Children are Always your Children!

‘We get 18 delicious summers with our children. This is one of your 18. If that's not perspective, I don't know what is’

My idea of a 'delicious summer'!

This quote  has been widely shared on social media, particularly as the long summer break gets closer. My attention was drawn to it by someone I follow on Instagram (@Ned in the Clouds) who has two young children, one of whom has autism. She rightly points out that not all children will be able to fly the coop the minute they turn eighteen - they may well need support to enjoy ‘delicious summers’ well into adulthood. But even if this is not the case, what does it say about all those moments you are currently sharing? Are your children counting down their years until they no longer have to endure a Eurocamp holiday or family picnic? Of course not. My children are now in their thirties (whisper it quietly but one of them still lives at home, albeit with his girlfriend and a plan to  save for their own place) and we still have a good time together.

Good times!

Over the past ten days I have enjoyed a weekend visit from my daughter, now a proud house owner ‘oop North’, and a wonderful day with my son.

All the ticks!

Beth and I spent lots of time on the beach with her dog, and had a glorious walk in the woods, collecting ticks! (Ugh - I love nature, but cannot, for the life of me, see the purpose of these hideous blood sucking creatures) We had a family barbecue, made a coffee last an hour in Costa, and watched the England v. Panama game together - cheering, shouting and saying ‘We never score from corners’ every time England were awarded one! 

Apparently we do score from corners!

To be fair, my son and I spend less time together these days but, on Wednesday, we had a real adventure. Danny Boyle has been shooting his latest film, written by Richard (Notting Hill) Curtis, in and around Gorleston and put out a request for 5000 extras for a beach concert scene. I applied for tickets when I saw it on the Book of Face, but assumed I had been unlucky, as I’d heard nothing more. By chance, on Sunday evening, I checked my junk mail, and there were two tickets! Normally my hubby would have come with me, but was in London for a meeting, my sister had other stuff to do that day and I am sadly lacking in non-working friends so thought I’d either miss out or go alone. However…against all the odds my great big hairy son said he’d spend the day on the beach, with his Mum!

Open-topped park and ride!

And what a day it was. We had ‘park and ride’ tickets and as we queued for the bus I saw that one bus was an open-topped double decker. I could not believe it when it turned out to be our transport! I’d just got over that excitement when someone handed me two tickets - one for a free burger and one for a free ice cream! Sod being in my sixties - I felt about ten again!

Free food excitement!

The atmosphere on the beach was brilliant - the sun was shining, there was music playing and there were thousands of smiling faces. 6000 to be precise - apparently the most extras used in a film in Britain. I filled up at one point - it was emotional to be a part of something this special. Danny Boyle directed us to ‘go mental’ when we saw the protagonist of the film - a musician who lived in a World where he is the only person who knows about the Beatles - perform a song that we’d never heard before. A punk version of ‘Help’ - so hard not to join in!  

Part of a crowd

Anyway, the crowd, including my lovely Aunty, who is in her late eighties, duly ‘went mental’ several times, for different ‘takes’. It was especially exciting as a helicopter filmed us while we jumped about like mad things, its shadow appearing across the front of the hotel being used as the stage. I maybe shouldn’t mention the fact that my Aunty looked up at it and, like the apocryphal penguins gazing at an aeroplane, fell over backwards! Luckily she fell onto Jake’s blow up chair, so only her dignity was damaged!

Easy to spot, and Aunty-catching!

It was an amazing day - we managed to spot ourselves on the local news (note to self: the camera really does add at least two stone!), and now can’t wait for the film to be released. My son’s Aunty-rescuing blow-up bed is bright orange, so we should be easy to spot! 

It’s difficult to explain why it felt so special but it has something to do with being a part of something, part of a crowd with one purpose. Similar to watching football I suppose.  But for me, what made it really special was being there with my boy. The fact that he spent his day off with me means as much to me as anything else. That, and the fact that it didn’t cost us a penny - best freebie ever!

Delicious!

So yes, appreciate your children / grandchildren while they’re little. Do lots of nice things with them and create masses of glorious memories. But remember that, when they’re grown up and living their own lives, the time they choose to spend with you can be even more special - it may even be ‘delicious’

What Makes Me Me?

Last week my daughter went on a photo shoot with her new job. She had to take a selection of items that ‘summed her up’ as a person, for the company website. Afterwards she commented that her layout just made her look like a hoarder. There could be something in that - she does like collecting things - but really what it showed was what a varied and interesting life she leads.

It started me wondering about what I would use to show the essence of who I am, and I found it quite a challenge. My idea of how I define myself has changed considerably since I finished work - my job was pretty much it, particularly in later years as I took on more responsibility. So, what makes me 'me' now, and what objects could I possibly use to show my character visually?

So many things!

It turns out that I also look like a hoarder! So many things are important in my life that I found limiting myself to objects that fit on my coffee table quite difficult! I had to make some tricky choices, deciding that although I love shoes, they aren’t really who I am, and neither is sewing! My life on a table! Mostly good - I am well aware how lucky I am - but some not so good. 

Fork!

The big fork represents food! I love food - eating it, savouring it, preparing it, sharing it. It fulfils all my ‘earth mother’ nurturing needs and nothing pleases me more than my family or friends sharing a meal that I have cooked, or helping my grandchildren to bake or make sandwiches. Can food be a hobby? I happen to think that it can!

Hippo!

The fork kind of links to the next object - a wooden hippo! It’s actually a carving that my sister brought me back from Kenya, but in this instance it represents my constant struggle with my body image. Despite last year’s infamous boudoir shoot I continue to dislike how I look, constantly comparing myself with others and always feeling that I need to lose weight. The fact that I truly believe that none of the people who are important to me give two hoots about how I look doesn’t seem to help in any way. Oh well…moving on!

Tennis!

Tennis! I love tennis, have always loved tennis and would play every day if I could. The injury that prevented me from playing for a year was the cause of great distress, but I’m back playing a couple of times a week now, and am slowly regaining some fitness. Amazingly, it isn’t just in a physical sense that I'm lacking but in mental alertness too. I found it really hard to concentrate at first, but things are thankfully improving.

The beautiful game!

And then there’s football. Not always the beautiful game if you’re a Norwich City fan, but still a part of me - I’m already planning what flavour Kettle Chips I need to get in before the World Cup begins!

Art...

The fridge magnets from various galleries represent my love of art. I’ve written before about how important it is to me and how it can teach me things without me even realising that I’m learning them. It troubles me how little importance it seems to carry in today’s world.

That's me, that is!

Music! This is a cheat pic, because I forgot to include the cd in my original. Nevertheless I was brought up in a home that valued music, I have enjoyed singing over the years, both in a band and in choirs, and think live music is incredible. It is also a measure of how I am feeling - if I turn on the radio or stream random playlists on Spotify, it usually means that, emotionally, I am in a good place. If I’m sitting in silence, not so much. (Please note, I am streaming a random playlist as I type!)

Don't worry, be happy!

Not surprisingly the worry people personify my anxieties, which can be many and various. It’s no secret that I was born worrying, and it continues to affect the things that I do, or, more accurately, the things that I don’t do. But hey, I’m streaming music, so…

Notebook and pencil...

The other thing that has helped me exorcise my anxiety inducing demons has been writing - whether it’s blog posts, micro-fiction or poetry. That I have become so hooked on writing poetry is amazing to me, even though my hubby tells me that my poems are horrible, because they tend to be quite dark in content!

Catty ornament

I haven’t written any poems about cats, but they are a big part of my life. We always had cats when I was small, and, as an adult, they have been my pet of choice. I love dogs, but could never swing a poo bag with any style.

All the books!

My library card is representative of reading. Since rejoining the library last year, my choice of reading is far wider, and I take a chance on books that I probably wouldn't buy. I actually panic if I don't have a book waiting to be read.

Sam!

So getting to the heart of my random mixture of artefacts, we get to the people bit. The photo of Sam could just represent how important autism has been in my life, but it is also reminder of how Sam is Sam first, and a teenager with autism second. I can truthfully say that he is now my friend and not my pupil, and I love spending time with him.

Friends!

Friends are hard to come by, and need to be treasured. For many years my friends were also my colleagues, but the A Team have stuck around!

How small were their feet?

Oh, those shoes! How little were they? My children’s first shoes. I can’t bring myself to part with them, however much I declutter! From them taking their first steps through to their (more or less) independence from me, they really are a demonstration of who I am. And I am proud of them both.

The centre of it all

And at the heart of it all, family. I remember this photo being taken, and my Dad running to pose after pressing the time delay on his camera. My family has changed, grown and evolved. It includes step children, grandchildren and a wonderful husband. It is who I am.

So, there we have it, my life on a table! What would you choose to say something about you? It's not as easy as you might think!

Remembrance

My hero...

If you look up ‘remembrance’ in the dictionary, alongside ‘the act of remembering and showing respect for someone who has died or a past event’ it also says ‘a memory of something that happened in the past’. The fear is that, after all these years, fewer and fewer people actually remember the wars. The last veteran to serve in the trenches in World War One was Harry Patch, who died in 2009, and year on year there are noticeably fewer veterans from World War Two at the Cenotaph, who have real memories of the conflict. Looking to the future, this can only make the act of remembrance increasingly more abstract.

I have no answers for how to fix this, but I can talk about my experiences of how I was taught about, what I thought of as ‘the war’, when I was small.

Would we have been here?

Every Sunday, my family would have tea (not dinner, that was for lunch time) and sit together around the table eating ham, salad, and home made cakes and biscuits. Afterwards my dad would regale us with tales from his time in the army. He’d joined the army as a medic shortly after the Second World War was declared, only a month after he’d married my mum. 

A month before the outbreak of war

Most of the stories he told were lighthearted and funny - about how he travelled the country to get home on leave, doing his best not to pay his train fares. He argued that the government was sending him miles from home, so why should he pay to get back! The scarier recollections were usually about his time on leave, when my mum and dad were fired on by a German fighter plane, or the damage done to the family home by a bomb raid. Although he shared tales of getting seasick on manoeuvres (practice for D-Day) or getting tipsy one Christmas on sherry trifle in a hospital in Burma, he didn’t really talk about any of the horrific things that he must have seen. 

This was new information!

However, during a period of prolonged ill-health, he decided to write his ‘memoirs’. We were older by this time, and me and my brothers and sister teased him mercilessly. We thought we’d heard the tales a million times, and couldn’t think why any one else would want to read them. And then we read them. My dad was a total hero. He landed in Normandy  on D Day, and was promoted in the water, because his sergeant got swept away and drowned. He travelled on an ambulance jeep to reach the wounded under sniper fire, with only the red cross to ‘protect’ him and, at the end of the war, helped clean up and reclothe inhabitants of concentration camps. And all this in his twenties and early thirties. The other underlying thread of his stories was how much he loved my mum and how desperate he was to get home to her. My hero!

My lovely Mum

I think of everything to do with remembrance, what resonates with me is that these men and women were so young. We see veterans and think of them as ancient. But they weren’t when they were fighting, battling to make the World a better place for others, separated from their loved ones. I am well aware that there have been many

other conflicts since - the Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan - but the people involved in the two World Wars had no choice. They weren’t career soldiers, and if they didn’t enlist, they were conscripted.

I am, at heart, a pacifist and my dad always said he would only enlist as a medic - he didn’t want to carry arms - but I recognise the sacrifice that over a million people made, and it is right that we remember them. Whether you do that wearing a poppy, or by taking a quiet moment to think about where we would be if no-one had stopped the Nazis, you should do it. And when poppies are being sold and your children ask why, maybe take some time to explain that thousands of young men and women went to war to protect the World from evil and make it a better place. Then there’s a chance that, even if nobody actually remembers the conflicts, we can all honour and show respect for past events.

Clothes Maketh the Man, but Shoes Maketh the Woman!

Ah, Shoe Embassy!

Last week we had the joy of having our grandchildren for a half term sleepover. Whilst we don’t really need an excuse for such an event, the reason was that we’d promised our granddaughter a new pair of boots as a belated birthday present. I don’t know who was more excited, me or her. You see, I love shoes. I hazard that I am not alone in this amongst women. Men, not so much - my husband argues that you can only wear one pair at a time, so why would you need any more than that. Meh!

If as Mark Twain said, clothes ‘maketh the man’, then shoes definitely maketh the woman!

All the t-bars! (I'm strangling the cat!)

I feel as if my love of shoes has been with me all my life - I clearly remember lying about a pair of t-bar sandals when I was 10 years old. They were too small, excruciatingly painful to wear but unbelievably beautiful, so I convinced my mum that they were a perfect fit and suffered all summer. But my, were they beautiful!

As I progressed through my teenage years I would save my meagre wages from Saturday jobs to satisfy my need for the latest style and fashion - platforms, slingbacks, Dunlop green flash plimsolls, hippy dippy leather sandals! Never stilettos though - my centre of gravity didn’t suit them!

Comfy boots!

Probably because of my experience as that 10 year old, limping through a family holiday in Kent, I eschew uncomfortable shoes. Not for me having my little toe amputated so I can fit into the latest Manolo Blahniks. I’m more a Doc Marten, Clarks Originals or desert boot type of woman. I appreciate that many of my friends regard my shoes as ugly, but I love them for their stylish quirkiness!

Another pair of t-bars - on my beautiful daughter!

Footwear is perfect - it always fits, regardless of weight fluctuation, can lift an outfit to another level, and make you feel confident when you’re at your most unsure. My daughter and I bond over shoes on a regular basis, sharing links to our latest internet finds. We both own far too many pairs and yet still resort to our favourites, time and time again.

Nanny, I love them...

It was two years ago that we first took our granddaughter to buy footwear - again as a birthday gift. We had her measured in a specialist shop and asked them to bring out any shoes in her size. She tried on a few pairs, reluctantly looking in the mirror each time. Then she tried on the silver pair with the pink flower…When she finally stopped skipping around the shop she whispered in my ear, ‘Nanny, I love them!’ Sold. She knew exactly which ones she wanted, and was so happy. They were impractical, but completely beautiful and, unlike my t-bar sandals, fitted her perfect little feet too.

Two years on, she has even clearer ideas about what she likes. She always chooses her own outfits to wear, and prefers twirly dresses to jeans, and sparkly tights to leggings. In the first shop we went to, the long suffering assistant brought her many boots, none of which passed muster. Too ‘purply’ in one case! We drove 40 miles to the next nearest specialist shop where we repeated the process. She half liked one pair, then tried on THE pair. 

THE pair!

We were again treated to a dancing, twirling child. Not only did she love them, she professed the desire to sleep in them! I have also wanted to sleep with shoes in the past, so I didn’t find this at all odd!

So in this confusing, troubling world, be grateful if you are lucky enough to own, appreciate and enjoy shoes - they bring so much happiness to both big people and little people - mine say more about me than anything else I own. Apart from, of course, handbags…

Oh the joy!

Every Little Thing's Gonna Be Alright...

Who isn't grateful for half price ice-cream?

For the past week or so, I’ve been joining in with the Salted Tail’s ‘Grateful Bedtime Stories'. It involves creating an Instagram ‘story’ listing three things you are grateful for on that particular day, just before you go to bed. And I have been finding it surprisingly difficult. 

If somebody asked me to list the things that I am generally grateful for, I wouldn’t struggle at all. 

Warm, cosy, fed - oh and a cat on the table!

I watch the news and there are daily reports of increasing numbers of people using food banks, struggling with the anathema that is Universal Credit and dreading the next knock on the door. So I am eternally grateful that I own my own home, I am warm and fed and the only knocks on the door are parcel deliveries or the window cleaner. 

He lurves me!

I have known times of hardship, and also loneliness but I now have a lovely husband who, astonishingly, loves the bones of me, despite the fact that these bones are better covered now than they have ever been. He doesn’t judge me and puts up with all my moods and grouches. Grateful? Of course I am.

I lurve them!

I am also lucky enough to have two children, two stepchildren and two adorable ‘step grandchildren’ who all get along, haven’t fallen out, still communicate with each other and with me. One of them even still lives at home - Okay, maybe not so grateful about that, but only because I know he would love to be financially able to move out! 

Loony, lovely family!

I am reasonably fit and well, despite my ongoing knee problems, and so are my family. We have had a couple of bereavements this year, but even these have served to draw us closer together through shared love and sadness.

So all told - and these things aren’t the half of it - I have very much to be grateful for. So why doesn’t it feel like it?

Stupid brain...

Primarily because my stupid brain finds it increasingly difficult to stop worrying about things that will probably never happen and prevent me living my life as I would like to. I am simultaneously convinced that my son is going to lose his job, my daughter is going to crash her car (again - she does have previous…), I’m going to run out of money, my husband is going to stop loving me, I have deep vein thrombosis / breast cancer / motor neurone disease…(delete according to the day of the week!) 

When I write all these things down, I can see how ridiculous, nay ludicrous they sound. But I can’t quieten my mind enough to focus on the simple things that I am grateful for and that make life worth living. I fully appreciate the big things - it’s the little things I need to work on. 

Stay awake for helpful tips...

I am currently listening to an audiobook sent to me by my daughter, who pretty much has me sussed. It’s called ‘The Worry Trick’ by David A Carbonell, and talks about how your brain tricks some people (me) into not only worrying about a variety of things that may never happen but also into worrying about worrying about things that may never happen. It’s been an interesting listen so far, and is making lots of sense about how anxieties affect your life. Haven’t got to the bit that offers any help yet though - I keep falling asleep! At least its helped my insomnia!

Fresh bed linen - another joyful, little thing...

I’m going to continue with #thankfulbedtimestories. I think it’s good for me to recognise little things in my life without contriving to be thankful for them. Hopefully, as time goes on they’ll become less food or drink orientated!

Sing along - you know you want to!

As I drove home from shopping yesterday, a song came on the radio that I was immediately thankful for - ‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley. It made me smile, sing along and I was very grateful to Graham Norton for playing it! 

🎶Don’t worry about a thing, because every little thing’s gonna be alright🎶