Judith Johnson
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We'll All Be Ben Gunns Soon!

10/4/2020

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A side-effect of the current Covid-19 lockdown, and admittedly a very high-class problem, is our growing hair, and the likelihood of not getting to the hairdresser's any time soon! The only other similar situation that comes to mind is that of the residents of the village of Oberammergau in Passion Play* year, which, incidentally has, along with so many other events, been postponed.

I, along with one of my five brothers, and my son, were all blessed with the same unusually thick hair. I recall at Hastings College in the early 1970s, I spent a whole hour in the student common room merrily braiding my long hair in tiny plaits. The problem was that my sister-in-law, who I was emulating, had very fine hair, and used this method to plump hers up. When I undid mine in the changing room, I found I had something that verged on a giant Afro, and I crept home praying that no-one would see me.

My son has now resorted to buying a pair of clippers, and my daughter-in-law has done a good job. But I don't think I can risk it, as Cell Block H is not currently casting, and that's certainly the look I'd end up with. That or Magwitch on a bad day.

Two salutory tales:

When really quite small, I found a pair of interesting large scissors (wallpaper scissors I later discovered) in our laundry room (I also found a pack of Robin starch which I innocently fed to the birds, but that's another story). I thought it might be a good idea to cut my hair, as I truly loathed hairdresser visits. However, when I regarded my work in a mirror, it must have struck me that it didn't look too great, as I went and put on my swimming-cap and went out to play for the day. Tea-time came, and Mum stood me on the kitchen table for a strip-wash. When she asked me to take that silly hat off, I refused, at which point she removed it herself, and, viewing the results, gave me a good slap on the legs. The next day I was escorted to Dieter Henri's Salon up the Moor to have a corrective cut, no doubt with the habitual frown on my face!

A few years on, in the late sixties, my brother Jonny came down to the kitchen, where I and other members of the family were gathered, in his Vespa scooter crash-helmet. 

"Why are you wearing your crash-helmet, Jonny?"

"Erm, well, I've been cutting my hair with my new clippers."

"Yeah, so ...?"

"Well, erm, I've cut it a bit short..."

Chuckles from us, as he was a bit of a joker, and we thought this was one of his japes.

"No, really - if I take it off, you won't laugh, will you?"

"Course not," sympathetically.

"Promise?"

"Yeah, we won't laugh, honestly."

At which point my hapless brother removed his helmet to reveal a convict-like dome, resembling nothing so much as a newly-mown striped lawn. And this was in the days long before males in every walk of life went round with virtually shaven heads.

Poor Jonny. We fell about, screaming with mocking laughter.  And for some weeks afterwards, he was to be seen about the streets of Cranbrook sporting a woolly bobble-hat, until his hair grew back.

So be warned!

*​http://www.judithjohnson.co.uk/blog/the-passion-play-of-oberammergau






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Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther

29/11/2019

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 I have resolved, since moving house with dozens of boxes of books, including an entire bookshelf’s worth to be read, not to buy any more second-hand books if I can help it, but to use public libraries, except for books for birthday and Christmas presents, which I’ll  purchase from independent bookshops. Libraries, in Austerity Britain, are under constant threat of closure . They are being forced to justify their existence, which includes tallying books taken out by library users. Since 2010, more than 478 libraries have closed in England, Wales and Scotland.*

There is a wonderful library in Brecon, staffed by exceptionally friendly, helpful librarians. It is currently in transit, having closed in November in order to make the move to a new site adjacent to the Brecon Museum.  Before they closed, they allowed users to take out a nice big pile of books to keep them going over the break, and one of my serendipitous finds was Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim.

I had never read this author, and assumed she was German, but actually she was a New Zealander, cousin to Katherine Mansfield, and her first marriage was to a Prussian aristocrat, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin.  This interested me, as my great-great aunt Lucy (pictured below with her two children), who was born in Kashmir, also married a Prussian - Count Radolin Radolinski, Chamberlain to the royal Prussian court; privy councillor; supreme steward to Kaiser Friedrich III and  imperial German ambassador. 



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In this really excellent epistolatory novel, von Arnim lays out Fraulein Schmidt’s thoughts and  a whole cast of beautifully-drawn characters so skilfully, using the device of a one-sided correspondence  ie Fraulein Schmidt’s letters to Mr Anstruther. It was published in 1907, seven years before the First World War must have put a temporary stop to young English gentlemen travelling to Germany to learn the language and culture.

I loved reading this, and  will definitely be recommending it not only to friends but also possibly laying in a copy for my baby granddaughters for some future reading. Yes, it’s that good!


*https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/15/tories-libraries-social-mobility-conservative
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Twixmas - giving thanks for the last Christmas Puddings!

30/12/2018

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I don’t eat sugar, so most of the year I don’t eat cake, but  at Christmas time I look forward to making  Christmas cake and puddings with some  excellent (cane) sugar-free recipes. It’s sweet enough with all the fruit, and I get the organic ingredients from  a wonderful  cooperative in Hastings, Trinity Wholefoods.
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Before the New Year, I like to make one more for the house, and another for my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters to tuck into on New Year’s Eve. I’ve had a really enjoyable morning mixing these up while listening to Cerys Matthew’s brilliant Sunday morning programme on BBC Radio 6 Music. I love this Twixmas time, when, for those of us who are lucky enough not to be working right through, there’s time for reflection, rest, and respite from the onslaught of life’s busy busy business.

Many of us don’t these days say a religious Grace before eating, but here’s a nice family one from Festivals, Family and Food by Diana Carey and Judy Large:

Earth who gives to us our food
Sun who makes it ripe and good
Dearest Earth and Dearest Sun
Joy and love for all you have done.


If I remember before I leap into eating, I also like to silently thank all those people who have worked hard to grow my food. In this case I’d like to thank those brothers and sisters around the world who produced these ingredients which went into the puddings today:

  • raisins from Uzbekistan
  • currants from Greece
  • sultanas and apricots from Turkey
  • prunes and almonds from the USA
  • orange and lemon peel from Italy
  • pears from Kent
  • ginger, cinnamon and mace from the spice-growing nations
  • eggs from Britain
  • apple and pear juice from the Netherlands
  • gluten-free flour from Doves Farm, Berkshire

Lastly, thanks to son Tom, who bakes beautiful loaves of bread, and gives them to us wrapped in greaseproof paper and string. I’ve recycled these to wrap the puddings for five hours’ boiling.
 
PS
Here’s a link to another Johnson Twixmas offering  - it took a lot longer to produce, but equally tasty for bookworms who love a good  creepy tale!

http://www.mj-johnson.com/blog/twixmas-offer-less-than-half-price

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Marriage Lines

4/3/2018

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I shed a few tears yesterday. My husband, who placed my wedding ring on my finger almost 38 years ago as we made our wedding vows at Capel Kings Cross, had to cut it off with a pair of wire-cutters. Happily for me this was followed by a reassuring loving hug.

My mother, at 94 years old, still has delicate thin fingers, but I seem to have inherited my father’s gene in respect of a tendency to swollen joints, and my ring-finger was becoming increasingly troublesome. Although it was swollen, and there would likely never now be any possibility of slipping the ring over the middle joint, I had hoped there would not be a need, but when I woke yesterday morning with a very sore finger I knew the ring had to be removed.  Perhaps the cold weather had made it worse, I don’t know, but after an unsuccessful attempt at a method for getting rings off found on you-tube, Martin fetched his tool-box.

Mum gave me the ring when I was a teenager. She had worn it since 1944, when she and Dad were married, and he had bought her a new ring for their 25th Wedding Anniversary. They bought it at Woolworths, and it had been decorated with orange-flower leaves, she told me, but they had worn down somewhat, and now, after almost 50 years of my wearing it daily, have completely disappeared.
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I believe that our marriage is, of course, only symbolised by the wedding ring, but nonetheless, and I’m sure I share this with many others, there’s something distressing about cutting it off my hand. In due course perhaps I will take it to a jewellers and have it soldered so that I can at least wear it on a chain round my neck.

We all know that when we pass out of this life we can’t take anything material with us, but we all cherish certain items we deem precious and meaningful. We have a number of family heirlooms, not valuable in monetary terms, but which give a kind of continuity, of heritage: my father-in-law’s football  trophy, my son’s first Clarks shoes, my Nanna’s kitchen-tongs (still in almost daily use!).

How painful it must be for the many dispossessed, fleeing from war, terror, desperate want, who can’t take these things with them.  I often think of my late friend Max, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, and who came to Britain on a Kindertransport. He had to make a new life here, and had virtually no mementoes of his loved ones. But at least he was given sanctuary - which sadly is no longer on offer in Britain today to so many who need it.


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1 July 2016

30/6/2016

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PictureHal & Ida on their wedding day
My grandfather Harold Edgar Shaw died when I was a child so I don’t know as much about him as I’d like. During the First World War he  was a medical orderly. He had trained as a pharmacist with Boots after an embezzler in his family, whose theft had to be repaid, made it financially impossible for him to train as a children's doctor, his cherished ambition.  Mum told me once that, when he set up on his own, and during the straitened times following the economic crash in 1929 and Great Depression, he often gave medicines to the needy without payment, though he could ill afford it.  She also told me recently, in one of her lucid moments, that he was a Labour man, through and through, all his life. He must have served in Egypt as well as on the Western Front, as my sister recalled he had some treasured 78s of Egyptian music which he had brought home from the war. In later life he loved to read the works of celebrated travel writer HV Morton, and I have inherited one of his books, A Traveller in Italy.

When I recall Grandpa I feel heart-warmed, and have an emotional memory of a kind, quiet, humble man. He ended his days in a mental hospital, where he used to wake in the night, weeping in great distress, believing he was back amongst the terrible scenes of the battlefields.

I have been to battlefield cemeteries of both world wars on a number of occasions, and stood at the graves of men from many nations - Chinese, Indian, American, Canadian, Australian, Russian, French, North African, German, Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh, all in their time deeply mourned and missed by their loved ones.   As most do, who visit these places, I am  always profoundly moved.

PictureOscar Maier
One young man commemorated on my local War Memorial was Oscar Maier, a Private in the West Kent Yeomanry (Queen’s Own), who died on 31 August 1916 in the Battle of Delville Wood, and was buried in Mametz, in the Somme. Ironically, Oscar’s parents were economic migrants from Germany, arriving in Southborough in 1895. They had heard from the War Office that Oscar had been wounded several weeks before his death was finally confirmed to them on November 29th. Until then they hoped he might still be alive. His younger brother, was 16 at the time. His son Clive told me “The only thing my father ever told me was that the telegram came on the morning of his sister’s wedding.  His father read the telegram, put it in his pocket, told no one and went through with the wedding. Only when the last guest had gone did he tell the family.”

On 1 July 2016, in one of many ceremonies, the democratically-elected leaders of the nations who took part in the First World War will gather for a ceremony at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing near Albert, in France, to commemorate the appalling carnage of the First Day of the Battle of the Somme 100 years ago.
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How desperately sad that what should have been a coming together of our leaders in a spirit of community and cooperation should be marred by the shocking division and hatred stirred up by the British referendum on 23 June.
 

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The Indian Princess

10/6/2016

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PictureJohn Howard Wakefield 1862
When I was a child, the story in my family was that my siblings and I were descended from an Indian princess. I knew that my father, James Hayter, had been born in India, and lived there until he was seven, but it wasn’t until some years later that I learnt more about my Indian ancestry.  My Aunty Janet and cousin Mary both had a passion for investigating the story of my great-great grandmother.

My father was born in Lonavala, a hill-station near Poona (now known as Pune), in Maharashtra, India,  in 1907, and was sent 'home' in 1914 for a British education at Dollar Academy, Scotland. He boarded with an aunt, and wasn't to see his mother again until after the end of the First World War. A family photograph of that time (see below) includes someone who was perhaps an 'ayah', who may have accompanied the children on the voyage. I read recently that these women were often shamefully abandoned after they outlived their usefulness. I hope this wasn't the case with my family.

PictureDad in Dollar
​My great-great-grandfather John Howard Wakefield  was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army, and First Cantonment Magistrate in Lahore. He had been born in 1803, into a Quaker family, and was the grandson of Edward Wakefield, London merchant in Gresham St, and Priscilla (Bell) Wakefield, authoress and botanist. One of his brothers was Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a coloniser of New Zealand.

It was said that John Howard  eloped with a young woman he first spied over the fence of an enclosure. It's not always possible to tease out fact from fiction, but it is rumoured that their meeting was the basis of the love story in MM Kaye's The Far Pavilions. He married her in 1831, she converted from Hinduism to Christianity, after being re-named Maria Suffolk.  She was the daughter of Kheru-Jumnu, Hereditary Vizier of Bashahr, and also the ward of the Rana of Kumarsain. I have been told that her father was put to death by the British for his part in the Indian Mutiny (I have recently read The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple, which was very illuminating on the subject of the Mutiny from the Indian viewpoint). Maria died in 1852, ten years before her husband.
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I am told that John Howard Wakefield persuaded all of his regiment to take the pledge, and go teetotal, and that in 1862, resident by that time in Canonbury Square, Islington, he caught a chill on the way home from a temperance meeting at the Union Chapel on Upper Street and died soon after of pneumonia.
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Their son, my great-grandfather, was George Edward Wakefield* (East India Company Deputy Commissioner Ludhiania, Punjab ) (1831-1892). One of his daughters was my grandmother Violet Mary Wakefield.

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George Edward Wakefield
​My grandfather, Owen Chilton Goodenough Hayter was a Police Commissioner, in Simla, and he married Violet at Christchurch in Mussoorie circa 1900. They had thirteen children, but only five of them survived to adulthood (according to a Twitter acquaintance, Sanjay Argarwal, the church, the oldest in the Himalayas, is still maintained very nicely.) Eventually  my grandfather retired and they returned to live in England, but not all of Violet's siblings were willing to leave India, and some returned to India at the end of their schooling in the UK, including her brother Jack, who worked as Agent to the Maharajah of Tikari, and his son, Colonel John Felix Wakefield, who spent much of his later life working as Director of an elephant reserve/jungle lodge in Kabini, Kerala.
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George Edward's wife and children
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Owen & Violet's wedding at Christ Church, Mussoorie
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Violet & Owen and household - Dad is 3rd from left, front row
In 1976, Aunty Janet, then around my age now, travelled to India for the first time since her childhood, flying in to Karachi and then taking the train to Hyderabad. She wrote: "Visited Gymkhana Club - just as remembered - and St Thomas Church...in the evening discovered to my great joy the bungalow we lived in, and had tea and delicious carrot sweet with the kind Lt Col's  family (the Najams) who inhabit it now...it was quite eerie going round the bungalow, and I expected to meet my own small self in a solar topee any moment”.

After an en route visit to Mohenjodaro, Janet flew on to Lahore "where I hoped to get help in tracing great-grandmamma's grave", which she did, via the Anglican Cathedral and the Diocesan Council's records of old burials.  She wrote: "...In the morning I called on the Reverend ...he called for someone to open a room going on the garden ... When the door was opened we were faced with a horrible smell. Don't go in, said the Reverend, "let the air go in first" ... the room had some odd growths hanging like strings from the roof, and one wall was lined with enormous leather-bound volumes in a very bad state of preservation and in no kind of order. They were going to fetch me a chair, and I was prepared to spend the whole morning, perhaps several mornings, searching. But by an extraordinary stroke of luck, the very first volume I picked out at random was an index of graves in the old Taxali Gate Cemetery, and so in less than five minutes I had found what I wanted... the Gate is one of the five gates of the old walled city... when I entered the cemetery my heart sank ... it is enormous ... and most of the gravestones have been knocked about and destroyed ... I walked through, and there it was - a plain slab of red sandstone flat but raised from the ground and in a remarkably good state of preservation, one of the best in the cemetery. Beautiful undefaced lettering."

Then she went on to Simla: "Explored Simla. Climbed Jacko - terribly steep - to Raja of Bushayr's house, which has what must be the most wonderful view in the world.

And on again, "breathtakingly lovely run", to Ranpur. "We climbed to almost 9,000 feet, and then gradually (the run took 6 hours), dropped down into a deep valley  made by the famous River Sutlej. Ranpur , the ideal capital of a small state ... one of the first free schools in India formed by the late Rajah Padam Singh ... on it is inscribed: BETTER UNBORN THAN UNTAUGHT, BETTER UNTAUGHT THAN ILLTAUGHT, and below that, COME AND LEARN GO AND SERVE and SERVE MAN AND SO SERVE GOD". (Note - I have inherited Aunty Janet's love of copying down inscriptions!)."The same Rajah built the new place, in 1926, where I am staying in lonely state ... in the grounds is an ornamental pavilion ... the most ancient building in Bushahr ... over it stands an enormous peeput tree - four or five hundred years old. I wonder whether Great Grandmamma played under it?... Taku Sahib, who is Chairman of the Municipal Council, thinks Great Grandmamma may have come from Pooh, another day's journey from here, and says there is a ninety year old there who is reputed to have talked about a Bushahr girl going off with an English soldier... alas! It is in restricted territory and I could only get a permit to go there in Simla... I'll have to come here again, later in the year next time."

Back in Simla, she "rushed to see Rajah of Bushahr, who said if I tell him the name of the Old Man of Pooh, he'll write to him and try and get some information for me. He said he was sure he'd seen the  name Wakefield on a sword or something."

In Mussoorie, she visited the church where her mother was married, and "Granny's house ... where we used to spend the hot weather ... I remembered how I had built a shrine on the steep bank above it and made a cross out of two bits of dried bamboo, and knelt there and prayed fervently. When I got bored with that I used to scramble down, go into the house, stand on a chair and steal toffee out of a large jar on a high shelf. Then I'd go back to my shrine and pray for forgiveness - and then back for more toffee, and then more prayers!"

I'd love to track down my great-great-grandmother's original home one day, should the opportunity present itself. I learnt today that 'in a step to create one of the largest repositories of Indian genomes, Bangalore-based Medgenome has teamed up with a southeast Asian consortium that has committed to sequence 100,000 Asian genomes. Were it to work to plan this could mean a consolidated storehouse of at least 30,000 Indian genomes'. So maybe one day I'll be meeting one of my distant Himalayan cousins!
 
 *John Howard’s aunt Isabella Wakefield married John Nicholson, Quaker of  County Down, and they had 16 children, the third child Alexander himself being the father of Brigadier-General John Nicholson, Soldier and Administrator, later styled ‘Hero of Delhi’, killed in the Indian Mutiny. He was Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar in 1857 with George Edward Wakefield (1831-1892, East India Company Deputy Commissioner Ludhiana, Punjab ) as an assistant (and also his first cousin, twice removed).
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The Urge to Purge

23/11/2014

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PicturePenguin No 8
I found myself telling colleagues about my old autograph book this week. It somehow disappeared when we moved out of our house in Cranbrook in 1971. It really was quite a good'un, with autographs Dad had got for me when working at Pinewood, Elstree etc. It had loads of smashing British actors in it, as well as all four Beatles, Mick Jagger and Tom Jones!  With the advent of selfies etc, autographs seem to have lost ground, but I still treasure a reply I had from Peter Jackson to my appreciative letter posted to New Zealand after the first Lord of the Rings film came out.

When my parents moved to Spain, there was a lot of downsizing needed  after years spent in a big family house with eight children. There was an auction, and most went in job lots, including Grandpa Hayter's library of first editions. I particularly remember a rather beautiful turquoise-covered first edition of Oscar Wilde's Salome. But hey-ho, you can't have everything - where would you put it? And when I regret things gone, I think of my friend Max, who left Europe on a Kindertransport with  a tiny suitcase, and all the other refugees that have existed before and since, forced to leave everything behind.
 
It's good to declutter, but I've learnt to hold my fire when I get into a certain purging frame of mind, and a desire comes over me to throw everything out. I guess the balance is to consider and select only the truly precious things, and to give, sell, or take to the recycling centre a significant portion of the rest. Who would want to end up like the man whose basement, upon his demise, was found to contain a copy of every issue of the Radio Times published during his entire adult life?

Our son is getting married next spring, a significant turning-point for us all, and, looking forwards to the next stage of our lives, we hope to streamline all that stuff stored away in the attic. I never get rid of anything without consulting its owner, but this year finally washed, dried and gave away to the local church's tombola-stall, my son's childhood soft toys (well, most of them!). 

There's still a way to go! William Morris famously said that one should have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. Well, some of the items I've hung on to are lovely to me, but they sit on the shelves year after year lacking attention. Here are a few of them:

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These four rather beautiful door-handles are from our former home in London. They were made by Wilbec, and are 30s/40s Lucite/Bakelite. 



The cracked mug - Hackney, the 'radical Socialist borough' from where, to some of our friends' amazement, we moved to a village in East Sussex with a Tory MP.


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A packet of Co-Operative Society sewing needles from Mam's sewing-box, and others kept on a half-torn ticket from the Coliseum, Trecynon for their production of Mud Diggers in aid of Aberdare Warship Week (I might keep the ticket for my scrapbook!) 

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A bottle from the Thomas Niagara Works in Swansea. Thanks to the joys of the internet, I've just found this info about its origins on the web: http://www.jlb2011.co.uk/walespic/archive/000826z.htm

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Some things, however, will be staying! My mother has knitted many marvellous things over the years, from Indian Chief cardigans (1960s) to Mr and Mrs Jack Frost (they come out every Christmas), and, especially treasured, my haunted castle pencil-pot.

At moments of crisis, like the illness or death of loved ones, you come to know, again, the truth that love is the most valuable commodity, and all else is passing.

Here's one more William Morris quote from Light from Many Lamps, another 'keeper', one of my favourite books, somewhat tatty now after much use:

"I'm going your way, so let us go hand in hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for soon death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep. Let us help one another while we may."

 

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Relativity Theory!

25/5/2014

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PictureMy Nanna, Ida Shaw
I love archaeology and history, and I’ve always thought it would be fascinating to have a gathering of people who see each other regularly, for example members of  a club (like my own local running group Sarah’s Runners) and get them to bring along their family trees to see how many are related. Ultimately, of course, we must all be cousins. Professor Brian Sykes’ intriguing book The Seven Daughters of Eve claims we are all descended from just seven women, and Dr Alice Roberts, says in her BBC series The Incredible Human Journey that every one of us has both black and white ancestors. It’s also claimed that most of Europe is related to ‘Otzi’, the man from 5,000 years back whose remains were discovered in the South Tyrol.

Something that intrigued me recently when reading Canada by Richard Ford was a character’s notion that most of us don't know and don’t care much about who they are related to beyond their grandparents. This doesn't include of course the hordes of furiously excavating genealogy enthusiasts, world-wide!

Anyhow, I rose to the challenge and sat down to list my great grandparents. Two of them were Thomas Frederick and Martha Cureton. Thomas was coachman and then chauffeur at Rashwood Court, the 'big house' in Wychbold, nearr Droitwich. Thomas and Martha lived in the chauffeur's cottage with their daughter Ida, who was born at the end of the nineteenth century.

The labour was long and hard, and after a boy had been born, the midwife was puzzled at Martha's condition. "There's something wrong here," she is reported to have said, and sent immediately for the doctor. He was out riding on his hunter, apparently, and somewhat the worse for drink, but he reluctantly came as summoned. Pushing his hand up the birth canal, he  announced "There's another one up here!" and pulled out my grandmother, a tiny twin. He dismissively cast her onto the bed and said "You can get rid of that - it won't live," at which the midwife cried, "Oh doctor! Where there's life, there's hope!" and rescued the baby, wrapping her in cotton wool. The big, healthy looking boy sadly died at six months, but Nanna lived into her mid-nineties.


PictureWedding of Harold Shaw and Ida Cureton
She married Grandpa Shaw in the 1920s, after he had returned from his service in the First World War. Through him, and two of my other great-grandparents, I am (it seems from my Uncle and cousin’s research) descended from the ‘White Queen’, Elizabeth Woodville, as follows:







My grandfather was Edgar Harold SHAW
his father, my great-grandfather, was William Attwood SHAW
his father, my great-great-grandfather, was Thomas Charles SHAW
his father, my great-great-great-grandfather, was Obadiah Gilbert SHAW
his father, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, was Gilbert Read SHAW
his father, my great x 5 grandfather, was Daniel (II) SHAW
his father, my great x 6 grandfather, was Daniel SHAW
his mother, my great x 7 grandmother, was Alice JELLIANS
her mother, my great x 8 grandmother, was Elizabeth WILMER
her father,  my great x 9 grandfather, was Thomas WILMER
his mother, my great x 10 grandmother, was Anne (Agnes) SUTTON
her father, my great x 11 grandfather, was Edward SUTTON 4th Lord Dudley
his mother, my great x 12 grandmother, was Cecily GREY
her father, my great x 13 grandfather, was Thomas GREY
her mother, my great x 14 grandmother, was Elizabeth WOODVILLE, ‘The White Queen’

And through Cecily Grey’s mother, from Edward Plantagenet,

his mother was Cecily GREY
her mother was Cecily BONNEVILLE
her mother was Catherine NEVILLE
her father was Richard NEVILLE
his mother was Joan de BEAUFORT
her father was John of Gaunt PLANTAGENET
his father was Edward PLANTAGENET, Edward III, King of England.

According to other family trees sent me by a cousin, I’m also descended from William the Conqueror. The actor  and musician Alexander Armstrong in his edition of BBC TV's Who Do You Think You Are was also pleased to find he had the same great (however-many-times) grandfather.

But I don’t think I need get too over-excited! Since my own ninety year old mother already has over 50 direct descendants, I reckon the Conqueror’s descendants must run into millions!


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Remembering Mam

16/11/2013

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I have lost a number of loved ones, among them three of my brothers and my father, and most recently, my mother-in-law. In each case, the things that bothered me about that person, their shortcomings as I perceived them, the small injuries they had done me, were, on their death, very shortly put into a different perspective: the long view of a life once it has ended. Any grievances rose to the top of my feelings about them and floated away – I could see these old judgements for what they were – nothing like as important as I had held them in my mind. What was left was the fondness in my heart for people, the essence of who they truly were. 
 
I first met Mam when I was nineteen. She and Dad, on hearing that Martin’s new girlfriend would be spending Christmas on her own in London, invited me down to their home near Swansea. Dad was there at Swansea Bus Station to meet us, looking smart and shoe-polished, warmly shaking me by the hand and saying “Welcome to Wales!” Mam and Nan waited back at the bungalow with a hot meal. Mam cared for Nan, her elderly mother, until Nan's death.
 
Mam became  like a second mother to me – my own Mum being largely absent in those years, living in Spain. Mam taught me how to wrap my baby son Welsh shawl style so that I could carry him round for as long as I needed to, swaddled against my heartbeat, and leaving my right arm free. She showed me so many small things, which gathered together, comprised what I had not been taught in my own home. And she was a wonderful grandmother to our boy. She came up to London to help out when he was born, she was always willing and ready to assist when needed. I had an ectopic pregnancy only weeks before we moved to Sussex, and she travelled up on the train to fetch our five year old son down to Wales while my husband packed up the house and finished the tasks involved in closing down my theatrical agency. When my son had febrile convulsions in the second year of his life, she was a calm and reassuring presence at my side. She herself suffered from some OCD issues, yet in spite of this, she was in many ways a sure and steady person to have with you in frightening times. She and Dad were generous, though they had never had much money – unasked for, they would pay for new shoes for our son, coal in a hard winter when interest rates had soared, took us for a week’s holiday to their beloved Blackpool when funds were low. And they were always kind and scrupulously fair in their gifts to all their grandchildren. 
  
We had many wonderful summer holidays in Wales – Mam would pack up sandwiches, crisps, fruit and a bottle of pop for our outings to the beach on the Gower, or trips to Carreg Cennen etc. We never came back up the M4 towards home without provisions for the journey. And Mam faithfully sent cards for birthdays, tests passed, anniversaries etc. 
 
There’s an old story that the Welsh people is the lost tribe of Israel, and Mam certainly had some things in common with the archetypal Jewish Mama: her two sons were the apples of her eyes, and could do very little wrong, and naturally enough, that rankles with daughters-in-law from time to time! We had a joke that if Martin or my son asked for a special dish, whatever hour it was, e.g. gammon, egg and chips at midnight, if remotely possible Mam would happily oblige, whereas if I asked for muesli for breakfast when toast was the norm, I
was blinkin’ awkward!
 
We got on each other’s nerves from time to time – we both had quite strong wills – and we had one or two quarrels, but we got through them.
 
Like I said ,Mam suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder. She used to say that I couldn’t know how bad “her nerves” were, and although I sympathised, as a young woman I also felt annoyed by her odd ways – always having to check a certain number of times that the gas cooker was off, that the door was locked, every time she left the house. It’s only with hindsight and experience of my own ‘funny’ ways, with years of struggling with my own character defects and bad habits, that I see how hard it is to overcome these things.
 
But Mam was also very brave. After Dad died, she worked hard to get out and about on her own, join classes, take the bus to Llanelli, Swansea, Aberdare and Carmarthen to eat in cafes, and do her shopping with her little rucksack. And she had some great qualities – she was patient, caring, constant in her affections and loving in very practical ways. 
 
After my father-in-law's death in 1995, Mam missed him dreadfully – she used to sigh and say “Oh Judy, I miss that man”. They met when she was fourteen and she said she could never think of being with another man. Towards the end of her life, when Mam suffered more and more with loneliness, she would always end telephone conversations with the philosophical words “Dyna fordd y mae” (that’s how it is).
 
When Mam was dying in hospital, my son and I drove down to Wales to see her. We sat with her and held her hands, stroked her forehead, gave her kisses. We had no idea how long it would be before her heart gave out, and regretfully I returned to work in Kent while Martin stayed with her. He sat alone with her through her last night, only two days later, and rang the next morning to tell me that she had just passed away. On Wednesday it will be a  year since she died. I miss her.



Loving and cherishing those around us is a very worthwhile practice to
aim for. As someone once wrote: “Any good that I can do, or any kindness that I
can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or
neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again”.


 

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Wedding on a Shoestring

30/6/2013

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PictureCutting the cake!
We popped down to Hastings today to see my Mum, and did some shopping en route. As I sipped a latte, I had a leaf through the Times and read the piece entitled Billionaire rants at media over hobbit wedding insults. I have no axe to grind with Sean and Alexandra Parker, who are entitled to have the marriage ceremony they choose – but I thought I would offer an alternative -   a wedding on a shoestring, which was a very happy occasion and kicked off a  marriage which has so far lasted, through its inevitable ups and downs, for 33 years!
 
We got married in 1980. We had shared a home in Islington for several years by then. We just decided one night that it was time to get hitched, shook hands on it, and wasted no time in putting our plans into action! We got in touch with the Minister of Capel Kings Cross, a Welsh Congregationalist chapel on Pentonville Road, to fix a date. We were invited to  attend two services at the Capel, and shared a very friendly cup of tea afterwards in the basement with the regulars. We then got on the blower (no mobiles or internet!) to invite our friends and family. We didn’t get round to printed invitations! We didn’t have a large income  – Martin was working as an actor, mostly theatre, and I was working as PA to a  theatrical agent in the daytime, and waitress/barmaid/box office evenings at the Kings Head Theatre Club round the corner. 
  
I already had a wedding ring – Mum had given me her original wartime ring when I was fourteen when Dad bought her a new one – and an actress friend of mine gave me an intro to a number of rag-trade contacts she had. I found a pretty dress at a trade price of £10, and a pair of cream shoes at Chapel Market in Islington. A friend who shared the house with us French-plaited my hair for the wedding and I had no make-up – I was 23 years old and had been a teenager in the 70s, at which time young women didn’t go in much for cosmetics! My sister Caroline (pregnant at the time) was my matron-of-honour and wore her own flower print dress.
 
We put on a spread, again helped by friends and family, in the basement of our rented house. We bought a home-cooked ham from Chapel Market, sliced meats and quiches from the nice sandwich-bar near my work place off Baker Street, and made ratatouille, potato salad, and other party foods at home. My in-laws (and Martin!!) spent the evening before the wedding cooking chicken portions while I went out to Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden with my sisters and mother for a girls’ night out! Mam and Aunty Olwen brought the wedding cake up from Wales. The local pub lent us glasses, and we bought the wine and beer wholesale. We had sparkling white for the toast. In those days, champagne wasn’t available discounted at supermarkets. 
  
A friend drove us to the chapel and back, so no wedding-limousine needed either! The orders of service were printed by my father-in-law, and in a typically generous Welsh gesture, given to us gratis by his employers Ty John Penry Press of Swansea. My boss at the time kindly offered to take the wedding photos.
 
Friends and relatives travelled up from Wales, from Spain, from the USA, and if anyone had looked up at the large first-floor window of our flat, it must have looked like a tightly-packed goldfish bowl! A hundred and twenty guests sat with their paper plates and cutlery on their laps or squeezed together with new friends and drinks in their hands.
 
Many people said to us afterwards that it was the best wedding they’d ever been to – relaxed, friendly, and great food! By 9pm there was a good-natured singing stand-off between the English and the Welsh which ended with most of the guests de-camping to the Prince Regent opposite, and by the end of the night, when Martin came up to our bedroom after a last look round the flat, he found me (in my bridal chamber as ’twere) surrounded by
late-stayers, still laughing and chatting!
 
I think, as I recall, my parents gave us £150 towards the wedding expenses, augmented on the day by my sister Liz, who, following Catalan tradition, cut the bridegroom’s tie into pieces and took them round on a plate, selling bits off to the guests.
 
We hadn’t planned a honeymoon as such, but we did have two Persil tickets. These were an offer, very unusual in those distant days when buy-one-get-one-free was unheard of, whereby you saved up tokens from packets of Persil washing-powder, and sent off for a Persil ticket. This enabled you to have two rail tickets for the price of one to anywhere in the UK. 
  
Martin thought we might take our bicycles to Inverness. His Dad had been there in the war and Martin remembered him saying it was flat. So, after spending a day clearing up after the party, we got on our bikes (sit-up-and-begs with no gears), wearing walking boots, with cycling capes and army-surplus rucksacks, and waved goodbye to our housemates. Apparently, they told us later, they had only just been able to conceal their mirth until they  closed the front door. We caught the night-sleeper from Kings Cross, spending the first night of our honeymoon on bunk-beds, and waking to see the purple heathery slopes of Scotland!
 
We hadn’t planned anything much (the confidence of youth!) or booked ahead – we stayed in bed and breakfasts as we cycled round Loch Ness. It took us almost all of the first day to get the first six miles to Drumnadrochit, battling against a ferocious wind funnelling up the Loch in our direction. And it wasn’t flat (Martin disremembered!). But we were also extremely lucky – that week in early March was mostly fine, whereas the week after our return brought heavy snow.  
  
I have to say that we had a great wedding and honeymoon, and I’ve never felt the slightest bit of envy about anyone else’s. And since we had our wedding in central London, it meant that for most of our friends and family, it was possible to attend without taking precious holiday time or needed money to travel to a foreign destination.

We didn’t have a wedding-present list – 1980s consumerism and Thatcherist ideals were yet to come, and we were grateful for the modest gifts, some of which have worn out now, but many are still with us. We have a very nice Norman Rockwell plate from an American friend, and a pair (Lion and Fish –Leo and Pisces) of water-pistols from another New Yorker. To this day, we haven’t used them as weapons – so far, so good!

Picture
Cycling round Loch Ness
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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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