Funny how things trigger memories

This morning on the radio, they were talking about Christmas nativity plays at schools, and I was immediately taken back to mine

I went to Hutt Central School and as a member of the junior class we prepared with much excitement for our event. I was dressed as an angel. In a wide sleeved creating made from an old bed sheet. I can feel the thick weave of the fabric under my fingers still. I don’t remember if I wore a halo, but there we defiantly wings. Dad, clever as always with his hands, drew the pattern and he and Mum fabricated them from some sort of silver material. Not shiny as though made from tinfoil and not that thin. I think they were made up of several layers probably sewn together to give the definition of feathers.

I joined the host of other angels; standing on forms to give is height, to sing our wobbly song. Probably ‘Away in a Manger’

We had decorated our classroom with an enormous tree. It wasn’t a real one, rather one we had painted in pieces on many huge sheets of the ubiquitous grey paper, why was it never white. To us small beings it seemed to reach all the way up to the ceiling.

Stuck on at strategic intervals were small presents.  Matchboxes wrapped in paper we had painted in various festive colours. Nothing bright. I remember the paints were almost always wishy-washy watery colours often tuning muddy brown after our mis-dipping paintbrushes from one colour to another.  We hung up the streamers we had made from short strips of coloured paper that stuck to itself when wetted, which we did by licking it. Yuk I can still taste the glue.  

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

I've been pondering on why it feels that Christmas somehow seems more festive over here.

There isn't an over abundance of chrissy music in the stores, so it can't be that. I don't think there are any difference in the deckies than back in NZ. The stores do seems to be more in the spirit of it somehow than they are in NZ but I cannot put my finger on why that is.

I wonder if it is that the shortened days, and the prospect of another white one, fit more with my childhood perception of Christmas.

Last weekend, after a visit to the science museum, we decided to take the bus back to Victoria Station as the crowd waiting to get on the tube was too much of a crush. At 5pm it was already dark and our bus trip became and impromptu tour through the festively lit streets. Past Harrods and other delightfully decorated stores. The Streets have their best dresses on too, sparkly wrapped presents and baubles seemingly float above the shoppers. Down side streets we glimpsed trees, their shed leaves replaced with a crop of twinkly lights. The Eye has become a huge slow motion catherine wheel. Buildings have shed their plain daytime exterior and, like Cinderella, have been magically dressed in beautiful gowns of light and colour.

The price of borrowing money

I received an invitation from my UK bank today to take out a personal loan. Sounds good, right? Wrong, very wrong.

Borrow £,4000, pay back £115.48 over 60 months (yes that's 5 years) and pay back in total £6928.80.

Thats an anual interest rate of 24.170%

And that from the bank that pays less than 5% on the money I have in my account.

I don't think so Tim

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them...

Today is Remembrance Day.

And I do remember.

I remember how lucky I am to even be here.

Both my grandfathers survived WWI and my father survived WWII.

My father served with the Essex Regiment. He hardly spoke about the war.

One of the things he did say was that one night they had all their guns stolen by the enemy and were nearly court marshaled over it. I have yet to discover if it were true.

Dad’s father served with the 11^th Essex Regiment, in France. He was wounded a couple of times and eventually medically discharged. Mum’s father was a merchant seaman. In September 1917, he was a stoker on board the Port Kembla. Along with the rest of the crew, he would have had to make a mad scramble for the lifeboats when the ship hit a mine off Farewell Spit. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

I’ve met the guys who dived on the wreck, and held the ship’s bell and some of the crockery they salvaged from her.

http://www.petemesley.com/local%20trips%20port%20kembla.htm

http://www.divenewzealand.com/?s1=divetravel&s2=Dive%20Destinations&s3=Port%20Kembla%20Wreck%20Dive

Well....

Yesterday evening a quick trip to the supermarket was not what we expected. A very loud and foul-mouthed young black woman was telling her young man in no uncertain terms that what was the use of going to a party if all yu were going to do was sit there and not get drunk!
Then at the counter she let loose at an unsuspecting customer who got too close to her while she was keying in her pin number. He looked stunned, as was everyone else around her.
The interesting thing was that if she hadn't have opened her mouth and let all that filth out you would have thought by the look of her, she was well dressed and fairly good looking, that she was a nice youg woman. Instead she was totally the opposite.
Just shows the old adage is still true, you defiantely can't judge a book by its cover.

Insulated

As I sit at my usual weekday morning Starbucks I'm struck by the thought of how separate we make ourselves from each other. When I look around no one is making eye contact with anyone else aprt from the counter staff and I am struck by how different it would be in NZ. In London's seemingly ovepopulated world I wonder if it is an attempt to retain personal space in a crowd.. On the jam packed tube almost everyone is head down, eyes only for the newpaper or more likely a PDA. Ear plugs in listening to thier own world, not making eye contact with anyone else,  or heaven forbid actually taking to anyone else. I crammed myself into a crowded tube a while back, yes I can do that now, and said to the men surrounding me 'Gosh, haven't been surrounded with so many handsome characters for a long time'  All I got in return was a blank looks form them.
But if you do manage to engage one of them in conversation it can be interesting. I struck up a conversation with a young fellow the other day on my way home. Yes, I talk to anyone who will listen. He was sitting next to me on the tube and had his head in a very complicted looking text book. Turns out he was an electrical engineering apprentice in his first year and finding it quite hard going, but defiantely woth the effort.

Why can't I...

I'm getting a bit frustrated with this blogging. I wan to post a comment on a blog I am following, but everytime I try to post it I get the message that I do not have the authority to post on that site. have tried logging out and in, but no joy. What is it I am doing wrong?

Needles...

I've been giving lots of flu vacciantions lately and it remineded me the first time I had the flu. It was just before baby number four was born. The whole household was down with it. Husband, and all three of the kids. Guess who still wound up doing dishes, feeding kids (when they were hungry). soothing fevered brows, and dealing with the 101 houshold tasks. Fortunately I had a good friend who did the essential shopping.   

The smell of solder...

Yesterday we paid a visit to the Science Museum. Definately somewhere we want to go back to do more exploring.

One of the displays we looked at was a cut away motor. One of the things I recognised was the coil. It reminded me that winding coils was something my Mum used to do.

She worked for a company called Turnbull and Jones which was in Fitzherbert Street, not far from Ava Railway Station. I remember it as a large art deco type building, its facade painted pale green. As a pre-schooler I was cared for by my grandmother while Mum was at work. Unfortunately my Nan died just before I went to school. Apart from the grief of losing her Mum, it must have presented a child-minding problem for my own parents.

The problem was solved by the factory installing a coil winding machine in the back bedroom so that mum could work at home. The truck would back up our long driveway loaded with rolls of copper wire, which were handed in through the window, and the finished coils made the reverse journey out the window onto the back of the truck to go to the factory.

My abiding memories from this time are: the roughness of Mum's fingers as she applied cream to an already sore nose from me having a cold, the smell of solder, something I still like, Dad using one of the empty rolls the copper wire came in to make a holder for a long extension lead. 

Please to remember the 5th of November

Red and green and silver like the scattered beads of a broken necklace are the multi coloured starburst followed closely by the retort of their launching explosion.

Definitely sounds like Guy Fawkes Night doesn’t it? 

Please to remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot! 

When I was a kid the fireworks were less impressive than today’s expensive and spectacular offerings. But we thought they were great. Sparklers and Catherine wheels, and rockets that went off with a satisfying whoosh.

But along with the smell of gunpowder and singed fingers came fear, and bad dreams.

We’d make a ‘guy’ and trundle it around calling 

Guy guy guy,

Penny for the guy, Hang him on a lamp post
And leave him there to die.

One year the ‘guy’ we tossed onto or back yard bonfire was made of granddad’s old clothes.  I had nightmares for weeks after. It was much to real and similar the old man that I loved.

Year after year a huge bonfire was built on Petone beach and fired into life on Guy Fawkes Night. That is until one year the surrounding crowed surged forward and a child was pushed into the fire. 

Mum told me that we were celebrating someone’s gruesome death, a man called Guy Fawkes. He was Hung drawn and quartered, not a nice way to die. Caught in the act of trying to blow up the houses of parliament in 1605 the gunpowder plot players, betrayed by one of their own, were found guilty of treason and sentenced to a horrible death.

 So here were all these hundreds of years later still setting off fireworks but I wonder how many of the kids today, or even the adults really know why.

Now I've heard everything...well almost

In yesterday morning's paper was an item about a chap who was badly burned when his carbon fibre fishing pole touched high voltage ovehead lines. He was trespassing on council land having squeezed through a hole in a fence. He's suing the council for not making enough efforts to keep him out!!

In the paper this morning is a report about a chap in poland who waited ten, that's right ten, years to get a set of false teeth. After all that time the shape of his face has changed and the teeth don't fit. Guess what? ..
He has been told he will have to wait another ten years for new ones.

Ratbags

This morning when I went to put my phone in my bag, it wasn't where I thought it would be. "Bother" I thought "Must have left it at work." Get to work and no it isn't there. "Bother, must be at home after all"

At home tonight, looked high and low and the phone is nowhere in sight. So what do I do but ring it. And...Hello someone answers. Must have dailed wrong.
No I didn't 'cos when I dialed it again, guess what.?

Yup, you got it in one.. Someone answered.
Kid on the other end says I don't know anything about the phone, Mum brought it home.

What next!!! I phone security at work, who will talk to the manager of the cleaning company to see who was working in my office area last night.
Then call the phone company and they 'kill' the phone
Then call the insurance company. They say report it to the police and we will action a claim.
So no prizes for guessing what I'm doing in the morning.

Now and again I had thought that the odd thing was in short supply or not where I left it. Now I am
very suspicious and angry.

Memories

Twenty years, gosh is it really that long, ago I  lost a very special man.  Lost seems not the right word to be using because it implies that it was something I did. But whatever word I use, he is no longer here. Not physically anyway. In spirit though, well that is another matter entirely.
He is my father, friend, ally, guide and all manner of other things. He guided me through the making of my first dress. Well he could read a plan couldn’t he, so what was different about making a dress. And it was a success. Helped me put a colour rinse through my hair for the very first time. He even let me drive his car, alone, when I first got my license. I don't think he ever judged me or my actions unfairly, even when I was an obnoxious teenager.

This picture was taken in his parents backyard. Mum has a wedding ring on so it  must have been taken shortly after they married. They were  married by special licence just 10 days before he was sent away.

In his latter years, I am pleased that I was able to tell him that I loved him.

I loved the way he could turn his hand to anything, and do it well. An inveterate DIYer.
From the time I was very small he always had something on the go. Painting, or building or repairing something.
An early memory is of him persuading an uncle that it would be a good idea to take down that chimney. Well Dad had already taken a couple out of our house and it did make the rooms bigger. So chimney dismantled, and what to we do with all those bricks. Didn't have a car back then in the very early 1950's. I think it was Dad that came up with the bright idea to drop them one or two at a time into the river. Not far from our house, the railway bridge spanned the river and on the other side was a children’s playground. So two things could be achieved at the same time. well three if you count a walk in the sun.
All went smoothly until one day the uncle managed to drop one of the bricks on his toe. OUCH. Bu the lounge was bigger.

I’ve done a bit of chimney dismantling myself and kept up the tradition. No toes damaged though.