Christmas Past

Before we reach the Feast of the Epiphany and all the Christmas decorations come down, (unless you are one of those sad people who have removed every trace of Christmas by Boxing Day of course....) I wanted to write about a small piece of ephemera that I was looking at today which has evoked so many memories of Christmases past.

When I was 14 my Father asked me to make something to put in the small window next to our front door at Christmas. Our family has always been completely obsessed by Christmas, a real tree, (the bigger the better!) a wreath on the front door, every mirror and picture swathed with evergreens, not to mention the amazing decorations sent over from Fifth Avenue New York by my Aunt in the 60's ...

My response to the request was to make this little panel, at the time far brighter, out of card and tissue paper. It sat in that little window every year, a candle in a jam jar behind on the window fill casting it's jewelled light onto the ,usually frosty ,lawn and pavement outside.

 It was carefully stored away to be taken out every year, even after the first painful one when my Father died and for many after, until eventually ,my Mother downsized to a house on the coast which had no window to grace.... And there it stayed, languishing at the bottom of the decorations box until my Mum, moving to a flat with very little storage ruthlessly culled all her belongings. I had to save this though ( and to be honest many other things in the discard pile!) since when I have put it up on an inside door, I look at it and it makes me smile with all the memories of such a happy home.

As you can see though it is,like me, showing its age, 42 years of service is a lot for fragile tissue paper, so looking at it this year I thought that before it totally disintegrates making a more substantial copy will be the next project for my stained glass course, it will have to be tweaked a little of course but something to pass on to my Daughter, as well as the family obsession with Christmas that she has already inherited.

6 months on

A while ago I read an article in the Guardian about how a Mother, knowing she had a terminal illness had filled a freezer with home cooked meals for her grown up family to eat on significant occasions in the year following her death. At the time I thought how poignant that was and how it would be difficult to eat the first Christmas dinner after your parent's death when they were no longer there .... It was hard enough seeing my Dad's timings and cartoons that he had written in chino graph next to the cooker on the first Christmas after he died, no one had had the heart to rub them out till then, though my Mum did shortly after. As someone who adored Christmas it all seemed strangely two dimensional without him...

Well today I am eating, not a Christmas Dinner but a chilli that was cooked by my dearest friend a couple of weeks before he died. He was a great one for cooking in bulk and then freezing extra portions so there was always something nice to eat when he was too busy to shop or cook or had arrived home late from one of his many foreign travels After his death I liberated one of these from his freezer thinking of this day, however...

I almost can't bring myself to eat it knowing how ill he was when it was made and what a struggle it was for him to be bothered, though to the last week the rest of the world wouldn't really have known, only those who saw him take off the public persona and slump in a heap of exhaustion and pain from metastatic prostate cancer.

So today, six months after I sat by him and held his hand for hours and hours as he gradually struggled to leave this life I am going to sit down at a beautifully laid table with appropriate music and a bottle of the finest Bordeaux to accompany this last morsel and raise a glass to the most positive, welcoming, interesting and loving man I've had the pleasure to know.

I do though also have his hand written recipe for said chilli , complete with instruction, (appropriately!) to chop several scotch bonnets.....so if I want to recreate it and by doing so try to conjure him back, I can. I shall always smile and remember a most remarkable man when I do.

Hangover cure

Six weeks ( almost) without so much as a sniff of the barmaids apron, never mind a sip of a juicy Chilean red, ended today.

To put this in context I should say I'm one of the new breed of middle aged problem wine drinkers that the authorities are concerned about, consuming at least half a bottle of wine a night, at weekends often more...... and I have been doing this for the last seven years with hardly a break.

That's not to say I went from teetotal to binge drinker overnight seven years ago.... But almost!

I started drinking when I was 14, though not to the extent some teenagers do now, only at parties and family occasions and only a couple of glasses. Even when I was an older teenager or student I'd only have two halves of lager a couple of times a week... apart of course from at parties, though even then the type of behaviour witnessed in most town centres on a Friday night was deemed unacceptable.

That changed when I arrived in London and fell into a hard drinking crowd, we would drink at lunchtime and be waiting on the doorstep of the pub again at opening time. By now I'd switched to G+T's to go with the heartbreak. I knew it was time to slow down though when one morning I was shaking so much I had to have a drink before I could go to work.....I did cut down but I was still consuming a lot, if not half a bottle of gin a day as I had previously.

After about 5 years I met someone who didn't drink, I was back to drinking cups of tea at night with the occasional glass of wine with dinner and found no problem with not drinking at all while I was pregnant.

 The abstemious life went on for more than a decade until I had a huge midlife crisis , lost 3 stone in as many months and basically became, almost overnight a drunkorexic .Drinking my calories rather than eating them . Eventually though I started eating too and of course the weight ,well half of it, crept back on.

So, why did I stop? Well a little while ago I saw the person who had set me off on the path to (Mother's) ruin and they had reinvented themselves , not smoking, cigarettes or anything else that they had been formally partial to, stopping drinking in dodgy pubs and not having relationships with people they shouldn't and wow did they look good on it! I felt about 150 in comparison. Of course like a battleship it takes a while to turn your life around, I've got a rescue dog, who has in turn, rescued me, I walk every day, I'm making a real effort to eat a far healthier balanced diet, and the crowning achievement , stopping drinking. I never thought I'd do it but I did and I have to say that after the first day I didn't miss it. I've realised that rather than an emotional crutch it was a tourniquet, stopping me thinking about how I felt about myself and others and what I really wanted from my life although that's not to say I've sorted it out!

 I've lost weight, my skin looks better, my insomnia is much improved and I'm happier.

But today I had a drink, well half a bottle, which was always the plan from the beginning , But do you know I didn't really enjoy it and I felt really seedy afterwards. So, as Scarlett said, " tomorrow is another day" and for me it is a day when I'm going to choose not to drink.

Vintage?

I've decided that today is the day for swapping the winter and summer wardrobes over,

You may imagine by that statement that I have piles of clothes or a hectic social calendar, unfortunately both now very far from the truth!

The actual wooden wardrobe that I have to store my finery is tiny and although I have done my best by having a lower rail installed it is still not big enough to hold all my clothes at one time, hence the twice yearly switchover ( though this year I'm wondering if it's worth it, given that summer may be three months long at best!)

It's always a good time though to look with a critical eye at things you've not worn over the past season and to possibly donate them to charity, Swish them or recycle them in some other way..... Bunting anyone?

I do dream of having trunks in the attic to house some things, The Daughter is always berating me for getting rid of the 20's to 50's clothes I bought in jumble sales when I was her age and indeed some of the designer suits I had in the 80's. Given the prices they now fetch on eBay I could kick myself too!

There are though a few bits I've kept, the beaded top I bought for pennies in an old fashioned charity shop in Headington ( the sort, now sadly rare, that looked as if the front door had been opened and everything just thrown in) which I wore to numerous parties and balls in the next few years with a voluminous silk tulle petticoat ( long since ripped to shreds and gone)

The Katherine Hamnett silk "Stay Alive in 85" t-shirt, I was delighted to see its' twin on display in the V&A and may donate mine to the excellent costume section at Brighton Museum...

The long kid gloves with tiny pearl buttons that are a nightmare to do up without a friend or lover in attendance

The Victorian underwear and nightdresses, hand sewn by Irish nuns ( in the case of one nightdress) or schoolgirls.....

All of these have so many stories and adventures imbued in their wearing that I can't bear to part with them and often too mourn some of the spectacular ones that, in a moment of madness, I did- the 50's new look White organza and black velvet trimmed dress worn on punting trips. The 80's peplumed black ottoman suit, so tight that it was only worn with designer silk underwear....( the rest I'll leave to your imagination!)

There is just one item, stored in a box on top of the wardrobe that the daughter is always begging me to get rid of.... A 30's fox fur, complete with head feet and tail(s!) that I bought in (another old fashioned) charity shop in Paignton- because it looked lonely! It did go on to accessorise a 30's mans DJ suit at several first nights, since when it's been used to frighten Trick or Treaters!

So until I get that trunk it's off to my local hospice charity shop with another "granny trolley" load of cast offs... Carefully vetted by the Daughter first of course!

Lay Lady Lay

Bob Dylan has a lot to answer for, well listening to his drawled lyrics during my formative years is the only explanation I can think of for my obsession with beds, mostly ( though not exclusively)of the big brass variety.....

I write this lying in one which is so high I have considered using steps to get in ( and I may soon have to when my ancient joints no longer allow me to vault in)

How many 18 year olds use their first full time wages to buy two decrepit Victorian brass and iron bedsteads and then spend many a cold Saturday in their Parent's garage carefully restoring them? ( I obviously had such an action packed social life!)

one of mine....

In my defense I can say that I sold one of them many years later at 500% profit, a margin I've kept up to this day with various ones that I have bought ( sometimes used) then sold on -thank you E bay! including two 19c iron ones , one French,that I sold this week,

In my time I've been in and out of many beds ,( some of which might have been better unvisited) and I always wonder, if they are an old one, what secrets and stories they could tell, for surely beds share our most intimate secrets? From birth to death with all those hours, filled with tears, smiles, kisses, pains and dreams we spend in them in-between , a third of our lives.....

For me though the bed I'm fondest of is now on the other side of the world with my Sister, given to her when I thought I should make a fresh start, the trouble being I miss all those secrets and joys we shared for so many years. ( both my bed and with my Sister)In restoring it from a rusty ruin destined for the scrapheap it's somehow as if we became entwined and my hopes and dreams imbued that perfectly ordinary Victorian bedstead...oh that I had had an attic big enough to store it while I came to my senses...... I wonder how much it would be to ship it back......?

Into the attic

Where to begin?

I suppose the question every new blogger asks themselves, followed closely by why the hell am I doing this and finally, will anyone bother to read?

To answer the second two, because I thought it would be good exercise for my mind now I am advancing in years and what is politely termed as perimenopausal ( and no I won't tell you how wrinkly I am, lets just say that every day I wake up and am thankful that everything hasn't headed south over night!) I hate crosswords and soduku and bridge, I've tried learning the piano only to find I have two left hands and so my daughters recommended a blog ( of course they had then to explain what one was!)

As for anyone reading, I'm not sure I care, in fact, like my teenage diaries I'll be slightly horrified if anyone does ( which is why this must be just our secret.....)

So, back to the main question, what to write about? The dusty corners of my attic, either physical or mental and what I find there appeals. I always had a frisson of excitement when Enid Blyton's children made their way to the attic of whichever castle they were staying in and found all sorts of exciting things as they opened the creaking lids of long forgotten trunks.

As for the scene in " A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett where the drafty servants room Sara Crewe has been exiled to is transformed first by her imagination, then by unknown friends, it still has the power to make me weep copiously....

I hope my musings, if anyone does stumble upon them amuse/ touch/ interest them...and so, on to the main event!