong – You will be hard pushed to find someone that loves an outfit, as much as I do, I totally have a connection with my mother there, it is in my DNA! – At a wedding you see all sorts of outfits, worn by the key players that on most occasions they would not be seen dead in and the style is mostly based on another period in history. Some of the wedding dresses are criminal hideous, not only in their excessive cost but in their ludicrous designs. At one wedding I attended the bride was told by her super religious mother that she could not wear white as she had been living with her husband to be, it was in the late 1980’s! So the down trodden bride walked down the aisle in a blancmange style purple silk dress with ‘off-white’ trims more sepia if I am honest. When we got to the reception afterward, her husband was clearly so amused and or bemused by her ‘look’, which had been made worse by the uncharacteristic makeup style that was caked on her slim face; he changed his speech and devoted it to his new wife’s, ‘new look’ – he brutally mocked her outfit and her ‘polyfilla’ face, commenting that if he had not heard her voice he would not have a clue who he had just married – as she more resembled Co-Co the clown! This horrendously ‘naff’ commentary brought on huge laughter from his mates and stony glances from most of the women present, including myself. The laughter only encouraged ‘Turbo Pete’ the groom, who had been for the last 3 hours staggering around Bray, Berkshire with his entourage of mates consuming vast amounts of alcohol, in fact we had seen him in The Crown about 40 minutes before he was due to get married – I was quite impressed that he even made it down the aisle at all! Unfortunately the sniggering and laughter from his mates only spurred Turbo Pete on, embarrassing his new wife further, he made the most unwise comment, particularly considering the occasion, telling us he didn’t care about what the bride looked like it was not her face he was interested in! Except his words were not as delicately chosen!  - The bride burst into tears, obviously not seeing the funny side – as there wasn’t one. And her mother stood up and gave a fulsome list of all the husbands’ downfalls and failings and why he wasn’t good enough for her daughter anyway! Not the best of starts and all of this gave the reception a bit of a downer – as you might imagine!

In the mid 1990’s my boyfriend, my parents and I were all invited as a guests to the wedding of the sister of a childhood school friend of mine. So there was a sort of connection there. A super slick, super posh and super stylish event in a small ‘midsummer murder’ style village in the heart land of Oxfordshire, this wedding in effect was a re-run, of my childhood friend’s wedding which had taken place a few years earlier. The mother of the bride was the doyenne of the local social society, her husband was in the film industry and therefore there was a few ‘bob’ sloshing around to pay for this tasteful wedding feast.

My parents were invited to this wedding because they got to know this family because of me. They have the unique irritating habit of almost always adopting my friends or networking with my boyfriends or my friend’s parents. I introduce friends to my mother and father and before I know it I return home to find my friend/boyfriend and/or their parents happily ensconced in my family house usually carrying out a job for my father Trevor at the family home Dutch Gardens or Trevor would employ them in his business, they just adopted my friendship group one way or another. I would find a boyfriend then in the case of my mother, they would be found hanging on her every word whilst in the kitchen sipping wine with her! I found it extremely irritating! When I had a boyfriend that was a twin. Within weeks of my new relationship with this young man I found his twin brother Mark working at Dutch Gardens as one of the permanent gardeners? This was intensely annoying as Mark used his job at the house to spy on me so he could tell his brother what I was doing at any time of the day, which caused no end of arguments between his brother and I. On another occasion Trevor was delighted to find out that I had a new boyfriend who was studding to be a gas heating technician. At the time Trevor had an interest in the large gas fire installed at the local Holiday Inn, near Heathrow and had decided to install one at Dutch Gardens. A fire was purchased all it needed now was a gas technician to install it. And by chance I was going out with one! My boyfriend was still very much in the early stages of his studies, this was not a problem for Trevor, my boyfriend install this huge fire into the fireplace in our lounge. The lounge area had three different sets of doors going off into other rooms in the house and had what my parents called a minstrels gallery high up in the roof space which lead off to my parent’s room. So it was thankfully a very well ventilated room. 

Said boyfriend installed the fire under Trevor’s instructions, as ever Trevor changed the configuration of how the fire was supposed to work, moving the fire closer to the front of the fireplace, which was not recommended and changing the start the ignition button which was put at the back of the fire, it was supposed to be at the front for easy and safe ignition. This meant that when you lit the fire, you had to keep you finger on the button for a set amount of time for the fire to ignite, you had to make sure you were not wearing any clothes in case they caught fire as your arm was dangling over the flames, I have no hair on my arms but it used to ignite my brothers hair if he did not pull his hand away quick enough! Nothing was ever simple at Dutch Gardens! After the fire was fitted, for the next few years, my friends and I, my parents and their friends all developed dreadful headaches and nausea whenever the fire was on –  Obviously we all blamed the fire - but Trevor would not have any of it. Needless to say the installation had not been checked by a qualified gas installer which meant the draw on the fire was not sufficient to pull all the toxic fumes up the chimney and we were all suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. It is a wonder that we all survived for so long – Just another day at Dutch Gardens!

Going back to the wedding, my mother, particularly had made friends with the wife of this family and over the years as we children grew up, we had been on holiday with them as a family and they shared many events with us. My mother adored everything her friend did, she was a great entertainer and had a good sense of interior style which appealed to my mother. I never quite fitted in, but as happens when you are young, I was billeted off for stay overs and other events at this house, but as adults my friend and I had mostly gone our separate ways but retained a very convivial long distance friendship. I was now viewed by her mother the mother of the bride at this wedding as more than a little wayward! To be fair I did have my moments and I was a little wild! Strangely enough they always thought they were a little cut above the Wynne-Jones, my family, particularly my father, the mother loved to give me her opinions about my family and they were really quite bitchy at times, some of her observations were possible quite true, but it is never easy as a child listening to someone criticizing your parents.  Trevor, was an extremely successful self-made man, yes a total eccentric, a maverick with a utterly ruthless megalomaniac edge with very few scruples unless it fitted the demographic of how he was going to make his next million. Apart from that he was obviously just a normal man – not! Trevor did whatever he liked in life with little regard to anyone else and spent his money lavishly on his lifestyle, most particularly his property – Dutch Gardens, which he has spent a lifetime building and designing then re-building and designing spending vast fortunes, he was ably supported by my mother who was a willingly participant on spending on all things lifestyle particularly clothes. They were the new bourgeoisie. This meant that they were good gossip value! As it happened the mother of the bride husband had made all his initial money from directing porn films. Once when I was staying at the house, there were a bunch of grown-up’s sitting at the breakfast bar one the evening drinking and laughing. We were playing and we ran through the room on our way to another room, we were stopped and introduced to the various guests, one of them was Linda Lovelace star of a film called Deep Throat, I said hello and we continued on our way through the room. It was then that my friend told me that Lovelace was an actress who appeared in sexy films. This made a huge impression on me, not because she was in sexy films, I could not have given a damn about that, but she was an actress everything that I wanted to be! Little did I know at the time! 

Despite my very complex relationship with Trevor, I have to admit I did admire on occasions his straightforward attitude toward this family, he could see that the mother of the bride had social pretentions as they found him socially inferior. Trevor would bait her from time to time. To my great amusement when I was about twelve years old and we were at one of their gatherings, my friend’s mother was holding court, as usual shouting at the top of her voice to the minions who were listening; “If I were Princess Anne… I would be a real … Bitch.”  There was general amusement and agreement around the room and much nodding at one another. Then came Trevor’s voice from the back of the room, “You don’t need to be Princess Anne to be that!” My mother was mortified … I was rather impressed….   

The Wedding ceremony that we had attended was to take place in a beautiful small church on the green on a beautiful sunny day, my boyfriend and I were standing on the lawn outside the church, waiting for the wedding to get underway, just watching all the guests laughing and chatting, pretty young people who had attended the right universities, knew each other since childhood and wore the right clothes for this type of wedding, all super at ease with this type of event – think … Hugh Grant and ‘Four Weddings’. In some ways it dawned on me how far I was away from this crowd and how I had only been associated with it by a happy accident of a childhood friendship.

Standing there like a couple of lemons, me nodding at the one or two people that I recognised, whilst my boyfriend remained in the main politely hostile to the occasion on all fronts. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw Trevor marching towards us, flustered as ever, this was never a great sign, but on the other hand quite a reassuring normal one. Looking beyond Trevor there was my mother picking her way carefully on her high heels across the uneven thick grassland, curiously they had arrived together, they had in fact separated some years earlier, but to my ever increasing annoyance they could never seem to leave each other alone when it came to social occasions or any occasions really – which usually meant a scene of some description or other mostly in spectacular style – I don’t like being with them together – it’s a dangerous place to be. Trevor caught up with us,  I turned my attention back to the wedding crowd I could see that we were now all beginning lined up into a que ready to enter the quaint little church to take our seats before the wedding started.

“Your mother has been doing the tour of everyone, Natalie, in the car park, she thinks she’s the bloody bride’s mother!” We glanced around in my mother’s direction and true enough she had arrived in the main throng of some guests and was working the crowd like a ‘pro’, air-kissing and shaking people’s hands and making topical conversation. There is no one that can dress for the part like my mother – no one. Today an amazing off-white streamlined tailored outfit, with small shoulder pads than usual, my mother loves a shoulder pad. Her beautiful figure showing off the couture costume to its best effect with buttons down the front, nipped in at her small waist by a matching belt, the hem being thigh length with a lace decoration around the edge, finished off with fingerless lace gloves, and despite the heat she had tights on. Well actually, they are more lightly to be stockings and suspenders, she was going through another phase of being ultra-sexy, particularly in the wake of her separation with Trevor. This obviously would wind Trevor up, as she would behave like a terrible flirt in front of him which could send him off the deep end in certain situations. I know how it pans out at these type of events. He will have collected her from her home and as she got into his car the hem of her skirt would ‘accidentally’ rise up a little too high reviling the top of a stocking and her naked thigh. I never really got the sex thing with my mother, she was like her mother to some extent ‘sex’ did not exist and nothing rude or overt on the matter could be said around her – yet put my mother in a social scene with men there, of any age really, 8 to 80, it did not really matter and then she turned into a vixen. She knew that she was the attraction in the room and that all eyes would be on her.

I once asked her after hearing a great deal of conversation at school about sex, how it happened? It was quite an innocent question as I was only about ten at the time. We were in my parents’ bedroom, upstairs. She had her back to me when I asked her and I knew that I had asked a difficult question because her shoulders stiffened and she stopped for a second what she was doing. There was no sitting down with me and telling me some ‘birds and bee’s’ story, she continued from her bedroom into her dressing room, so she was just out of sight but I could still clearly hear her. ‘It is when a man put’s his willy up a ladies bottom.’ I was utterly disgusted, no ….. Mortified and repulsed. She offered me no further explanation, she continued doing whatever it was that she was doing in her dressing room and I left her bedroom to retreat back into my own bedroom in utter revulsion – it was most probably the most repulsive thing that I had ever heard or could possibly imagine, I certainly looked at my father and my uncles that had children in a very different light after discovering this piece of information, I could only believe that there was indeed something very wrong with them indeed! Clearly all perverts! My mother never offered any other information on the subject of sex to me, the conversation, such as it was, was never mentioned again. So I then had to glean any further information on the subject from spotty teenage girls in my class at school like Debbie Cook who seemed to know a great deal on the subject and was only too happy to impart it, though her explanations on the subject were somewhat less grotesque, they involved a lot of mouth to mouth resuscitation according to her called ‘French Kissing’, the very idea of doing this with any boys I knew I found equally repulsive -  I vowed from a very young age that no matter what – sex was not something I was going to indulge in!    

Trevor joined us in the que to get into the church. My mother was still spinning on her nude sling back shoes in her social conversations with various guests. Occasionally she touched the rim of her statement two tone straw hat with an off white brim the crown being in a dark caramel colour which was draped with a scarf to look like a veil. You could not miss her she looked stunning! Imagine Crystal Carrington from the 1980’s Dynasty TV program;  in reality, it could actually be one of Crystal Carrington’s outfits, my mother had been at the auction of the clothes and had purchased a number of items warn by both the leading ladies, Crystal and the iconic Joan Collins.  

Getting closer to doorway of the church Trevor beckoned to my mother to come and join us in the que, she totally saw us, but ignored us and continued with her mother of the bride duties! So we entered the church leaving her outside in the sun and in her element, Trevor was gritting his teeth and muttering about her behaviour. We squeezed through the door and shuffled into the small churches pews allocated to us, people were chatting and waving at each other, some people acknowledging Trevor with thumbs up and mouthing ‘you okay?’ We all shunted down the pew to give the guests more room at the other end, Trevor trying to hold a bit of space for my mother to sit on once she arrived. The ushers charged about trying to organise everyone, a women at the front of the church by the font started singing a very jolly song, and the general hub-bub started to quieten and people now started to turn their attention to the order of the service.

“For Christ sake, what is she doing, where is your mother, Natalie?” Trevor hissed into my ear loudly. Looking around the bride’s family were now filing into the church, smiling and waving at the selected guests, followed in by the ‘actual’ mother of the bride, who looked lovely, but was acting less like the mother of the bride than my mother! The family took their seats three rows in front of us at the top of the church, as the mother of the bride sat down she turned around and ‘mouthed’ to Trevor – ‘where is Josephine?’ Trevor put his hands up to either side of his face and shrugged going red. The singing started in earnest and I turned to watch the back of the church toward the door. Finally, my mother was in sight, stopping at the door to talk to someone. Then she started her slow decent toward her seat, stopping at relevant intervals to wave and chat with people. I tuned to see the mother of the bride eyes following my mother as she posed her way toward us, she was not amused, but to be fair to her was resigned to my mother’s behaviour. My mother was going to make the most of her moment, she was in auditions for my wedding after all! When she had reached the end of our pew, the seated guests had to stand and shuffle back into the pew to make room for her to pass, at which point the ‘here comes the bride’ music began to play, the entire congregation turned back to look at the church door where the bride and her father had entered the building. Trevor was a mixture of embarrassment and rage!

After what was a very sweet wedding service we all made our way out of the church into the summer sunshine and walked in clutches of people away from the church and down the drive to their house, as the photographers, one taking pictures and one filming, both scurried amongst the crowd. – We approached  the rambling family house where the vast marquee was set up on the lawn for the wedding reception. The house screamed quintessential English country house with all the windows of the property looking out at the wedding, with fabulous sprawling roses and climbers picture framing each window. As the guests assembled at the back of the house, you could hear the gravel crunching under people’s shoes, which reminded me of my childhood running around barefoot at this charming old house and the pain of walking from the lawn to the house across the gravel chips. Echoes of my past, I never really fitted in here, but I have good memories. The family had since converted the garage extension into a ‘granny’ flat that was attached to the house, they now referred to as ‘The West Wing’! And it was in the West Wing that all the catering was taking place, this was all very ‘Four Weddings & a Funeral’ …  

Drinks were served as we milled about on the gravel terrace, loud guffawing came from certain clutches of people. Beautiful young woman ran from one set of people to another screeching and laughing holding onto their hats as they ran, bags and scarves were tossed aside, this was a place that these young people were comfortable and familiar with, it was a very British scene. It was a sea of pastel coloured haute couture ‘Sloane ranger’ outfits and crinkled linen designer suits intermixed with floral yummy mummies in their pretty printed dresses and soft silk sling back shoes. I have never been one to run with the crowd, it’s not that at one stage in my life that I haven’t wanted to – I had. But it just was not my style. But it would be fair to say that I certainly stood out in a crowd! Dressed in velvet black platform shoes from Liberties, the rest of my outfit was purchased from Roz at Mango in Windsor, the same shop that I was later to buy my wedding outfit from. Today I was in the iconic black Helen Storey ankle length ‘swirling crinkle’ skirt, that moved in rhythm with your body, paired with a figure hugging black turtle neck body with black net sleeves, this ensemble was held together with a Helen Storey fitted black and red silk blazer. My dark brown hair was cut in a sleek lopsided bob topped with a black leather beret, drop chain earrings styled with a red enamel stones. Put it this way, you could not miss me amongst this crowd!

Easels had been erected all around the marquee at various entrances which advertised the seating plan for the guests. My boyfriend and I were at the table of brother of the bride and his wife, whom I also knew well, I can’t help thinking that we were the booby prize and that they had only agreed to sit with us out of the goodness of their hearts. We were the oddballs at this event! The marquee was ‘spot on’ beautifully designed elegance without being too ‘ott’ and the table settings were magnificent, no expense had been spared, the catering staff busied themselves serving the wine and food which just kept coming from the West Wing. As the day wore on speeches were made and many happy tears were shed. As always with these occasions, tensions and emotions are high, my boyfriend hated everything about it and decided at the first opportune moment that it was time for him to leave, which left me nursing many glasses of wine, feeling sorry for myself, ‘you always get one don’t you!’ And it was me!

Glancing around at the large table at the top of the marque where my parents were sitting, I could tell even from a distance that there was friction and irritation between them, this type of situation was perfect storm for a spat between them. They never really worried if they had an audience, sometimes I wonder if they preferred it? It usually ended in tears, my mother’s! On occasions there can be broken china and furniture sometimes the odd neighbour can be involved. There scenes can take many forms … Once at Dutch Gardens, our home, we were all having a lovely evening, a new green barbeque had been bought and family friends had been invited to the first use of the green machine. Mostly the evening was going well, but the usual picking at each other had started to enter the evening. Trevor picking at my mother’s love of dressing up, he had taken to calling her dresses – frock’s, which irritated her enormously. The other couple were doing their best at trying to head off the bickering between them, without much success – once my parents were off and running that was usually it! Feeling incensed at the next insensitive comment Trevor had made to her, my mother got up from the table on the terrace and went back into the kitchen presumably to get some more drinks, she reappeared with the enormous Victorian jelly that I had made from a new jelly mould that my mother had bought. It was so large that it required many packets of jelly to fill it and as such was a multi-coloured ‘splendour’. I was very much looking forward to presenting it to the guests later in the evening, it was to be served with strawberries which were being marinated in Pimm’s and were sitting in the fridge. Purposefully my mother walked across the terrace toward Trevor, she was holding the jelly with one hand underneath, waiter style and balancing the wobbly item with her other hand on the side of the plate. We all watch with interest as she marched toward Trevor, then to use one of his phrases ‘the penny dropped’ – Trevor jumped up holding one hand out toward her in a defensive style – ‘No Joey, No … Come off it now !! … Joey..‘ Whereupon she charged at him. The guests looked on open mouthed unsure of what was about to happen, Trevor moved quickly knocking the chair over just as the jelly launched into the air. One thing you should know if you ever decide to become a professional jelly thrower – is that the weight of it when it is this huge size means that it does not fly through the air as you would expect, it sort of goes up in the air - forward a little and then drops out of the air directly downwards, hitting the edge of the table and splattering large shards of jelly across the table toward the guests who instinctively pulled back in their chairs as it splattered towards them, the other half of the jelly having been given a bit of propelled motion by hitting the table splattered towards Trevor, it hit the floor and splattered up his legs and all over his shoes. ‘Good God Joey!’ My friends and I who were down the steps on the next level watched the performance with open mouths – I was scowling, I was really fed up that my jelly had been treated like this and if my mother was going to use it as a weapon the very least she could have done is had made it hit the target! My mother turned on her heal having picked up the now broken melamine plate that the jelly was on, with it she scooped up some of the jelly on the floor and returned to the kitchen. Minutes later she returned with the cut glass bowl that housed the marinating strawberries and a jug of thick double cream put them on the table. Picked up great chunks of the jelly that were glistening on the table and slopped and blobbed them in the middle of the table like a sort of Jelly Mountain. Walked over to her ‘hostess trolley’, which was not switched on but being used to house various cutlery and crockery and napkins, cleaned her hands and brought dessert plates and napkins back to the table and offered strawberries and cream to the stunned guests. Who quite appropriately accepted! That was the thing about Trevor and Josephine and being at Dutch Gardens, their behaviour was all part of the show. And people just acted accordingly.

Sitting at the wedding table all by myself now staring down at my black platform shoes, in my addled mind I had decided that it would be a good idea to make my way up to my parents table and rescue any situation between my parents that might arise! I had after all become quite accustom to this! Picking my way through the dancing party on a slight incline as the flooring had been laid directly on the grass I was suddenly grabbed from behind by one member of the bridal party, a man of a certain age who had equally like me drunk too much! I jigged around on the spot to the music with him trying to keep a distance between his ever encroaching arms, then the record changed to a slow song. All guests around us assumed the clinch position, reluctantly I was forced to do the same with this gentleman. It is quite horrid when you don’t want to be this close to someone, but feel you should so as not to make a scene.  As the song droned on his hand which originally started in the small of my back, moved ever lower and more insistent as he tried forcefully to pull my bottom towards his still gyrating groin, purposely bumped his crutch into me; for the record his thrusting movement was not even in time with the music! What else do you do? I am young and I don’t want to be impolite! So I try to dance with my bottom sticking out to stop him making contact with me, this unfortunately only seemed to encouraged him to use both hands on my bottom, his fingers splayed and sticking into my flesh, he was now fighting to control my movements and forcing me towards his thrusting genitals, I do wonder what it is about this type of man, it is like the more you resist the more they enjoy themselves? On what planet does he think that I have any interest in him? Now I was fighting to get free, but trying not to make a show of what was going on … The ghastly record continued as his salivating mouth was making its way towards my face, turning my head as quickly as possible his sloppy lips collided with my ear, I was so revolted that my ‘gut’ reaction was to push him away, thankfully he released me and staggered backward into the dancing crowd, which caught him before he fell the revellers ‘yelling’ approval and he disappeared into the dancing guests.

Wiping my ear and face in utter revulsion then rubbing my wet hand down my crinkle skirt, I continued on my way through the guests to my parents table the wine was hitting me now. At the large table of guest where my parents were sitting. I was greeted with a smile from Trevor, who beckoned me to an empty seat next to him, I manoeuvred my way around the other guests holding on to the back of chairs, looking over at my mother who was at the other end of the table with a number people holding court happily, it would appear that all was well with my parents after all! Finally reaching the vacant chair, which Trevor pulled out so as to let me in to the space. I held onto the table and squared myself up steadying myself from the journey to their table; as I went to sit down, I just seemed to keep going. Unbeknownst to me Trevor had spied the previous owner of the seat coming off the dance floor and back toward the table, so as I went to sit down he moved the seat away from me and offered it back in the direction of the original owner. I just kept going, in my mind slowly it started to dawn on me that there was nothing there to stop me, then it all started to move in quick time – I speeded up, my natural reaction was to grab at the table in front of me, seizing the white table cloth in an iron like grip, it happened pretty quickly from there! As I crashed to the floor my grasp on the table cloth pulled over my head along came half the contents of the table - glasses, empty plates, knives and forks and the floral centre piece along with other detritus! The noise, even with the loud music playing was pretty spectacular. As the smashing stopped I heard an audible gasp. Momentarily I wanted to stay where I was. ‘Oh my God – is she alright? …  Get her out’..  Trevor and another man pulled me out by my arms and as quickly as I had gone down I was now being launched into the air at a spectacular speed. As my feet touched the floor and my eyes managed to re-focus, everyone in the close vicinity was staring at me. And as luck would have it the official wedding videographer was catching it all for prosperity! My mother was still sat at the table with her wine glass in hand. ‘Really Natalie!!? What are you thinking of – I will deal with this – Trevor take her home?’

Not needing to be asked twice Trevor grabbed my arm and we were at the nearest exit before I knew what was happening, he stopped to put his jacket on that he had grabbed from the back of his chair and we were off up the drive like rabbits being chased by a fox.

My mother stayed making, I assume profuse apologies for her daughter, enjoyed the aftermath of my performance. Not understanding how her daughter could make such a spectacle of herself! I wonder where I got that from?

The good news is the video of me still exists, sadly this marriage did not last long they divorced and she re-married someone else fairly shortly afterwards. My mother and Trevor were invited to the next wedding, I was not!

What can I tell you my mother loves a wedding!

The Wedding Outfit…

What is in a ‘Snowball’?

A story based on Bridesmaids & Weddings

-        It is not as dull as it sounds! -

Some passages contains language that some people might find offensive. This story is based on my life & these are the first draft chapters of a particular part of my life – But mostly it is about the peculiarities of growing up in my family … Don’t judge me until you have read it all!

The Wedding Outfit

Chapter 1

Circa – late 1990’s

Standing in front of the ‘thin’ mirror, in my favourite shop, Mango, St. Leonards Road, Windsor, looking back at the reflection of myself, I would like to say admiring myself, but that is not for me I struggle with how I look. But ‘I think’ this is an ‘OK’ look and it is what I want; a long black large sparkly jumper that fits over my now seven month bump.

I have been standing in front of this ‘thin’ mirror for just over thirteen years, or so, on and off, it is one of my favourite places to be, trying on bespoke clothes, in this little boutique, in the town I went to school in. The buzz has never abated and I hope it never will. Clothes are one of the very few things that I can honestly say that my mother and I have in common, otherwise we have very different opinions on most things, which makes our relationship complicated – to put it mildly!

I find that it is always important to give the outfit a second glance and some balance so I move across the floor to the ‘fat’ mirror, which I never liked standing in front of for precisely the reason the name suggests – it makes you look fatter than the thin mirror! But it is an important barometer. Before being pregnant, I would look at myself in the thin mirror first, then if I liked the look, which inevitably I did, I would move to the fat mirror, to check out how bad I would look in the outfit if I looked fatter. To most people this would not make any sense, but to me it makes perfect sense, I think it might just be a female thing? It is like the feeling you get when fitting into a new outfit that is one size smaller than the size you usually go for, it is a free positive!! Today it seems a bit mad standing in front of the fat mirror as I am heavily pregnant, so I am obviously going to look fat/pregnant in either mirror, but I have to do it, it is part of the process!

My mind wonders and I glance at the reflection behind me and I watch my mother rootling through the clothes on the display stands. I brought my mother with me on this occasion, we are not good shopping buddies, for many reasons which I will explain later or will become apparent as I tell you this story.

My mother is working the dress shop as she usually does with a sort of forensic mania that you only see in someone who has a compulsive obsession to find something first that no one else has seen, her eyes are flickering and scanning from one item to the next, rummaging at speed through the careful hung clothes; she reminds me of Guilty our cat when he has enthusiastically pounced on a mouse, he just throws his paws around in all directions, punching the ground trying to catch something that has already escaped. This is normal behaviour in a dress shop from my mother.

Earlier today, another customer who was in the shop had a lucky escape. The lady had come in to try on a very expensive thin blue leather coat that had been put by for her to try. This elegant young woman had excitedly and carefully put the coat on, rolling the soft leather sleeves up her arms, she then swayed in delight at her image from side to side in the fat mirror, she looked stunning. This was not lost on my mother, who had stopped searching for a minute and was observing with interest. This young woman, was clearly weighing up the cost of this expensive ticketed couture item, it was certainly an investment piece. She made the fatal mistake of taking it off and carefully tossing the coat on the chair in the boutique. Rookie mistake! My mother was across the room like a sprinter, snatched the coat up and was forcing it on over her arms onto her shoulders. My mother is a tall slender woman, the coat size was for a petite frame, but that did not stop my mother’s efforts in try it on. This poor young woman was shocked as she had not relinquished the coat, she was just simply enjoying the moment of toying with the idea of purchasing such an expensive item. It was an embarrassing moment, I was going to have to intervene.

Moving closer to my mother, with my back to the woman and the shop owner, I mouthed, I think more than clearly; “Take it OFF!” My mother looked at me, and did her usual thing, shrugged her shoulders in defiance, pulling the collar up around her neck, the thin leather straining… I am used to these episodes of resistance so I repeated, “Take it off,” she swung backward and forward, the powder blue pelts following her movements; “take it off – NOW!” I am pretty sure that the ‘NOW’ was audible to the two people standing behind me … Nope I could tell she was in ‘non-compliant mode’. This happens with my mother if she feels I am challenging her in any way, a small example of this is when my mother tells me that I will like something, for example a film; I will say that I have seen it and I did really like it. She will tell me that I did like it, I will say I didn’t and she will move onto the actor in it who she insists I like, I will say yes he/she is okay and my mother will say I knew you would like that film! There is no easy way out!

I move to ‘low tactics’! Turning to the young woman and the shop owner Roz, I say, “You haven’t finished with this coat, have you? You really must buy it, it looks amazing on you.” Turning to glance at my mother, half smile on my face; “Take it off – Mum, this lady is going to buy it!” I have embarrassed her now, this is not going to end well!

Throwing her head to one side smiling, she peals this beautiful coat off, leaving one arm inside out and tosses the relieved coat back on the chair from where she had stolen it… “So sorry, I didn’t realise you were still interested in it.” She did! Balance is restored albeit with a bit of an atmosphere left in the building, Roz picked up the coat, pulled the arm back through. The young woman, who had nearly been deprived of her coat decided immediately that she wanted to purchase it and the deal was done with Roz – I think my mother’s hijacking had most probably helped seal the sale!

In Mango, the clothes are always displayed beautifully with the hangers each placed exactly 2 inches apart, there is usually only one of each piece on the rail, the other sizes are kept upstairs out of sight for when they are needed. My Mum had now resumed her forensic investigations of the display, pulling each item of clothing from right to left, the hangers scraping against the rail above as she sorts through them at an alarming rate, having got to the end of the first rail of clothes they are all swaying hanging on the left side of the rail as if in a summer breeze all symmetry gone. My eyes moved across the white interior of the shop to the owner Roz, a petite lady with wonderful short spiky hair, she is beautifully dressed in one of her outfits that she has collected over the many years of owning the shop. She too is also watching my mother, with I think, relatively good humour considering her carefully laid out clothing display was being deconstructed in front of her, but I guess that is her job.

Reverting back to my reflection… I like this jumper and it is what I want for the occasion and it has stood up to the fat mirror test and just made me look pregnant which is what I am, after all! I think it will work well with my tight fitting maternity black skirt, with a slit up the side. I inwardly smirked, she will go mad when she realises that I am actually choosing my wedding outfit…. devilment takes over. “Mum, I think this jumper would be great for my wedding day outfit.” She stopped ferreting for a tiny moment, turned to look at me

“Don’t be so ridiculous Natalie, you are not wearing anything like that when you get married!” Roz glanced at me and pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders. I guess she was thinking the same as me, I am after all a fully grown adult, pregnant with my first child, not living with my mother but with the man I am about to marry!! – And I will damn well wear what I please. My mother, you see has obsessed over my wedding day for years, meticulously planning each detail, depending on what year we are living in and what are the current trends when it comes to Bridal wear. I have never been consulted!

I realise of course that I am going to have to tell her and Trevor, my father at some stage that I am getting married in just over a weeks’ time in a registry office. It is not going to go down well and it will come as an enormous shock to my mother particularly. Inwardly I shrug, I am not telling her today, I will wait a bit longer. I am buying this jumper as my wedding outfit. “I will have this Roz, thank you.” My mother continues to ‘frisk’ the clothing, she is not interested in the black jumper. She’s moved to the glass shelves where Roz displays all her accessories, Mum bends down to the floor under the shelves and picks up one of a pair of fantastic orange and pink shoes with a splayed out heel, flips them upside down to check out the size, mum has large feet a size 7-8, she kicks off one of her shoes, balancing on one leg and forces the too small shoe over her toes, then puts her foot on the ground with her ankle hanging over the back of the shoe, she bobs her head from one side to the other observing the ‘look’ and the shoed foot moves in tandem with her head from left to right. I look at her face and she pulls that all too familiar upside-down grimace. To the uninitiated, they could take this look as a confirmation that my mother does not particularly like this shoe, but I know better – she likes the shoe a lot, but is internally downloading if she will buy it and what is the best deal she will get if she does buy it and what will she wear it with. In the same moment she kicks the shoe off and it lands haphazardly back in the same spot where it was originally on display, but this time it is on its side, I wince, but Roz ever the professional, is over there in a shot carefully up righting the shoe and putting it back on display. Don’t get me wrong, it is not that my mother is intentionally being rude or disrespectful, it is just that she is in ‘feeding frenzy mode’, with the clothing, the pretty things on display in front of her, she is in the zone! And she has clearly spotted something else.

She has moved onto the third shelf up from the ground, this is where Roz keeps the belts and handbags, top shelf is usually reserved for smaller items like sunglasses, gloves and jewellery. Hawk like, Mum has seized and unravelled a dark brown thick suede belt, holding it to her waist, this type of accessory is a staple of Roz, my mother already has a number of these, but in different colours, she has even given me the colours of the ones she has bought and does not particularly like. This is something that amuses my soon to be husband. Mum will very kindly offer to give me some of her clothing, on occasions when she has had a clear out, I love this when it happens, lots of the items are not for me, Mum is tall I am short like Trevor. Trust me, there is no one that shops or has a wardrobe like my mother, it is like going to Selfridges, she has everything in every colour. So, occasionally, she gives me items of clothing and I adapt them to suit me. I will then wear the adapted item when I see her and she is always be a bit fed up that she gave them to me in the first place! And wants them back! It is normal!

I move over to the rail that has been disrupted by my mother, sliding the outfits back into, more or less the position close to where they were originally. Lingering on a couple of items that I lust after, however with my baby bump I have no chance of fitting into, I am at that stage in pregnancy where I want my shape back to where it once was.

Mum is standing at the thin mirror, and there is! The grimace face, she moves to the fat mirror to take a look at the belt against her, she crumples up her top over the belt, to give it ‘a look’ then pulls her top back down and goes for the ‘nipped in’ waist look. Yup!! I can tell she really likes this, she is twisting to the right and left admiring the look. The fat mirror does not matter to my mother, she has supreme belief in her looks, and she is and has always been thin and stunningly beautiful.  “What do you think Natalie?”

“Yes it is nice mum – but don’t you have lots like that?”

“No Natalie, not like this – not in this colour!” – Then it is out of her mouth I can’t stop it and I did not see it coming!!  She said it, loud, bold and clear – The *N* word. But in its full literation!!! And she continues; full throttle; “It is *N*-brown Natalie.” The women behind me that had entered the shop a short while earlier and who was up to this moment also moving the hangers from side to side, froze. Roz, usually the consummate professional, mouth has dropped open….. Oh God no…

“Oh my God, Mum you can’t say that!!!” On reflection I realise that this is a grave mistake! Saying can’t to my mother is never a good thing and we have only just got over the blue coat incident, I know she will argue the point to the death, no matter even if she knows she is wrong.. This is the most acutely alarming moment… 

“What do you mean Natalie – of course I can say it! This belt is *N* brown!” She waves the belt at me! “That is what it is called, Natalie, *N* brown, *N* brown!! That is the colour of it!”

“Oh My God!! Stop saying it – you can’t say that!”

“For Goodness sake, what do you think I am saying? That is the name of the colour, really Natalie!”; she shrugs her shoulders, at the nonsense I am making of it, - yes really! She continues to enlighten me; “I had pencils called *N*brown when I was a child! It is a very nice colour, don’t look at me like that – stop making a fuss!” There is a look on her face it is impossible for me to distinguish, if she has realised that she has made a colossal hideous mistake or if she really is that ignorant to what she has just said and keeps repeating? She continues, slightly flustered, but she is determined at all costs to fight her corner, “Natalie, everyone knows that is the name of a colour, it is quite normal! *N* brown!” Oh for Fuck sake STOP!! – I give her my hardest stare – I hope it looks like ‘Shut the fuck up mother’ sort of stare…. She opens her mouth …

“MUM – STOP SAYING IT!!! YOU CAN’T SAY THAT NOW IT IS NOT A COLOUR ANYMORE!!!” I charged her and try to wrestle the belt out of her hands, in the vain hope that this might just stop her from continuing, but she’s not having of it, she is holding firm as I yank one way and she yanks the other. She snaps the belt away from me and moves away.

“You think you know, everything Natalie, but you don’t, I can tell you that for years they have been calling it …. “ Oh my God – what the fuck, she is saying it again, what is the matter with her?

“STOP!!” STOP –“ And for real emphasis; “STOP IT - NOW!”

She responds calmly to me glancing toward Roz and the other stunned shopper, by way of an explanation. “Natalie, you are being silly! Everyone knows …..” And she repeats the word over and over again for clarity I presume? “This name is used all over the world”, Oh my God now she is going ‘global’! “On colour charts, paint cans, chocolate for example, haven’t you ever seen it on paint cans? It is used all over the world – as a colour, it is perfectly normal – everyone uses it!” This is one of my mother’s things, she is now trying to broaden the appeal! I am beginning to think that she has either lost her mind completely or has been in my brother’s bedroom one to many times smoking one of his funny smelling cigarettes… When she comes out of his room, happy and dancing, usually this prompts Trevor to ask me – why is your mother so happy? Which is to be fair a rare occurrence in their relationship!

As you can imagine I am acutely embarrassed… I just want to get out of the shop and shut her up! “Please stop Mum! And no you haven’t seen it anywhere recently, stop saying it!!” Her hands have gone to her hips and she is shrugging her shoulders. Again she starts rattling off various items and products that were dark brown, except she did not call them dark brown! It is excruciating. Now I am getting cross, I give her my best stare, you know the one that your parent gives you when you are young and it means be quite or else! It is not working she is adamant that she is right! Shouting now, “LOOK MUM!!! You can’t say it now, on any level! It is offensive, very, very offensive AND it is RACIST!! STOP!!”

This seemed to shake her from her endless listing, she looks shocked, finally!! “Racist – Natalie, what on earth do you mean, I can promise you it is a colour and there is nothing wrong with that? Me - a racist, don’t be so ridiculous, everyone knows I am not a racist!” To use Trevor’s phrase when he wants her to stop – ‘I think the penny had dropped!’

“You can’t say it Mum, it is racist and it is rude and it is unacceptable, we are going, now!” She stopped and stared for a moment, she looked generally a bit shaken. She turned to Roz, who had now moved over to her other customer and was trying to ignore the scene that was unfolding in her shop.

“For Goodness Sake Natalie, how could anyone think I am racist? I mean, I go on holiday to Barbados every year for nearly six months of the year!??” Yes you could not write it – except I am! Oh God this is not happening to me!

“You young people!” Now I knew that she wants a way out, my mother never calls anyone young, she is one of the young people, I don’t think that she has really ever seen herself over the age of about 30 – at a push! “You young people are always changing things, one never knows what is going on, all this new language, you are always changing meanings, making people look silly, I have no idea why you do it Natalie, it is very difficult for people!!” It has clearly escaped my mother that changing any meanings of any words is nothing to do with me – But somehow she skilfully makes it my fault!

And now for the curved ball! A complete change of direction!

“Roz did you know that Natalie won’t let anyone read her Vogue magazines?” To be fair this statement is absolutely correct, even if it had little to do with the belt’s colour. Roz and her customer just looked from me to my mother. “What person is so mean as to not let people read their magazines? Natalie won’t, she hides them out of the way.” I have no idea why I attempt to defend myself in these situations, but I always fall into the trap!

“I don’t hide my magazines!!”

“Yes you do Natalie! You always say that I can’t flick through your Vogue magazine, when I am at your house! Look Roz has some Vogue magazines there on the shelf,” my mother again turns to Roz; “Do you stop people from reading your magazines Roz? – I am sure you don’t?” Roz just looked bemused.

“Of course Roz let’s people read her magazines Mum, that is what they are there for! For God sake!”

“Oh that is kind Roz, Natalie can’t bear anyone to even touch her magazines, and she doesn’t share!”

For God sake – “I do!” This is classic ‘my mother’ – And what is worse is that I engage with it which makes me look like a 5 year old!

“You don’t, look what happened last week – You took the magazines out of the room!”

Just for the record I am not a – Magazine hider! – In the main!

“I DON’T HIDE THEM MUM! I JUST HIDE THEM FROM YOU!!” She winces for dramatic effect at my statement. I mean really, what sort of a daughter hides her Vogue magazines from her mother? I am a monster!

I try and calm my comments; “Look I don’t hide them from you, mum, I take them away from you because you lick your fingers when you turn the pages, which smudges the ink and you fold down the edges of ‘my’ magazine before I have even read them, you know I collect them!” Roz and her customer wince, now, looking slightly revolted. This honestly does not make my situation any better, I now look like I am making out my mother to be unsanitary – which she is not!

The outcome, after a few more harsh comments about my lack of magazine sharing and we are heading for the door!

If only I had had half a brain cell I would have just paid for my jumper and forcibly removed my mother from this poor woman’s shop after the first incident, about an hour and a half ago. My mother to Roz and her bemused customer is still listing all the other magazines that are not in my collection that I don’t let her read either! I can’t win!

I purchased the black jumper as my wedding outfit, I am going to tell her one day very soon that I am getting married, a week on Friday. Based on today, now is not the right time to approach it. My mother purchases a number of other items, not the belt and nothing further is said to me and I think that Roz was happy to get us out of her shop.

Never a dull moment!! …

Chapter 2 – Coming soon!

My thoughts on entering September…

To be honest I am not sure what I really think of this time of year, on the one hand I like it, because I like seasons.. I like to see the beautiful colours of the autumn trees & the romance of the leaves weather permitting having been dried to curly crisps by the wind, they then scuttle in all directions in the breeze… In the past, when the weather was more settled - back in the day! … I relished the dry bright cold mornings with blue skies that make for good walking weather, or just looking out the window if you can’t be bothered to go walking.

Like my daughter, I also like winter clothes, for me there is something so much more elegant, the layering of different items to make a look… I love the winter boots & the thick felt hats… The open fires always makes me feel safe… I am just so much more comfortable with more clothes than less … So for me that is another plus to the on coming season..

I am always also sad to wave goodbye to summer, if only we had a summer this year! I am particularly reluctant to part with summer this year as I have had little opportunity to use my new barbeque… Also sad to say goodbye to summer because it means so much to my husband, who loves the sun!! It is always a summer holiday choice for him, for me my favourite holiday is a ski resort …

Like most mothers, even of older children, this season means a different type of work as autumn quickly edges into winter… We are a big family with all sorts of ‘extensions’ so there is always a great deal to organise, with many birthdays leading up to Christmas & the Halloween party to organise that means so much to the children - yes even these days… It is all such a lot of work… And I must admit to sometimes, particularly when the children were younger finding the work load overwhelming.. It made me a ‘tad’ - irritable at times & I could be a bit of a humbug!! … But when we get to the end of the year & all the work is done and works well… I enjoy it! But sometimes it is just ‘the’ getting there! This year I intend to be a bit more laid back & totally enjoy the process, just let it all happen!

I am reminded of one of my friends young daughter, who having finally made it from nursery school to ‘big school’ - primary school, at the end of her first day, with all the excitement that it holds for a young child, she was asked by her grandmother; ‘How was your first day at big school?’ She shrugged her shoulders, ‘I liked it a lot, but I spent all day there - & I still can’t read’! …

Life is like that one new challenge after another …. This year I am going to take it one step at a time!

ELVIRA …

Elvira at her sister Dilys wedding some way back in the ‘70’s

It is always the same… White sticky address labels stuck at an angle on brown C5 size envelopes. The white address label typed in bold black, with my name & address, each line starting & finishing at different places. Then there is the tell tail sellotape, stuck firmly over the entire white address label, I presume this is because she does not trust the efficacy of the stickiness of the address labels.

I know who this letter is from, but I flip it over, just for good measure; another white label cut in half, stuck at an angle with her name & address in bold, & just in case, her email & land line number also very visible on the label, sellotaped to the opening flap of the envelope. If you didn’t know better you would assume that this envelope contains some really important documents. But I know different, this letter is from my aunt Elvira.

Elvira, the only constant elder member of my family that has been in my life, she is my father’s sister. I spent many happy summer holidays at her house. She is the archetypal British eccentric, from a long line of them.

Pronounced EL-VI-RA. My mother-in-law used to love telling me that we were not pronouncing it correctly, “It is Ell-veer-a, Natalie! That is how you pronounce it!” I didn’t take any notice, I assumed that my grandparents knew how they wanted her name pronounced… My mother-in-law Renée, was prone to giving her opinion on things; she delighted, usually after a few whiskies, which could be from any time after 10:30am, on telling me that my parents were ‘up-starts’ as my maiden name was hyphenated! Certainly my parents were part of the new bourgeoisie.. I went out of my way not to introduce my parents to Renée, despite living with my now husband for 11 years at the time, which irritated both my parents & my mother-in-law, which now I think about it was a bit of a result! However my parents being my parents, decided to boycott my requests, I mean really what business or point was there in them all meeting? My mother & Renée, would exchange Christmas cards, for what reason I have no idea? In these cards they both put their telephone numbers & thus a meeting was organised. My mother to Renée’s, home… I found out about this meeting, not from my mother as she likes secrets but from Renée, who after a few more whiskies announced that my mother “was a social butterfly”. I was therefore to take from this that she was not to Renée’s, tastes as she was a former teaching & an intellectual! Somehow Trevor, my father also arranged a secret meeting with Renée, this time at his house, a chauffeur was dispatched to pick Renée up & deliver her to Trevor’s house Dutch Gardens. The chauffeur was a good idea, because by lunchtime Renée would have had at least half a bottle of whisky whilst she read the morning papers & did the cross word; so not surprisingly by lunchtime her driving suffered under this influence! Renée once turned up at our house complaining that her car was making a dreadful noise, blaming her daughter’s boyfriend Eric for the offending noise as he had been doing some work on her car. I looked at the car & the metal trim was at right angles to the car & there were scratch marks all the way down the side of the car. “What have you done Renée?” She glanced at the damage, “Oh don’t worry about that - that is Eric’s bad handy work!” “Renée that is not Eric’s fault you have crashed into something & ripped off the trim.” “Yes!” She replied, “I had to avoid hitting the bus so I veered off the road into the hedge then went back on the road & hit a few bollards where the men are working on the road.” I looked under the car – there was the source of the loud scraping noise, a cone jammed under the car!” Never a dull moment…

She meet Trevor at Dutch Gardens, Renée turned up as she always did with a glass bottle of Coca-Cola filled with whisky, for some reason Renée thought that the disguise of a soft drink bottle would hide the fact, mostly from her daughter that she was drinking whisky, no-stop! Why I have no idea as we all knew that she drunk whisky! On this occasion she mixed the whisky with generous portions of Trevor’s wine, thus got more *pissed* than normal, spilled all her families secrets, which Trevor duly noted for his own possible use in the future…… When Renée told me she had met Trevor, she told me he was a dreadful Svengali [something I think that he would secretly like to be called], none of them ever met each other again! For the record, Renée liked to be controversial, on most topics, which at times made her extremely unkind but at other times a riot to be around! I digress!

Back to Elvira’s document. You can’t easily open her envelopes due to all the sellotape! Sitting down with my cup of tea & a knife I prize open my brown envelope which buckled under the strain of its confinements. Pulling out the content which was a bundle of selected magazine pages taken from The Sunday Telegraph paper, which is Elvira – ‘must-have’ newspaper, it is a religion to her, she collects them & bundles them together in piles all over her house, 1000’s of them & whatever is said in them is gospel, except she is not keen on the Sunday Telegraph magazine attachment, I think it would all be a bit too modern for her! Elvira, on regular occasions will find an article from one of these newspaper piles of something she thinks of interest or relevant & sends out the copy with added notes to the recipient, something that incenses her children! …. Today was my turn … The tatty tear sheet pages stapled together at the centre to act as Elvira’s own publication to me. On the first page attached at an angle is two yellow post-it notes, which states; “COVER – Special STel Mag usually aimed at people with funds.. Usually flipped thru & angrily dumped. However Interest for you – my specific discussion area  MORGANE PULANSKI Probably a future in films she is fresh ----- untainted by the past. Xx E Now Thursday 8/4/21’  It is not immediately comprehensible what she is trying to say or what I am supposed to be interested in, but then these missives from Elvira rarely are, I plough on!

“AMPLE BODIED ROUND MODEL”

Under the yellow post-it note inscription is a picture of a beautiful black model in a midnight blue low buttoned dress with a fine ample bosom on show. Next to her written on the magazine, upside down & at an angled in Elvira’s handwriting with an arrow pointing at the model in blue biro, “AMPLE BODIED ROUND MODEL” – There of course is no particular relevance to this comment, but it is clear that my beloved aunt thinks that I might not notice the picture & what she believes is the relevance, so it is necessary for her to scribble on the image for my clarification. Elvira is not up to speed with the general trend in magazines to use models of all types, to ‘level-up’ the fashion industries stereotypes. She clearly thinks that this is a revelation that I must immediately be informed of? Elvira always likes to think that she is ahead of the curve & the first to notice a trend! Once sitting in her kitchen, when I was young, she exclaimed that it was amazing that platform shoes were ‘on the way out’ – This was news to me as my mother was/is a fashionista of the class ‘A’ type. Platform shoes had in fact gone out of fashion at least two years earlier! On another occasion Elvira was trying to explain to the French au pair, how to body board, she jumped up from the table, announcing that, “you must make yourself into a complete ‘flotation’ – in order to balance!” & then, as she often did, went into the ‘arabesque’ ballet poise, which instantly irritated her children, who complaint that Elvira had never even been body boarding! Reality or truth of these things never really bother Elvira, any opportunity to announce to any person whatsoever that she was a dancer was always at the top of her list; you see according to Elvira if you are a dancer you can do anything, even of course if you have never, as in Elvira’s case! “If you are a dancer Natalie – You are a medical phenomenon! Doctors ask me to advise them”…. Once much to my cousin Sarah’s utter horror & embarrassment on school sports day… Elvira took to crawling on her hands & knees after her baby son who was also crawling down a nearby slope, wiggling her bottom in the air as she went, whilst wearing the shortest mini with blue frilly knickers which were on full display for fathers! I thought it funny, my cousin was mortified.. The difference here being I am not her daughter – I am her niece!   

“LAST LOOK - TOP OF THE WORLD…”

I opened up the stapled pamphlet to the next page, the title was, LAST LOOK, this article was about a 17 year old schoolgirl who won a beauty contest that changed her life. To be honest I am not really sure what the relevance of this page is as there were no scribbled instructions or post-it notes advising me? I flipped the page again; my heart sank! ‘SHOW BREAST IN … nipple enhancing ‘tweakments’ are on the up, reports Sarah Kennedy… Was the story line – ‘MAKING NIPPLES LOOK PERMANENTLY ERECT IS A REQUEST WE RECEIVE OFTEN’!! Next to this bold statement Elvira has written in red biro, obviously this is the key article! ‘Been there!’ E x I am totally unsure why my aunt felt the need to send me this article – or why she needed me to know that she needed pert nipples, all the time? She is after all 83 – But hey who am I to be ageist! I must tell you; it has never ever crossed my mind that it might be useful to have permanently erect nipples? If anything it sounds rather uncomfortable & more than a little unbecoming, particularly if you are doing the weekly supermarket shop. The article continues – ‘When it comes to shape & size, some clients have very specific requests’, below this quote are pictures of a ten pence coin, a strawberry & what looks like clay cooking beans… ‘Dear God!’ I have just had another glance at the pictures – Please tell me those are not hard boiled eggs? To be frank, I now feel a bit revolted at the thought of having cork stop nipples at all times! Why? I have, for a person of short stature a more than ample bosom that can enter the room before the rest of me, how terrifying would it be for the occupants of that room to have to suffer a ‘Carry On’ comedy pair of breasts entering the room, ‘avec – Oeuf’ or for that matter with nipples the shape & size of strawberry’s! Revolting!

“SHOW BREASTS! - IN!!!!”

I am now reminded of sitting watching the TV at Elvira’s house with my many cousins, Elvira had been out & had drunk some wine & Elvira does not drink. It was a light summer evening, with a torrential down pouring of rain. In a fit of pique – Elvira said to us all watching TV that if we gave her a £1 fee each then she would run down to the lake & back in the nude. To most children particularly these days I think this would have caused great alarm & embarrassment, if not a bit of terror, for an adult to be making such a strange offer, but we children just glanced up at her & then continued to watch the TV. Later that evening she had us all outside running in & out of the muddy puddles in the rain, which I can assure you was more entertaining to us than her previous offer & less expensive!   

WHAT CAN I SAY????

– But to Elvira, it is all about being sexy at all times, I think that working in the Film industry all those years means that she thinks that women have to look permanently ‘on heat’ – It is really important to her, I don’t know if it is a generational thing? As my mother once told me that she felt invisible now being older when she walked into a room of men & they don’t all look at her – Which I think is quite a sad statement in its self – That the only thing that is important to her is that all the men are looking at her? If not these days a bit creepy!

Flicking the switch on the kettle again – In slight trepidation, I flipped to the next page, the next 3 pages had been stapled back to front starting with the back page first – This article is about Roman Polanski’s actress daughter Morgane. Here Elvira for ease of my comprehension had slashed the article with red biro, quite randomly as none of the so called high-lighting actually hits the words she is trying to high-light; I glance through the article – it really is not my thing – But I show willing… I closed the pamphlet. On the back page is a further ‘nonsensical’ message this time like the front page in blue biro; “IGNORE ALL RED MARKS – TRYING TO FORCE ME TO CONCENTRATE - X E X”  I know that this is not true, Elvira has just decided that she has perhaps over-egged what she thinks should have been important to me… I stuff the content back in the ripped brown envelope…

I HOPE THEY ARE CLAY COOKING BEANS NOT EGGS!!

I received periodical a few weeks ago, I have not read any of the pages, to be honest they are not really my kind of thing – Not to mention that when it comes to reading matter - I have a daughter who’s favourite thing is books, which she brings to the house in their hundreds, each day she will turn up with some new books, like she has found a little lost puppy to play with …

RED HIGHLIGHTS - MORE IMPORTANT THAN BLUE!!

Today I have received another none-seneschal email from Elvira – with the note stating that when I call her – we simply must discuss the topics sent to me in her recent correspondence… My heart sinks a bit! I have already dodged that bullet once in a recent call. Elvira lives by herself in an enormous house that is falling into disrepair – But she refuses to leave despite many urgent requests from her son. I think we have all come to the conclusion that she is going to stay there to the bitter end. I have written this piece, which is just a snap shot of some of the things my aunt has done & it is written with much affection & love for my aunt, she has been very ill with ‘long covid’ for almost a year and she has been very difficult to help, she refuses medical help & thinks she knows best about everything – At times she has been very confused, which has been difficult to deal with, but when I received these magazine articles with the mad comments, I know that she is back to her old self, so although the content is quite bonkers it is just as it should be with her. She has been a thread through my life & she never turned her back on me. We are as opposite as could be in many ways. When I was little, she would laugh at the fact that I was the most like her in terms of colouring, light skin, mine for the record is almost porcelain & my hair was light brown at the time, Elvira is pale skinned & blond, where as her beautiful children were/are all darker skinned have beautiful brown eyes & hair, like their father. This made me, the little ugly duckling of all the family very pleased. When Elvira went to the Royal premiere of ‘Entertaining Mr Slone’ in April 1970 so beautiful was she that she knock Princess Margaret off the front of the Newspapers – This was quite some achievement!

WELL AT LEAST SHE IS ON THE MEND!

Some years later in the summer we were sitting outside at Elvira’s house with an unrealistically huge bowl of broccoli in front of us covered in butter, with the normal, what my mother calls ‘plastic bread’ & butter as an accompaniment - Elvira is not known for her cooking, the broccoli was also covered in angry wasps from the nearby wasps nest. Suddenly Elvira jumped up, picked up the enormous serving spoon & started to smash it down on the offending wasps smashing the overcooked broccoli to a congealed palp, scattering shards of grey-green broccoli everywhere, including splattering my cousin Sarah & I with the green mush. Once she had finished this outburst she sat down again & expected us to eat the remnants, of the mush now added to the dish were the dismembered bodies of wasps – I hated broccoli for years after that!   

Left to right, Trevor, Elvira, Taller boy Laurie, my brother, Tall lady with beads, my mother Josephine short fat bridesmaid with ringlets not looking at the camera pulling my bloomers up - Me! What was my aunt Dilys thinking of with those outfits?

Prince Philip - My small encounter…

I was sent to school in Windsor from the age of 9; Windsor is a small town which meant that you could very often come across a patron or two in a Royal cart or car with the little flag flying from the front bonnet & a regal occupant inside. The Royal family were always around & about it was not unusual to come across them occasionally. Not least my school - I loosely mention it as a school it was in fact a convent - Brigidine Convent, Queensmead House School, located on the edge of Windsor Great Park, right bang smack in the middle of the long mile to be accurate. Despite the schools affiliation with Roman Catholic nuns it accepted pupils of all faiths.

For the record, I am of no faith, my mother was religious to a degree, I know that in London she was courted by the local vicar who was according to my father ‘in love’ with her? However she turned to the dark side & married my father, leaving said vicar broken hearted.

It seems that I was yet another of my parents ‘surprises’ & as such I was not christened, which never bothered me as it was never on my radar as we were not a church going family, except when one of the family got married or for that matter got christened.

When we moved to Berkshire & I was sent to the private convent school having previously been schooled in London at non fee paying Brookland Primary School - East Finchley, NW11, or as my mother would call it Hampstead Garden Suburb. I can promise you it was monumental & quite a shock to find my self surrounded by at times the brutal negative regimes of the Roman Catholic nuns. I was ill prepared for such a regime, not to mention the endless curtailing of my character & natural exuberance. I was a modest child & eager to please, it seemed to me that you were taught that everything was considered a sin which at such a tender age was quite difficult to comprehend & extremely challenging. Of course there were much lighter moments when ‘normal’ teachers would take the classes & those I enjoyed.

On the second day of attending the school my mother dropping me off at the front door of the convent, which unbeknown to either of us was not to be used by the likes of the lowly pupils, but was reserved for special people & his reverence the local vicar visits, which to my memory when he pulled the front door bell sent all the nuns scurrying to see him even some of the elderly ‘mothers/nuns’ it was as if a rock star had arrived on a pack of screaming teenagers, the nuns dropped their haughty repose & descended on the poor man like bees to honey their faces turning red in hot flushes of slightly hysteric yapping & giggling, it was curious to me & even at that age - I considered it vulgar. Little girls can be very judgemental!

Back to the front door of the convent, my mother pushed me out of the car, shushing me with her hand to go up to the front door, I was hesitant & staring at her, then her face changed, clearly she had a second thought.. Anxious, she scooched over into the passengers side of the car reaching out to wind down the window, “Natalie, whatever you do - Do not tell them that you are not christened!!” .. Then as only my mother can do, she wound the window back up re-seated herself in the driving seat & shot off, hair & lipstick immaculate, no doubt off on a shopping expedition, that she so excelled in…

I was terrified, as a child you get a sense that something is very wrong, my mother was prone to just dropping me in it & hoping for the best & buggering off!! I rung the door bell, after a moment or two, one of the over excited nuns ripped open the door, there were audible the sounds of clattering feet scampering, running, jogging to get to the front door first. As the other nuns arrived in the hallway to their disgust & dismay they only found a tiny pork pie shaped child with a maroon pork pie hat on & maroon striped equally ill-fitting blazer at their front door - Their reaction to me was very much in the negative. I never entered the building through that entrance again. Also, thanks to my mother I spent my younger years in the school utterly terrified that in some way I would be ‘outed’ as ‘non-christened’ - sinner! It left quite an impression.

The school because of its location to Windsor castle would regularly get calls from the castle staff to request the convent school pupils to line ‘the long walk’ & cordially wave at the very many cars carrying the Queen & various members of her family & entourage, when they were going on visits to Ascot & the like, we would cross the road dressed in our blazers & straw boater hats, it was a requirement of the school uniform to also be wearing white gloves, mostly we all had lost one of the pair of gloves, so we would group together loan out what we had & as we walked past the nun checking our uniforms we would have one gloved hand on show the other non-gloved hand shoved in our pocket, when I see the old St Trinians films made in black & white it reminds me of what we all looked like! It was even then archaic!!

We stood on the edge of the long mile & waited, sometimes for ages for the Royal procession to slowly go past us as we politely waved & the Royals & their guest waved back at us sometimes looking a bit board, occasionally you would get a sort of smile, but at other times they would look stern or even to my mind a bit cross. We did this so often & were so close to the Royals, I just assumed that all schools did this type of greeting.

My mother very soon tired of taking me to school & quickly organised to get me off loaded with various lifts & school rotas from other parents in the local area where we lived. Eventually my lifts to & from school were taken over by one particular mother who did the school run with her own two children, her name was Gay & she was more than a bit eccentric, she was actually mad as a March hare. She was always talking & expressing an opinion, shrieking at the top of her voice to us three girls, she was excitable & would quite often wave her arms around to make her point, sometimes both arms, which obviously meant that she had no hands on the steering wheel, which would mean that her tiny car would weave madly to one or other side of the road, occasionally clipping or mounting the curb & often being hooted at by other vehicles on the road. To be honest as a child this type of driving never really bothered me that much, as my father had a penchant for falling asleep at the wheel of his six litre car, whilst speeding, before being brutally awakened by my mother. Gay’s driving was normal to me!

One morning we were off on our normal route to school, we passed through a small village called Datchet, just outside Windsor & there was the usual backlog of traffic, so Gay decided to take the residential ‘rat-run’ to get us back on the main drag into Windsor in an attempt to avoid the traffic jam, she didn’t turn the corner, she just bounced on the pavement at an angle & nearly hit the car coming the other way & had to slam the breaks on as did the large blacked out official car coming the other way. The car had the usual little flag waving on its bonnet, which was to signify that a member of the Royal family was in the car & on official duty. The car edged forward a bit around Gay’s car then came to a halt alongside of us, the back tinted window of the car came in line with Gay’s window, the electric window slowly came down & out came a long arm slightly bent - Which then very stylishly give - ‘the two fingered salute’ to Gay’s opened window. You could clearly see it was Prince Philip & he was cross, he held his arms & fingers there for a few seconds, then his arm withdrew back into the car, the window went back up & the car drove on.

I can not tell you what joy this gave me! I sat there in the back of the car in my little pork pie hat with matching body & striped maroon blazer, I was delighted …. The nuns would have found this behaviour an abomination, to me in my small mind it was so exciting… As I grew up through that school, I did become a bit of a wild child & rebellious to all it stood for, I can’t say that Prince Philip was is any way responsible for this - But I can say - To a small child at least he kept it real…