The Cherry Orchard

Oh, my childhood, my innocent childhood! This is the nursery where I slept and I used to look out at the orchard from here. When I woke up every morning happiness awoke with me... 
(Chekhov, 1903)


There were no orchards in Croxted Road, but I can still  picture the garden as it looked from my bedroom window more than thirty years ago.

Most of it was just grass, not grand enough to be called a lawn, spotted with daisies and dandelions, it had a round dip halfway down that we sometimes called a fairy ring. There were borders for flowers, with roses for making squashed-petal-perfume, snap-dragons that would open their mouths as we squeezed at the side, and livingstone daisies that closed tight every night as the sun went down and opened again like magic in the morning. There was a bumpy stone path that led alongside the washing line to the bottom of the garden, where the compost heap and  the gooseberry bushes sat either side of the huge green swing.

If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still see my big sister peering round the flap of her wigwam; I can hear my little sister riding her pretend horse, making clip-clopping noises as she gallops around and around; in my mind's eye, our cat Oliver winds in and out of my Mum's legs as she pegs washing on the line and my Dad sits on the swing smoking a cigarette.

I loved that garden; a place for laughing and arguing, for fighting and playing. Never mind that it was a small back garden in south London, in my imagination it was part The Secret Garden, part Little House on the Prairie, and it came to represent for me everything that a garden should be. For a long time after I left Croxted Road, I wanted to create another garden just the same. A place for my own children to remember, somewhere they could grow up in, then return to as adults, in time bringing their own children with them.

But of course, it didn't turn out like that.

Sometimes the world changes around us and we aren't able, or simply just fail, to take control and change the course of events.  Chekhov knew that. The Cherry Orchard ends with Mrs Ranevsky losing her childhood home, with the curtain falling to the sound of an axe cutting down the orchard. A hundred years later, I understood it too as my dreams of a long-time family home and garden were replaced by the reality of a series of rented houses and other people's gardens.

I like to think though, that there's more to both our stories. Mrs Ranevsky set out for Paris, we came to Otford.

Last year we bought our house and with it, we took ownership of a long, long, garden. It has room for a swing, for flower beds and a path,  there are long stretches of grass, space for games and picnics. We're making plans for places to sit, for climbing roses and a fragrant lilac. It will take a while, but I think we'll gradually turn it into a garden to remember.

And this week we planted a cherry tree.

In praise of small things- part five - three little words

The title of this post might well, all on its own, send you running for the hills. So let me apologise first for any inadvertent nausea caused by my feckless choice of words. Let me assure you that I have no intent to write a soppy elegy based on an overused germ of endearment and then, if you're still with me, let me clarify what I really mean.

When I was a kid I was an avid reader - I've written here before about my love of reading. My weekly trips to the library didn't only get me out of the house, they gave me a ticket to somewhere else entirely. The books I loved best were always those where I could imagine myself as one of the characters. I practically lived in Narnia during the months I worked my way through the Chronicles. I spent weeks imagining the tiny world of The Borrowers that might exist under our floorboards, dreaming that one of the borrowers might slip out from behind a skirting board to befriend me. And I spent hours dancing around the bedroom - a floating ballerina from any number of books about an ordinary girl who makes it as a ballet dancer.

So, imagine the impact when I first saw a film that moved me as much as a book. 

I must have been around ten or eleven, when I was taken to see Lionel Jeffries' adaptation of E. Nesbit's The Railway Children. For those of you who aren't familiar with the plot, it's the story of a family who move to a house in Yorkshire, when their father is wrongfully imprisoned for selling state secrets to Russia. There are three children - Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis, who pass the time playing by the railway, watching the trains and waving to the passengers. They become friends with Albert Perks, the station porter, and with an Old Gentleman, who they see regularly on the 9.15 train to London. The children enjoy a series of adventures, all loosely connected with the railway, while their mother sits stoically writing children's stories to keep them supplied with buns for tea. Eventually, the Old Gentleman is able to help prove their father's innocence and at the end of the film, the family are reunited.

I was one of three children, and although I was the middle, rather than the eldest daughter, I was often deemed the 'sensible' one, so it really didn't take much imagination for me to become Bobbie, marshalling my siblings through a series of mishaps.

I've lost count of how many times I've seen the film - it's rolled out on TV almost every Christmas, and I have DVD copies of both Lionel Jeffries' original and a later made-for-TV version. 

And although, as I've grown older, I've sometimes wondered about the way that poverty and class are portrayed in the story, the film has always been able to hold me spellbound. 

This week, Philip, Megan and I took a trip into town for the biggest treat. 

With amazing foresight, some clever and imaginative person had decided to turn the abandoned Eurostar terminal at London's Waterloo station into a theatre. We walked from the hustle and bustle of the main station at rush-hour, through the metal and glass surroundings of a modern international railway terminal, towards a black-curtained entrance. As we stepped past the curtains, we were transported to another world. 

Leather luggage trunks were piled up along the station platforms, a cream and gold footbridge arched across the track and ahead of us sat the station-master's house complete with white picket fence. Banks of seats had been set up each side of the track, and as we took our places, passengers dressed in full Victorian costume began to emerge onto the platforms, mixing with and talking to the audience.

For the next two hours, I sat in wonder as The Railway Children was brought to life. I was drawn in just as much as the little lad in front of us, who stood on tiptoe throughout, craning his neck to see every bit of the action.

And most fantastically, because it was a real railway station, with real train tracks, they were able to use a real proper steam train, with shiny green and gold paint, a tall black chimney and the actual Old Gentleman's carriage that was used in the film. 

And there was steam. Which is important. And which brings me back to the title of this post.

You can probably tell by now just how much I love this story. Most especially, it's the scene at the end, where Bobbie feels drawn to go down to the station. People are behaving oddly and we all begin to understand what is about to happen. But she hasn't realised it yet. 

A train pulls in, the passengers dismount and then the train moves on, leaving clouds of steam billowing across the tracks. As the steam clears, Bobbie sees the figure of a man slowly taking shape at the end of the platform. After a moment's hesitation, she begins to run towards him, with a heart-melting cry of 'Daddy......my Daddy'. 

It's those three words that get me. Every single time.

In praise of small things- part four - buttons

A button. Not chocolate or belly. Not a description of a chin or a mushroom. Not an instruction to button up or a warning to button down. This post is a short homage to that humble object with holes. The small but perfectly formed, functional and fascinating fastener.
The variety is almost endless. All shapes and sizes; countless materials - metal, polyester, wood, pearl, shell, leather, rubber, nylon, plastic, acrylic.......
When I was a kid, we had a button tin. I think it was an old Quality Street container from a long ago Christmas. In it we kept the spare buttons from new clothes, saved buttons from old shirts just before they became cleaning cloths, and fallen buttons that were being kept safe until returned to their rightful places.

I loved playing with them, lifting up a handful to let them run through my fingers; sorting them by size and colour.  When I first set up house, I kept buttons in an old pasta jar. It pleased me to watch the pile gradually deepening as the jar filled up. Nowadays, rather than jumble up all my buttons, I use an old spice rack. Each of the glass jars holds a different colour of button. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of my cooking skills will appreciate that the jars get far better use this way.
 I still like to sort them, and sometimes I like to think that each button might have a story; a tale of where it used to belong and how it came to be in a glass jar in  the cupboard-under-the-stairs.
After all, there can't be that many small objects that can be done up to create a feeling of warmth and comfort, or undone to create a feeling of quite something else.

.

In praise of small things- part three - egg and chips

I've written about my Dad a few times on this blog, but it's been a bit more difficult to write about my Mum - I know she sometimes reads this, and she can't quite see why I would want to tell a whole load of strangers about our family and our life.
There are however, some things that I've enjoyed all my life - largely down to Mum and  it would be wrong to leave them out of this series - even if it makes her a bit uncomfortable. So, I'm sorry Mum, but here goes.
Most of my childhood memories of my mother relate to her cooking. In my mind's eye she is almost always standing in the kitchen - I'm sitting at one side of the kitchen table, I've got my big sister Rosalind sitting on my left, and Caroline, my younger sister, sitting at the end of the table to my right. Mum is standing at the other side of the table, with her back to us, either  stirring something at the cooker, or peeling vegetables onto a sheet of newspaper laid out on the draining board (the newspaper that is, not my mother).
I have a vague memory of Ros once writing in her school book, 'my Mum wears sack dresses and she is a good cooker'.  I think I remember my parents' reaction - a mixture of amusement and bemusement. I never knew what a sack dress was, but I do know she was a great cook.
Mum's coffee cakes are legendary - her grandchildren appreciate them as much as we did, although they don't often get the treat of licking the mixing bowl clean, which was an integral part of the pleasure for us. She still makes cakes and puddings for us at Christmas and she made my daughter's wedding cake last year.
But it's not for the special-occasion foods that I'm including Mum's cooking in my series in praise of small things. It's for the dinners she cooked us, day in, day out, throughout the years of my childhood when we all lived together in the house in Croxted Road.
Mum had been a child during the war, so I suppose that rationing and food shortages must have had an impact on her. For us, there was no appearance of shortage - every day we'd have a proper cooked dinner and a pudding. Roast chicken, shepherd's pie, liver and bacon. I could go on. Of course I had no idea then that she was performing culinary miracles with the most ordinary of ingredients. I remember her sitting with a chopping board and a sharp knife as she cut every tiny scrap of fat and gristle off the stewing beef that would go into a steak and kidney pudding. To this day, my favourite joints of meat are belly of pork and breast of lamb - they might be the cheapest cuts, but you'd never have known it.
Puddings were great too - from apple crumble to apricot batter, treacle sponge to mandarine cream.
We ate well, and we ate healthily - with plenty of fruit and veg. Summer meant sitting on the step outside the back door, with a colander full of fresh peas to pod. I learnt early the technique of slightly pressing at one end of a pod until it popped open and I could run my nail down the side to open it up and push out the peas (keeping an eye out for the occasional maggot, which would set us squealing with delighted horror).
The generally healthy approach meant there were some meals that could only be had every now and then. Among these 'rationed' dinners, my favourite was always egg and chips with tomato ketchup. I loved it then, I love it now. Caroline, who was renowned for playing with her food, would chop it all up, mixing the food around until it was a uniform pale pink, before piling it all up in the middle of her plate. Even that couldn't put me off. There is something so right about dipping the end of a chip into the runny yolk of an egg, then dipping the eggy chip into a pool of bright red sauce. A small pleasure, but a perfect one.

 

In praise of small things- part 2 - Two pound coins

Continuing with the 'seven things' task, and at the risk of portraying myself as either a miser or a lunatic I'd like to pay homage to the wonder of the two pound coin.
Before I start though, it's probably best to clear up one thing - yes, I know the title of this post was potentially misleading - I could have been writing about a pair of one pound coins, or even some very heavy coinage, but my desired clarity was hampered by my keyboard. For some reason, the solution to which is beyond the technological brain power of either me or my beloved, I cannot find the key on my laptop that types the symbol for one pound sterling. Dollars yes, percentages, quotation marks, ampersands - yes. But from the key that says it's a pound sign, all I get is a #.
I could, as someone is likely to point out, have searched for a pound sign from somewhere else, copied and pasted it in - but to be honest, life is too short. So for the rest of this post, wherever I've put a #, please read that as a pound - and I'll just apologise in advance to all the twitterers that I'm bound to confuse.
So, to be clear, my intent is to describe my affection, if that's not too strong a word, for the object that, in a single coin, offers two #'s worth of spending power.
Like many well-brought-up children from a not overly-affluent background, the importance of saving was instilled in me at an early age. To this day, I am more inclined to agree with the spirit of Mr Banks' 'tuppence prudently invested' than the bird-lady's  frivolous invitation to squander said tuppence on a bag of bird seed (the Disney film of Mary Poppins has set many of the standards for my adult life - but that's another post).
When I was about eleven years old, I had a cardboard box, with a slit cut out of the top, into which I deposited large proportions of my pocket money. I had a plan to go to America, confident that when I got there I would meet David Cassidy and then somehow convince him that he wanted to marry me.
My youthful, naive, confidence in the institution of marriage, the reliability of pop stars and my own levels of irresistibility were naturally all dashed in due course, but the pleasure of saving has stayed with me.
I'm not talking about the sensible grown-up approach of setting up a direct debit to transfer a chunk of your salary to a tax-free ISA before you even see it, but the task of actually taking coins from your purse and stashing them away.
Over the years I've always had a penny jar or its equivalent - ranging from an empty spaghetti jar on the telephone table to a blue and white faux-ming vase on the bathroom windowsill. We've had a  flower-painted jug for the money that sometimes re-appeared from the depths of the sofa, and the cardboard tube from a Laphroaig whisky bottle for late night pocket-emptying in the bedroom.
The problem with all of these is that it takes years and years to fill any of the receptacles and then, at some point, you have to decide what to do with the coins. This used to mean begging the tolerance of a world-weary bank clerk as I off-loaded my carefully separated and counted out bags of money. But the introduction of the #2 coin in 1998 brought a whole new approach.
What can I say about the pleasure and ease of collecting #2 coins?  The combination of gold and silver, and their resemblance to chocolate money at Christmas makes them look like treasure. There aren't too many in circulation, so when you get one it feels special and you know you have to save it. And even if you only get one every now and then, they accumulate quickly into quite-a-lot-of-money.
And then you get to actually spend it.
No more sighing bank clerks. Staff in shops are happy for you to count out the shiny special coins in exchange for their goods. How do I know this? Well....
....earlier this year, in celebration of my far-too-big-a-number-to-be-named birthday, we had a whole day out on the contents of the #2 coin collection. All day, everything we bought was paid for with coins - our train tickets, our coffee at the station, our lunch, a new belt for my jeans and a splendid heart-shaped fruit bowl. Admittedly, my bag was quite heavy at the start of the day, but our glow of satisfaction increased as the weight lessened.
I've started saving again and the special coin bag is rapidly filling. Philip has a big birthday in six years time - I reckon by then we'll be able to have a really big adventure courtesy of the #2 coin.

In praise of small things- part one - playing with letters

Some time ago, my beloved accepted the honour of a meme, passed on to him by Mr London Street. Over the last few weeks he's written a fantastic series of posts about things that never fail to make him smile. The series culminated in a seriously awesome post - 'Messing with my hair' - if you haven't already read it, please do - you may laugh, you may shake your head in disbelief, you may even understand a little more about the strange man I happen to love.
Philip has now passed the meme on to seven other bloggers and, with what I'd like to think was a mixture of love and indulgence rather than simple nepotism, he included me among the seven. 
I'm a little daunted at the idea of following in the footsteps of MLS and my domesticated bohemian, very fine writers both, but there aren't many rules attached - I can write about seven things I like or love, seven things that make me smile, or actually any seven things of my choice, which ought to give me plenty to play with. And I've never been one to wimp out of a challenge. 
We live in a small house, in a small village. I like this small world, being here makes me smile; so I've chosen to write my series about seven other small things that also make me happy. 


In praise of small things - part one - playing with letters


From its title, you might well think that this is a post written in admiration of epistolary efforts. But no, when I talk of playing with letters, I really mean playing. With letters.
I was quite young when I first learned to read, when I understood the magic world that tiny shapes on the page would open up for me. Letters were a code, with a meaning, and I'd unlocked the code. It was the first time I ever felt clever. I loved to read - anything and everything. My Saturday morning wasn't complete unless it included a trip to the children's library in West Norwood and an hour spent choosing the three books I'd be allowed to take home that week.
But I wasn't only fascinated by letters that made words. I loved the letters themselves. 
With a stroke of genius that I have only recently come to appreciate, my Dad invented a series of games that cost next to nothing and involved little effort on his part, but they kept me occupied for hours.
Probably the simplest one was colouring in the letters on an old sheet of newspaper. Any letter that had a closed loop had to be coloured in. 'O's were best - so I'd always do them first, then 'p's and 'd's before the smaller hoops of 'e's and 'a's. Each different letter had to be in a different colour. It was painstaking work - I had to stay inside the circles so the letters were still distinguishable - no mean feat with newsprint, but it looked great when I was finished - my own colour code.
Another favourite with newspaper stories was the 'sausage and mash' game. This was great because it meant Dad would read to us. He'd choose a column from the Telegraph - serious world news was the best - but instead of reading it straight, he'd substitute 'sausages' for every word that began with an 's' and 'mash' for every word that started with an 'm'. Complete nonsense, but almost impossible not to giggle. Go on - try it. It puts a great perspective on politics.
As I grew older the letter games were more challenging - we became quite accomplished at finding over a hundred short words from a single longer one (ok, we were allowed 2-letter words). As we got better at it, we were allowed to set the words - of course we wanted them to be as long as possible - which meant scouring through a dictionary. And although I could never get Dad to accept that wonderful word from Mary Poppins - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - it was an inspired way to expand our vocabulary. Literally. 
Almost my first foray into poetry was with acrostic poems - I loved that the first letter of each line was so important - that I could read something in the lines across and the first letters down. I learnt to do anagrams, and crosswords, and then came Scrabble. All those letter tiles, each with a value, and an infinite number of uses; a criss-cross pattern of interlocking words. I'm horribly competitive - I always want to win, but I get just as much pleasure from dreaming up the longest words I can, or from changing the meaning of a word on the board by just adding a letter or two. Even now, no trip to see my Mum is complete without a game of Scrabble. 
Several years ago I set up an after-school homework club on an estate in one of the less affluent parts of London. The kids bought along the homework they'd been given at school and after an hour or so we'd finish with a game. I had all sorts of things prepared beforehand, but the one they always wanted was the simple game I'd played as a child - choosing a letter of the alphabet, for which each of them had to think of an animal, a country, a boy's name, a girl's name and an article of clothing - all beginning with the chosen letter. Week after week they pleaded for the alphabet game.
I recently realised another lasting impact when I heard a comment about names spelled backwards - immediately and with no hesitation, I could remember my own name in reverse and hear my Dad calling me it - Norahs Snikrep. 
I sometimes think my desire to write is just an excuse to keep on playing with letters.

Going underground

There are always plenty of things we should be doing on a Saturday morning, but today was just one of those proper summer days when the world outside is calling, so Philip and I set off for a walk through the valley.
We know how incredibly lucky we are to live in this beautiful place, and today there was no beating it - blue skies with wispy clouds trailing through, fields carpeted with scarlet poppies. In the distance the lavender was turning purple, to our side the River sparkled in the sunshine. It was a bit like a Disney movie; white-tailed rabbits stopped still in front of us, butterflies twirled and danced around our heads; and the tiniest frogs imaginable hopped across our path. Above us the larks were calling, at our feet crickets scraped and creaked. Even the drone of a plane overhead had the sound of romance about it.

 

So, amid all this glorious beauty, what was it that intrigued me most? Holes.
That's right - holes. Holes in the ground. We passed tunnels drilled into the ground, neat, perfectly round. No sign of their occupants. We were left guessing - who lives in a house like this?

Too big for the rabbit we'd passed - and a fox would get in there in no time, so probably a badger. Further on there was a whole series of holes in the bank - that must be the rabbit hangout. Our walk was turning into Wind in the Willows, I was half expecting Ratty to pop up and say good morning. Part of our route crossed the local golf course - we had no interest in the holes there, but stepping back into the wooded path at the other side we almost trod straight into the next dip in the ground. Probably as well that we didn't - we'd stumbled across a ground nesting bees' nest.

Which left me wondering.
Bees spend their days in the sunshine, they fly amongst the most glorious bright flowers. How can they bear to return to a nest that is a dank, dark hole in the ground. What happens when it rains, does the water come through, is there mud in the honeycombs? Do they find intruders constantly trying to invade their space - worms slithering through, centipedes marching?
We didn't investigate or dig around - for obvious reasons, so I will have to imagine what the underground bee world was like. Rather than the cold, grave-like burrow it appeared to be, I shall instead picture a hall of golden cells, full of nectar and pollen, the aroma of honey and the soothing hum of a hundred bees returning home to chat about their day's work in the sun.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

At work today, I seemed to be wishing lots of people happy holidays as they snuck off early for the Easter weekend. Some of them, with a definite air of optimism over experience, were setting off with their metaphorical buckets and spades for a few days at the seaside, determined not to let the dismal weekend weather-forecast dampen their enthusiasm.

Is there anything more likely to prompt nostalgic reminiscence than talk of past seaside holidays? Waves crashing on pebbles, the salty tang of the wind, the crunch of sand in picnic lunches. Children, families, lovers and loners; excitement and energy, romance and regrets.

Among my most treasured memories are two summer holidays when I was around 9 or 10. For two years running we stayed at the Georgian House Hotel in Littlehampton. In those days a relatively sleepy seaside town, with none of the brash brightness of Brighton or Hastings. No amusement arcades, slot machines or fairground rides, but the wonder of three different beaches!

The sand dunes - rolling soft sand that your feet sank into, while blades of sharp, unforgiving grass dug into vulnerable bare legs. The main beach - with its pebbles, deck chairs and wind breaks, where dads and kids would squat at the water's edge to build castles in the wet sand. And my favourite - the furthest away from where we were staying, but worth the extra walk for its magical combination of beach hut and rock pools.

The excitment of negotiating my way around the rocks, my feet clenching through their flip-flop soles, trying to cling on to one stone before gingerly stepping out to the next one. All the while knowing that if I slipped I'd jag my knees on the ragged edges, and drench the thick jumper that was keeping out the seaside wind. The magic of lifting a rock to find a tiny crab that I could lift up, oh so carefully, and store in a bucket of water. The bucket carried back and stored with our other treasures in the beach hut until it was time to leave.

When I was a child I always cried at the end of the holidays - never wanting to go home. So my very wise mother devised a special treat - only allowed on the last day of the holiday. A knicker-bocker glory. A tall glass, with syrup at the bottom; small pieces of tinned fruit covered in ice cream, piled up with whipped cream; topped off with more syrup, a strawberry, and a sprinkle of hundreds and thousands. It was eaten with the longest spoon I'd ever seen. Oh the wonder of pushing the spoon down through the melting ice-cream to find those pieces of fruit at the bottom, hoping to uncover another strawberry - it was almost as good as finding a crab.

Big book of proper - the dining room table

When I was young we ate almost all of our meals at the kitchen table. The dining room table was pushed back against the wall, out of the way, and only pulled out for us to sit round on special occasions.
So, why does the dining room table feature in my Big book of Proper?
When I think back and picture myself as a child I am almost always sitting at the table. I know I sat there for hour after hour in quiet concentration, finding all sorts of ways to keep busy.
Colouring in was a game that required careful planning - my concerns weren't about using the right colours, or keeping inside the lines - I knew that each part of the picture came alive as I coloured it in,so I had to colour it in the right order - if I did the feet first, the person would run away only half-filled in.
I always loved reading and had plenty of library books, but one of my favourite ever books actually belonged to my sister Caroline - it was called Caroline and her Friends. I desperately wanted my own copy, so one year I sat at the table for what seemed like the whole of the summer holidays, copying out the stories word for word into my own book.

A single jigsaw puzzle could present a number of challenges - sorting out the edge pieces first then filling in the middle; trying not to look at the picture on the lid, or attempting to do the sky first. My favourite ever jigsaw had a picture from the film of Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang - Caractacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious dressed up as wind-up dancing dolls. I completed it so many times. Even now when I see the film, that scene takes me straight back to the dining table and the jigsaw.
 


So, no sign of dinner, and certainly nothing to do with etiquette, but the dining room table firmly belongs in the Big Book of Proper.

The Big Book of Proper

I've always had a strong sense of what feels right - nothing moralistic or judgemental, just a sense of wellbeing, brought about by doing something in the right way at the right time. I suppose it's a mixture of family ritual, sense of duty, happy memories and rites of passage.

Hard to describe, and when it happens I might either smile or cry, but I will always feel a bit better about the world. In our house, these events are known as entries in The Big Book of Proper - nothing written down, just a virtual, constantly growing list of good things.

So what goes in the book? Examples might include Sunday morning walks, always stopping to kiss the person behind you as you go through a kissing-gate; eating boiled egg sandwiches with a bit of salt and a lot of sand at the seaside; collecting the first fallen conkers of the season and keeping one in your coat pocket until it starts to shrivel; or watching a father sitting with his sons at a football match, knowing they're all as excited as each other.

One constant entry in the book, and probably worth a whole chapter to itself, is the film The Railway Children. I've watched it more than 20 times now, but it never fails to delight. Over the years I've felt less comfortable with the idea of the middle-class family playing at being poor, but I'd still love to be the mother writing stories so we can have buns for tea; and my heart is always in my mouth as the train stops inches away from a fainting Bobby. At the end, when the steam and smoke clear for Bobby to see her beloved and greatly missed father stepping down from the train, the words 'Daddy, oh my Daddy' are still enough to reduce me to a quivering wreck. Very definitely Proper.