You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'family' category.
Wow what a year this has been! In the last twelve months I have been to more places and events than I have in the previous 20 years.
We started with the trip to London to see Hamlet, then we have seen several West End productions here in Cardiff, several visits to the cinema, my first holiday by air for 25 years, to Malta, the recent cruise and now my first ever pop concert!
Most of these (except the cruise) are down to my daughter’s determination to prove that 70 is not old. 
Last year when we first saw that Cliff and the Shadows were doing a reunion tour, and that they were coming to Cardiff, we could not resist, especially as JW offered to pay for the tickets.
Jennie booked the tickets on the day the booking office opened, (a few minutes after it opened actually) which was just as well as it was rapidly a complete sell out.
The year has flown by and October 6th was soon upon us. When we arrived at the Cardiff International Arena, the pavements were thronged with people, many with grey or white hair, predominantly female. Coaches were disgorging more from all parts of Wales and the West country, but all were very orderly and friendly.
Jennie had chosen the seats well and we had a splendid view. The performance started with a filmed bit and then the stage was lit up and Cliff, Hank and Bruce were waving and grinning at the audience. They have all aged very well, and there was an excited roar of welcome from the audience and then we settled down to listen to the music, contented to sway and sing along. As the evening wore on the swaying became more pronounced, the applause louder and you could see us all shedding years until we back to our teens again!
Just before the interval the Shadows did a set on their own of their number one hits, which was rapturously received.
During the interval, all inhibitions had gone and we were chattering away as though we really were teenagers again. Even the men accompanying their partners had lost their resigned “I’m only here to indulge the wife,” look, and admitted they were enjoying it.
After the interval Cliff came back on for about 40 minutes and then Hank and Bruce took over, exchanged good humoured badinage, and then,together with their excellent drummer, Brian Bennet, bass guitarist, Mark Griffiths and keyboard player, Warren Bennet, played the penultimate set. By the time Cliff came back on the audience were all standing and shouting for more. We weren’t exactly dancing in the aisles, but close to dancing in our seats! ( I did wonder what all our grandchildren would have thought had they seen us!)
At the end of the evening everyone filed out, We didn’t smash anything, I didn’t catch a whiff of any wacky baccy, or see anyone popping pills, but there was such a feeling of happiness and friendship around that I wish I could have bottled it to sprinkle around!
We arrived home still up on cloud nine, so thank you JW for indulging your wife and daughter and thank you Jennie for refusing to let me feel old.
Just a short post to thank all those who have visited my site over the past year, especially those who were kind enough to leave comments. It has amazed me that there are so many who have shown interest in my “meanderings” and memories and have put up with my occasional rants! I feel as though some of you have been friends for years.
Thank you one and all. Maybe we would have a happier world if everyone blogged.
One of the treats I enjoyed a lot when I was small was accompanying my Mum and her friends to the tea dance at the Palais de Dance. Four of them from the Young Wives Fellowship used to go every Monday afternoon.
When I was on holiday from school they took me with them. I thought it was the most glamorous place I had ever been, with its glitterball, little tables and shaded lights, the small orchestra of elderly men in their dress suits and the siver haired MC.
My Mum loved to watch any kind of dancing, but I think she only did ballroom and a bit of Scottish and English country dancing. She was a lively “flapper” in the twenties, when she was a teenager. She was aided and abetted in this by her Aunt Margaret, who taught her to make the fringed and fancy dresses, and thus encouraged her lifelong interest in fashion and dress-making. Even when she was in her eighties and disabled, she was always particular about what she wore.
Even during the war and rationing, she and her friends had their ”tea dresses” and silver dancing shoes.
The dancing was all ”old time dancing”, not the glitzy and athletic dancing we see on TV now. There were few men, so the women usually danced with each other, to the strains of the small orchestra, who played all the wartime favourites and prewar tunes.
After about an hour, tea and biscuits or cakes was served. During this interval a raffle was held in aid of the armed forces. I was so excited one time when one of Mum’s friends thrust her ticket into my hand and said, “You have this one me duck!” It was the winning ticket and I was thrilled to go up and collect the prize. It was a (to me !) beautiful frilly nightdress case. I wasn’t sure what to do after receiving it, so I thanked the MC and curtseyed (as I had been taught at my ballet school)
The excitement of these outings lasted long after we had returned home, and I used to persuade my Mum to dance around at home to the music of Victor Sylvester on the wireless. ……
Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.
Well, project number one, the knitted bolero is finished. The Firefly yarn is very odd to knit with, (it is two threads with silky bits in between) so I had to concentrate as it is easy to knit twice into the same stitch, however it gives an interesting texture when it is finished. It was a bit of a gamble as I adapted a pattern I already had, which was for a different yarn, but it seems to have worked out OK.
Project number two is the evening dress. Again this was using an old pattern which I had adapted. This one was more complicated, so it has taken me longer than the couple of days I was anticipating, as I have had to unpick a few bits and redo them. Some of the techniques were a bit rusty too, so I couldn’t do them on auto pilot as I used to do them.
I got so frustrated with one bit of it this afternoon, that I was tempted to put the lot into the rag bag, however I had a break from it for an hour, when Jennie and the boys called in to see us, and I decided to give it one more go and it all fell into place like magic, so it just needs finishing off now.
It is now countdown time to our “Awfully Big Adventure” so I don’t think I will start any more projects before we go!
Tonight at the proms they are featuring the “Ukulele Orchestra of GB” for the first time.
When I heard this on the news I was thought of my Auntie Cis and wondered if she would be looking down on them and smiling at them playing in such august company.
Auntie Cis was my Mum’s elder sister. She had no children herself and liked to spend a lot of time with us, even though she lived about 14 miles away in the country.
My grandfather taught all his children to play either piano or violin and some played both….except Auntie Cis who played ukulele and banjo. I don’t know why the exception was made for her unless, being the first girl after so many boys, she got more of her own way than the others.
She used to sit in our living room strumming away and teaching me all the songs popular in the war years and after. I enjoyed singing songs like “Maisie Doates”, ”Old man Sunshine”and many others, but my favourite was “Lily Marlene” and I always clamoured for her to play it, until my Mum must have been sick of hearing it, but not half as sick as she became of dragging me away from the lamposts where I started putting actions to words!
I told my Mum one day that I thought Auntie Cis was so clever to play like that, whereupon I remember my Mum remarked wryly,”So she should be. She used to play all day while I helped grandma with the housework!”
I don’t know what happened to the instruments as I don’t remember seeing them when I was grown up.
The last couple of days I have been indulging in another of my former interests, dressmaking.
When we booked for the cruise I knew that I would need an evening dress (not much call for one out in the sticks )
I soon started to remember why I used to make so many of my own clothes, when I could not find anything I liked in my size or the colour I wanted. Jennie came with me to the material shop and helped me choose a rather nice blue material. It is taking me a bit longer than I expected because I couldn’t find a pattern I liked and have had to adapt one I had already, but at last it is coming together.
I made my first dress with a pattern when I was ten years old. Before this I had learned most of the basics from my Mum and then she had the confidence to let me do it on my own.
We bought the material from Nottingham Market. There was a man called Harry who bought bags full of remnants from the factories and sold them on a stall there. He always had a big crowd round his stall and he would dive into his sack and pull out a remnant, measure it by holding it up, arms length to nose for a yard, and put a price on it and the first one to catch his eye bought it. He must have started this as soon as rationing finished and, as most people could either do dressmaking or knew someone who could, everyone was hungry for new clothes.
I carried on making my own for many years, mainly because I had to alter everything ready made anyway being a titch. When mini skirts came in there was less need for this and the dress making dropped off, and then imported clothes were so cheap too.
I made quite a lot for Jennie when she was small and then it was just her costumes for dancing, until I made her wedding dress and between us we made the waistcoats and ties for the men. After this I made Cheeky’s baptism outfit and that was about that until now.
I think the bug might have bitten again especially as I have a drawerful of material and have been introduced to the wonderful world of the new materials.
Another link with my childhood was broken this week when a friend I have known since my early childhood rang with the sad news that his wife of nearly sixty years had died.
She had been my Sunday School teacher when I was about seven and she was fourteen and we had remained friends ever since. She and Roy had been “sweethearts” since childhood and married young. They were always involved in church functions, so we saw a lot of them.
Our house was quite central and my parents always had an open door for our friends. When I left home to start my nursing training my brother had just started his National Service, so my parents would have been quite lonely, but our friends still continued to visit. After my Dad died, and my Mum became increasingly housebound, it was reassuring to know that she would still have visitors.
In recent years our friendship has continued mainly by correspondence and the occasional telephone call.
So many links have gone now, my parents, my brother, aunts, uncles and cousins as well as a few friends. It would be quite sad, but I have been blessed with a long memory and have only to hear, or read, an odd phrase and I am back with them all. They are all there in my head ready to be recalled at will. I can see them all at the church social. My Dad organising the men in setting up the trestle tables, my Mum helping with the food, and my brother with his friends cooking up mischief.
My Dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly so I had no difficulty in remembering him as the big strong man he was, and it used to worry me , when I was looking after my Mum as she became more and more physically disabled, that that was how I would remember her. I don’t. When I see her in my memory she is in her prime and I see her laughing and dancing the Gay Gordons or a Veleta.
So when I “see ” my friends I see them as a happy young couple on their wedding day, or as happy parents with their lovely children more easily than as the elderly couple they had become.
This morning JW was enthusing about a new music site he had found. He remarked, “Just think what fun Phil would have had with the internet!”
Phil was his uncle and they both shared a passion for jazz. Whenever we visited them, or they visited us, the two of them would spend all their spare time comparing concerts they had been to, or records they had found. They discussed all the old time musicians, arguing amicably over the various merits of some of them. I am sure Phil would have embraced all the new technology, after all he bought top of the range equipment to indulge his hobby.
This set us off on a flight of imagination about our other relatives and how they would have coped with modern technology.
My mother, mother-in-law and JW’s aunt would probably have joined Jennie in her surf around craft sites, and printed off patterns and instructions, and bought their materials from the discount sites.
My father would have been a very enthusiastic “nerd”. He loved new gadgets, we were the first family in our road to have an electric washing machine, TV etc. He bought himself a typewriter and taught himself to type, because he thought typed exam papers looked more professional and tape recorders to record his lectures!
I think my dad would have been a keen surfer, emailer and blogger. He would probably have had a site giving lectures on first aid. All the technicalities would have been explained to him by JW, as he regarded JW as the oracle, but he would only have needed to be shown once, not like his daughter, who will have forgotten what Jennie or JW have shown her by tomorrow
Going back a further generation, I don’t think they would have been so receptive. I think they would have been a bit distrustful, just like me, and holding a vague suspicion that there is a mysterious and possibly malign creature there waiting to get one over on me, but nevertheless, still amazed at the information available, if I only press the right buttons.
My mother taught me to knit when I was about four years old. That was during rationing time so some of the wool was obtained from unravelling jumpers etc. donated by kindly relatives. Most of the wool was 2 or 3 ply, so didn’t grow very fast!
My mother was an expert knitter and was the person the extended family turned to when they wanted a complicated pattern made up, and pattern was made by fairisle or series of different stitches.
When wool came off ration the makers started introducing more variety in colours and thicknesses and what were called “novelty” wools. These might be random dyed or have silk twisted into them, but you still had to use a variety of stitches to give a different texture. Every neighbourhood had at least one wool shop and most department stores had its own wool dept. (usually presided over by a keen knitter, who could tell you how much wool you would need and give general knitting advice).
All the women’s magazines had at least one knitting pattern in their pages and periodically gave a pull out supplement of patterns.
I used to knit quite a lot and increased my versatility when I lived in Norway and knitted fairisle sweaters with oiled wool on circular needles.
Over the years, as sweaters and cardigans became cheaper (due to imports) and wool shops became harder to find I did less and less. In recent years I have done very little, just the odd jumper or hat for my grandsons.
My daughter, Jennie, is a keen knitter and has occasionally tried to waken my interest in it. Recently I went with her to a craft shop and was amazed at the huge variety of yarns available now. They truly are “novelty” yarns now, with shiny bits, knobbly bits and fringes all twisted into the yarn, so that even stocking stitch produces an interesting texture.
When I couldn’t find the little bolero type jacket I was picturing, to wear with evening dress on the cruise, (at my age upper arms need to be covered!), she suggested I should make one and then proceeded to find a site on line which sold all the well known brands at discount prices. I have just started to knit it and find it very strange. I am using ”Firefly”, which is composed of two thin fibres with silky bits held between them. The knitting needed is simple and grows quite quickly, but it is very difficult to count the stitches and rows, so I have to concentrate more on it and can’t read at the same time.
I am having to resort to marking each row on a bit of paper, but at least it is just knit and purl.
I don’t know what my Mum would have thought of these yarns, but I guess she would have taken it in her stride and put me to shame.:)
Everyday when I look in the mirror I see my mother looking back at me!
When I hear Jennie with her children, I hear myself. When she tries another new craft, or makes preserves I see my mother. My mother was never without some form of craft work, and even when she became increasingly disabled in her latter years she sat knitting socks. When I was younger she used to make enough pickles or preserves to feed us through the winter.
Now Cheeky has taken it another generation. I was used to him reminding me of Jennie at that age, but yesterday he came rushing in with a handful of raspberries for me. “I grew them myself,” he informed me proudly. This immediately took me back to when my father used to hand my mother the first runner beans of the season, or the first bunch of sweet peas. Cheeky loves grubbing around in the soil and has his own set of gardening tools.
JW has been in agriculture and in journalism, and, until we started doing family history, had no idea that these professions had been in his family.
So, is it genetic or environment which makes us into the people we are?
Recent Comments