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

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.
​
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.

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.

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.
​
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.
 

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.

​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.
​
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.

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).

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”.


 

I recently lost my mother-in-law, who I first met when I was nineteen. I lived in London at the time, and had just started going out with my husband to be. He was going home to Wales for Christmas, and when Mam and Dad heard that I would be on my own for the holidays, they immediately invited me to spend the time with them. I caught the coach down to Swansea, where Martin and his father met me at the bus station. Dad held out his hand and greeted me jovially with, "Welcome to Wales, Judy!" and later I enjoyed an equally warm reception from Mam.

In the years since, Mam has been a consistently supportive, loving presence in my life, and a wonderful grandmother to our son. She and I sometimes got on each other's nerves, no-one's perfect! She didn't like reading, for example, so I always had the comment "Oh! So we're in the library now, are we?" whenever I got a book out on holiday, which used to rattle my cage, but we always made things up, and we had lots of good times. I valued her kindness, generosity and patience. She was steadfast, a stalwart. She and Dycu (Welsh for
Grandad) had my son Tom to stay for all of his summers. Dycu passed away seventeen years ago, and Mam stoically carried on without him.

This will be our first Christmas season without seeing Mam since 1975. I miss her. And, as always when a loved one passes away, cannot help reflecting on ways I could have been more loving. In my mind, Mam's faults have flown up and away, like chaff in the wind, and what is left is the memory of the goodness at the heart of her.

Tolstoy wrote in his diary as a very young man:

 "The powerful means for achieving true happiness in life is - and without any dogmas - to spread out from oneself, in every direction, like a spider, a whole spider's web of love, and to catch in it everything that comes along - whether it is an old woman or a child, a girl or a
policeman."

At this time of celebration of love and light, reading this encourages me to try and give as many hugs, kisses, pats, and expressions of warmth and goodwill, as I can. Christmas is one of those times when you can feel extra lonely and unloved if you're on the outside of things.