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 ……..

The Red Pot

The Red Pot is on the bottom shelf of the kitchen cupboard, being cast iron it is a good workout to pull it out and get it on the hob, there it sits, in its shiny splendidness with the tiny chip in the red enamel and the deep black interior. It always makes me smile, not least because I quite often cook mussels in it, which are one of my favourites and the reason it was given to me by my late mother-in-law, Renee.

Renee on any level was not a good cook and the pot sat on her shelf in her small kitchen ‘lean-two’ as she called it. We were sat there, one day looking out at her sweet garden, having our customary glass of wine. Renee only drunk whiskey, except for a while she took to drinking a glass of red wine at lunchtime after reading an article in the broad-sheets stating that it aided the digestion and had physical and mental well-being qualities. I did point out to her that the article did not mean to add a glass of red to the near three-quarters of a bottle of whiskey that she drank each day, as this rather contradicted the point of the article!

That weekend I was going to cook us all mussels and Renee wanted me to take the red pot as she said it was the best thing to cook mussels in and she was fed up with it sitting on her shelf collecting dust. Ben got the heavy pot down for us. Renee was insistent that she did not want the pot back it was mine to keep. So we all agreed – Moules Mariniere – mussels in their shells with onions in white wine – Yummy x

Renee liked a tipple or two, it was part of her character and something that she had done all her life, she grew up in an era where drinking was not frowned upon as it is today, sometimes she would talk about her past life when her and her husband used to start their drinking day off early with a good ‘Pinkers’, this was a drink made up of Gin, Angostura Bitters, sparkling rose wine with a garnish of ice cubes and red berries. Drink was part of her lifestyle. We were all used to it and almost all of us accepted that this was the way Renee was. It is easy to ‘right-off’ a drinker, as just a drinker, this is not always the case, Renee had been a school teacher and her skill with children was still called on even after her retirement, where she would go and teach special needs children and children with mental health issues, when she was not doing that she would read avidly; the only other person I have ever met that reads as much as Renee did is our daughter Tallulah. Renee was always on topic with the news and had very strong views on almost everything. She was very much more than a drinker.

I am not saying that after a day when she had more drink than most people would be able to cope with, particularly as she got older that this could affect her, obviously it did at times. One terrifying occasion, when the door knocker went at our house at about 2:30 in the afternoon, when I opened the door it was Renee standing there. She told me that she had just been in town and her car was now making the most dreadful noise, so as our house was the closest to town she came straight here. I went out to the car which was a very old two-tone brown mini. The trim on one side had been partially pull off and there were scrape marks down the side of the paintwork. I turned to Renee and asked her if she had hit anything? ‘Oh, that!’ she said smiling and pulling on her nose, which was a habit she had; ‘that, that is just bad workmanship, Eric put that trim on and it has come away.’ I looked at the damage again and looked back at her? ‘Might have been made a bit worse, when I had to swerve on the Wargrave Road to miss the bus and went up onto the curb into the bushes?’ she offered, just a little bit sheepishly, pulling on her nose again, then waving her hand. I pulled off the trim as it was sticking out, but realised this could not be the reason for any noise coming from the car. So I bent down and looked under the car, and there it was the culprit. I stood back up and asked her where she had been in town? ‘I haven’t been anywhere yet, I came over Henley Bridge, they are doing work on the road by the town hall – did you know? Anyway there were all this men in the middle of the road digging a hole as I went by them that is when the noise started and I came straight here.’ I bent down and looked under the car again, I couldn’t dislodge the offending article. There was a broom leant up against the house, so I got it and used the handle to manoeuvre the traffic cone out from under the car. Renee screamed with laughter at the mangled cone and said that she had looked in her rear view mirror and wondered why the work men were jumping out of the way an all the cones were knocked all over the road! Alcohol and driving do not mix!

Over the years there are many occasions that I cooked mussels in that red pot for Renee, the meal would always start off with her noticing the pot and saying that it was hers! I would say you gave it to me Renee and by the time she left I would feel a bit put out that she thought I had kept her pot and I would have it ready for to take back when Ben took her back home, obviously not letting her drive! She would then remonstrate that she had given me the pot and did not want it back! After many years I got used to the process and didn’t bother to offer it back. So I still have ‘my’ red pot and I do love it, it cooks so many things so well. And I always remember Renee whenever I use it. Cheers Renee….. x

A Twist on Mussels in White wine

I change the Moules Mariniere recipe occasionally, I add Chinese 5 Spice, paprika and chili flakes. Replace the wine for a tin of coconut milk. It is delicious!!  

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….