The last visit was the worst, of course. Indelible.

They had moved my mother into a side room. We hovered on the threshold; the moment I glanced in, my heart lurched. You know that expression? - ‘my heart leapt into my mouth’ - that’s how it felt.  The world tilted.

I was torn between two monumental, conflicting impulses: the urge to cry out, run forward and hold her hand, and the exact opposite, the rising compulsion to drop my coat, turn on my heel then and there, and run away as hard and fast as my young life would carry me.

My father and I just stood there. We did nothing; we were frozen. The room was bare, there was no locker, no cards, no colour, not even a faded bedspread. Everything was pale and bleached out. My mother’s skin was waxy, otherworldly. This was a dying room.

If I ran out into the night I could leave the feeling in that room, sense nothing but the hairs on my bare arms tingling with the shock of winter cold. If I blundered into danger in the darkness, hurt myself, drew blood, it would move the feeling somewhere else, into a knee or an elbow, make it physical, manageable, contained.

We hesitated. There weren’t even any chairs. Underneath the pervasive reek of hospital disinfectant, there was another smell, strong, sweet, familiar - unpleasant - someone has left some old flowers in here, I thought, looking for a vase, expecting to see fetid, slimy stems in dull water - they shouldn’t leave these things lying around to rot. The nurse should take them away. Nasty. I’d find them and take them out.

I stepped closer, looked again. There were no flowers.

My mother was lying on her back, both arms bandaged, attached to a drip. The restraints were gone. The room was filled with an unearthly sound, like snoring - she did snore sometimes in her sleep - but this was different - she was not asleep - her eyes were neither open or closed, her eyelids were slack, wavering inbetween. Behind them, her irises - they should have been clear blue - were the palest grey, bleached and clouded, like catatracts. She was hovering at the very edge of life, a ghost, trapped in a blind, insensible body.

The sickness had won. Her flesh was too raddled with sickness, pain and drugs to hold her fiery spirit any longer. One by one, her organs had packed up, abandoned the fight for life. The bright, fierce, funny woman who was my mother was gone.

My father led me away then. We left the sympathetic looks and the searing glare of tungsten lights and went quietly, out into the darkness, drove home in virtual silence, numb and frozen, entered a cold, empty house. I remember smoothing the tablecloth over the table with peculiar care, lining up the knives and forks with excessive ritual, as if trying to delay the last supper. I don’t know how I ate. Habit. Everything tasted dry, bland, like cotton wool.

Through this fog, a telephone rang. My mother’s life was over. Some other kind of life began.

A nurse met us in the corridor on the second visit.

‘Mum’s very poorly, very poorly,’ she said, ‘She’s drifting in and out. We’ve given her a lot of morphine. I’m sorry.’

Poorly? What did that mean? In and out - of what? Sleep? Anaesthetic? Had she had another operation? (They hadn’t told me about the first one, not properly.) Morphine? And - sorry? - had the doctors made a mistake? I didn’t know what the nurse meant. Still, no-one had told me.

We went in. Mum was propped on a pillow, asleep. Sometimes it was a relief when she was asleep. I knew then my face couldn’t betray me, let slip naive expressions of worry, sadness and - yes - the worst - the hardest to live with - the hardest to recall - horror. I would have time to compose my features before she opened her eyes; I was getting good at it.

I didn’t want to see how bad things were; I looked everywhere else instead, at the machines, the blinds, the floor, at anything, even the familiar loops of tubing, the drips and drains connecting her body to the hospital, connecting her illness to the medicine. Up until then I’d found the machines reassuring, they held her, protected and sustained her, like knitting, but - hang on - something was wrong. Where was the cannula? I was both fascinated and repelled by the cannula, the way the needle disappeared beneath her papery skin. There was a tight bandage around her forearm - and - what? - her hand was swollen, bruised. Those straps were new. They were fixed around the metal bar of the gurney, around her arm. Oh. And the other arm. Ties? No. Restraints. Her arms had been placed in restraints. There was a patch of dried blood on one of the bandages. It looked like a withered flower.

Dad and I sat there, wary of meeting each other’s eyes, not knowing what to do, how to behave, what to say.

‘I’ll get us some tea,’ Dad said, and left the room.

I could look now. I gazed at my mother’s face. She was worse than the last time I saw her. How was this possible? But yes, she had diminished further, settled more into the mattress, become fainter, less herself. I was uncomfortable, staring like that, seeing her so weak and vulnerable, so exposed. I had to look away, focus on something else. You can only take it for so long.

Sometimes there were sweets in the locker. I opened it - not this time - instead there was a notebook. Mum’s diary. This was wrong, I knew it and felt bad, but what else did I have to go on? No-one would talk to me. I flicked the pages. Guilt, guilt, at every turn, but I was compelled to read on. The first entries were light and chatty, nothing too personal, her plans for going home, to-do lists, groceries, catch-up notes, event dates, reminders.

I flicked forwards, further in - what’s this? - the handwriting changed, there were no more lists or plans, no white spaces, the pages were entirely covered with cramped, sloping content, hardly any punctuation. It looked strange, frantic, I couldn’t make sense of it.

I wish I hadn’t looked at the last pages. The writing - how to describe it? - had come unravelled. Sentences dwindled to phrases, phrases to single words. The dates were sporadic. I shook my head. No. This wasn’t Mum’s handwriting. This wasn’t her. The script was loopy, irregular, untidy, it slipped off the page. Some vowels were swollen, some had burst, the consonants were unjoined and illegible. The effort to capture something was obvious, but… the entries were just fragments.

The final mark on the final entry was a deep, squiggly black line scratched outwards, trailing faintly to nothing at the edge of the page. I was still staring at it when I heard footsteps in the corridor; I closed the notebook quickly and put it back. Dad came in with a nurse.

‘What happened to her arms?’ I said, ‘Why are they tied?’ Confusion and pain made me hostile.

Dad looked at me as if to say, ‘Shhh. Don’t ask.’

The nurse’s face set in a particular way. I’d seen that face so many times. Her eyes softened. She cocked her head to one side. I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me.

‘Mum was a bit upset,’ she said. ‘She knocked over her side table and hurt herself. Spilled her flowers. She was upset. She banged herself. Her drip came out. So we… it was for her own good…’

A poem jumped into my head. We’d learned it recently at school:

‘Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.‘

Dad looked away, coughed. We knew my mother. We knew what ‘upset’ meant. She’d thrown a fit. She’d caused a fuss. She’d been a bad patient - angry - unfeminine. We were embarrassed for her, for ourselves.

I knew something else now too. I couldn’t put it into my own words, not yet, but - that line about the dying of the light - finally I understood.

We made three visits that week.

The first evening, for once, I had plans to go out. My father scotched them quickly. We had to go and see Mum in hospital.

Hospitals. I was sick of hospitals. The hospital was an hour’s drive each way. We had been going there forever, we went just last week. Mostly I went quietly, but did we really have to go again so soon? I was a teenager, I wanted a normal life. My mother had made everything difficult by being so selfish as to fall sick. I had more household chores than most of my friends, fewer lifts, less laughs - why me? - why now? - it wasn’t fair.

My father held back from why. Up until then he had retreated into his version of 1950’s masculinity, tight-jawed, stoical, and largely silent. I put him through it that day, arguing. He finally lost his composure, smashed a cup, shocking me into silence. I agreed to go, slamming the car door too hard with monstrous ill will, morose for most of the drive.

Mum had been sick for over two years, but by the time we reached the hospital bed something had shifted, in me, in everything. Things were in a bad way; it hurt. This had happened before, though, hadn’t it? Last time she clawed her way back. We all did. This time, though, she seemed weaker. She was conversing strangely, rambling in an unfamiliar, disconnected way, snatching at rafts of small talk, groping for the ordinary world.

My father and I had no lifelines, our grip on ordinary was long gone. We struggled for things to say. I hadn’t been told the whole story; he had never been much of a talker. Between us was a huge generation gap and mutual incomprehension. Mum was the conduit, the bridge, the base of the triangle.  Without her, communication was collapsing fast.

We didn’t stay long. She fell asleep and we drifted out. Dad was oddly talkative on the way back; it was unsettling. He went on about ‘adjusting’. Adjusting? Already they had moved Mum’s bed downstairs, closer to the bathroom. What now? Was he going to knock walls through again? White plaster dust and mess everywhere again. More stuff to clear up. I didn’t understand, didn’t really want to understand. What was going to happen now? When was she coming home?

My first car was a Ford Anglia like this, below, with red seats, which a friend sold me for twenty quid. I drove it around for six months (without tax, couldn’t do it now) before it packed up and had to be towed away by the council. I used to take my cat in it. She became so used to cars she climbed into a neighbour’s car one day and ended up lost, miles away. Luckily, some ringing around traced her to the Cats Protection League and she was rescued. (I have more sense these days.)

It wasn’t until I got a job on an impossible bus route that I needed another car. This one was a white mini, 850 cc, with an unreliable starter-motor. In cold weather, in the winter, it would rarely do more than cough, let alone go up hill.

Every morning for weeks, before I could set off on my drive to work, I had to persuade my boyfriend (who would otherwise have laid in) to get up and give me a running bump-start. As I drove away (daren’t stop until I’d done at least five miles) I’d catch sight of him bent double in the road, wheezing. He hated that car. Particularly when I finally investigated how much a replacement starter-motor cost. Not much, as it turned out.

The Clio Years were the years of joint ownership. 1.8L, mint green with electric windows, compact and reliable, the Renault Clio was economical, fast, hatch-back, easy to park and together we drove the nuts off it, covered thousands of miles - Land’s End to John ‘o’ Groats - with lots of Big Loves in between. We were good on the move; not so good at staying still. The Clio never broke down, not once. Unlike the relationship between its owners…

Which brings me to the Rover Montego. If ever there was car designed for an Old Geezer, this was it. ‘The Montego comes from an era that earned Rover the kind of reputation it has since successfully lived down.’ Plush seats, central locking, automatic gears, in-car cassette player, de-mister, soft suspension and a big, fat, 2L engine. I bought it from my father. He had a good sense of timing, the old man.

That car was nothing but trouble from the moment I drove it away: the gear box fell out, something about it invited pranks, students sprayed it with foam and glue, every passenger with a hint of motion sickness from aged Aunt to babe-in-arms, instantly threw up in it. The seats were midnight blue and hard to clean. It broke down on the way to a funeral. Reverse gear failed on the new gearbox and, owing to the fact that we could not reverse, that same day, it was clamped. ( In a moment of minor triumph I did manage to persuade the clamper - almost unheard of - to remove the clamp. By then, I think, I had a mad look in my eye. ) Ah yes, the Montego. How we loved it. But that didn’t stop us selling it to a Banger Racer.

So what has brought all this on?

This. In April, our VW Passat (relatively new, relatively reliable) began belching black smoke on the way to the county town. A towaway job. Head gasket gone. The turbo mechanism was irreparably damaged, coolant from the air-con had gone everywhere and we were lugubriously informed that it was not ‘an economical repair’. Right now, it looks like a giant green metal carcass has landed between the hanging baskets and is in the process of slow decay. J has started dismantling and ebaying the good bits for parts… there is bubble wrap everywhere.

So we’ve had to re-animate The Dinosaur, the beast with the V8 engine which has been parked up, idle, untaxed, for two years - yes - the Landrover Discovery. Our big, embarrassing, bad-decision baby. The dreaded 4×4. The engine, of course, turned over first time. That thing will never die. As cars go, though, given it’s age, it can hold its Big End up against many another younger car on the *carbon footprint calculator, but the bad press makes me (a smallish blonde woman driver, the Demon Stereotype) feel like I’m going to be pelted with eggs on my way to town. (All say, ‘Ahh!’)

On the upside, it has always been fun to drive. For dump runs, standing stone hunts, beach trips, camping, you can’t beat it. We’ve shifted motorbikes, sideboards, most of the contents of a shed and carried out the greater part of two house clearances with it. J was even in an impromptu Landrover + trailer race up the bypass on the way to the dump once. What a white-knuckle ride that was. Yeeehar!

Cars, they’re not all bad, are they?

Kraftwerk: Autobahn

————————————

* the Cars v Carbon Footprint issue is a complex one, but I would just gently remind readers, in case there are any holier-than-thou’s out there, this car-driving socio-economic unit is only rearing the one Jnr future consumer…

Rene

We’d been looking forward to it for weeks, saving up. Jean’s seventeenth birthday. November 18th, 1948. We had heaps to celebrate, Jean had a new job, apprentice to a dressmaker, ‘Couturier, Rene,’ she’d put me right.

‘Mr Leopold designs clothes, he doesn’t just run them up.’

Rationing was coming to an end at last and things were getting better.

We’d been planning what to wear. I had on a frock of Mums that she’d hardly worn, she said the pattern never suited her, so she let me take it in at the waist. As for Jean, everyone in the family had chipped in some clothes coupons to buy her a new winter coat for her birthday. We were taking our new glad rags for a big night out, first to the Odeon in Beckenham and then on to the Dance Hall in New Cross. We reckoned we deserved a treat.

Our Mums were sisters. Lily and Aunty Soph. Me and me sister and me Mum lived in the next street over from Jean’s. The bit in between had been bombed out, but me and Jean missed that, we’d been evacuated to Kent in the Blitz. We were just eight years old, then, twelve when we came back. Didn’t seem like long ago, the end of the war. I’d been put with a nice family, I couldn’t complain, but Jean hadn’t been so lucky. She used to moan about it. But her Ma, my Aunty Soph, she’d tell us about when she saw the milk cart hit, glass and milk and bits of horse everywhere and the milkman dead - and she’d never forget it - and more besides - but there had been a war on and we were all lucky to be alive - and we should be grateful.

Jean would roll her eyes and say, ‘As if we don’t know that, Ma.’

We hadn’t had much fun growing up and all we wanted to do now was have good times and forget about it.

Jean

The big day arrived at last. I had some lovely presents, a comb and manicure set from Ma, some money from Pa and a night out to look forward to. But the best part was my new winter coat. No more old blanket, the new one was proper wool all trimmed and edged, and it was New Look, with a full skirt. I swirled around feeling all that lovely fabric swing out around me, feeling like I could sit on the train on my way to work and be proud instead of shrinking in the corner like the poor relation. With my figure and that coat I could turn heads and hold my own with the other girls at Mr Leopolds.

I heard Rene ring the door when I was finishing my hair upstairs. Last time Rene came round, the dog got free from Pa and went flying at her. Poor Rene only just got behind the parlour door in time and after Pa shut Mandy in the kitchen, Rene perched on the edge of the settee all dressed up in her brown coat and yellow frock, looking for all the world like a scared canary about to fly off. I’m always telling her she’s too timid.

I leaned out the window and shouted down,

‘I’ll be down in a minute, Rene. Don’t worry about the dog. She’s shut in the kitchen, she can’t get out. Ma’ll let you in.’

She shouldn’t let Pa bother her, either, but since Uncle Reg was killed in action she’s not used to men crashing about the place. So, right on cue, just as I grabbed my purse and had a quick last look in the glass, there goes Pa, crashing out on the landing, thumping down the stairs, hollering;

‘Shaaaad-ddaaappp!’ banging on the kitchen door. ‘Shaad-daaap, you dog!’

As if that was going to work. It’s enough to put you off men; except the proper heroes. Men like Johnny, who’s a twice a hero to me, once for the Olympics and once for the films. Or a man like Mr Leopold. He doesn’t need to throw his weight around and shout. He never even has to raise his voice.

When I walked into the parlour Ma was shouting through into the hallway,

‘It won’t make no difference you telling that dog to be quiet, ‘Arry, it just makes ‘er worse. Give over, will ya? Rene’s here. She’s brought a present for Jean.’

Just for once, instead of rowing back and starting the usual, ‘I’ll ‘ave you put away’ with Ma, and her coming back with, ‘I’ll ‘ave you put away’, he just muttered something about going up the pub and he was gone. Perfect. Now nothing could spoil my day.

Rene’s present was the icing on the cake. She was a bit shy when she gave me the box, all done up in paper and tied with a scrap of ribbon to look like it had been wrapped in a posh shop. I was shy taking it, too, wondering how much it had cost her. There it was, Evening in Paris in its pretty blue glass bottle with the silver top, real perfume, for a proper lady.

‘Oh Rene. Thank you. It’s lovely.’ I said. ‘I’ll put a dab on now.’

I touched the end of the stopper on the ‘pulse spots’ on my wrists, like I’d seen the girls do at work, and one behind my ear, for luck.

‘We’d better go, the picture starts at seven.’

Rene

She looked so different in her new coat, smelling of Evening in Paris and chattering away about Mr Leopold and his girls as we sat on the bus on the way there. I couldn’t help looking, and feeling a bit envious, but I knew my time would come.

‘It’s all about the new pattern cutting, Rene,’ she was telling me, ‘And taking on more of an American style, from Hollywood, a hint of glamour, that’s what Mr Leopold says. It’s all in the detail. Like your beading and sequin work. They’re making lots of new pictures out at Pinewood Studios and they want the costumes to show the glamour, like we’ve all turned a corner and the future is on the way. I bet I could put in a good word for you, if you wanted.’

I sat there watching the sights go by, everything twinkling in the evening rain, looking bright and shiny and new. It set me thinking that maybe all that make do and mending and the beading I’d done when I’d had T.B. and been laid up, might come in handy after all. Pa was gone and nothing was going to bring him back. We were the breadwinners now, we had life to get on with.

You couldn’t help thinking about the war, though, going past the old graveyard. Most of the bodies weren’t found in the first place and the rest never came home. But we looked ahead, up the road, watching for our stop. I saw the Odeon sign first, all blue and yellow neon against the night sky. Our bus pulled in right next to it.

‘Isn’t it lovely, Jean?’ I said, ‘Seeing the old place all lit up and people out on the streets having a laugh at last.’

Jean

We were getting the eye on the bus all right. A couple of boys on the back seat kept nudging each other and pointing at us. Rene was miles away, but I couldn’t help but notice. There was so much going on. Everyone was getting off at the Odeon and there was a bit of a crush, so we spilled out onto the pavement, laughing from all the jostling and chat.

We walked past those hoardings fast, arm in arm. It was black behind there, bombed out and wrecked, I didn’t want to look. They’d missed the Picture House, though, we were all glad about that.

There was a big queue to see the picture, but we were used to queueing, so we just fell in line at the end of it. Everyone was there to see Johnny Weissmuller’s latest Tarzan film, or ‘movie’ as the Americans called them, Tarzan and the Mermaids, with Brenda Joyce as Jane.

tarzan2,

‘Look, Rene,’ I said, ‘See that poster. There’s Johnny diving off a rock and there, look, wrestling the octopus.’

He was bare-chested as usual. We laughed about it.

‘Do you think Pa could look like that if he got himself a Bullworker?’

‘Oh, give over, Jean,’ she said. Rene never much liked it when I talked like that.

Just then, we looked up through the stream of people and there was a young chap with a camera coming towards us. He was holding a cardboard cut-out figure, large as life, smiling like he was on the make.

‘Awright, ladies. How about a nice picture with the hero of the piece?’

He turned the cardboard shape around and there he was, Johnny Weissmuller, our hero, in full colour, loin cloth, bare-chest and all.

‘Come on, Rene,’ I said, ‘Let’s get a picture. You, me and Johnny.’

So we paid the chap his money and he lined us up, one on each side, our arms around Johnny. Then with a pop! and a flash of light, he caught our moment.

It was the start of the rest of our lives.

jean, johnny, rene,

S

I have them in my hand now.
All three look 2-D, frozen flat in time,
two sides of a story at the moment of diverging.

Above, a swathe of white Deco survives,
a taint of the fascist 30’s,
an echo of Olympic screams.

Outside, flanked by hoardings and posters,
kitsch action pix paste over a past
still sore and peeling underneath.

Behind, the queue of grey and brown torsos
swim forward, heading for Hollywood’s Odeon dreams.

But there, in the middle, centre stage,
snapped before they were both snapped up,
stand two shining girls

hugging a cardboard hero.

A breathless Übermensch,
he ran to fat soon after.
Their last-chance-Tarzan -
worn out by too many exotic wives -
washed-up in Acapulco.

(The ignominy of Jungle Jim.)

Not much longer was he Mr Dreamboat
for Rene and Jean.

His Mermaids, though -
they swam on.

One, suited to the 50’s,
saw security with a shy, sideways glance -
Rene shed the hand-me-down dresses
by beading for the BBC,
netted an executive -
and landed her plump ankles
and sequins, safely,
on the Isle of Wight.

The other,
tall and slim,
styled for the future -
too smart to fall for the War on Germs
sewed outfits for Diana Dors - a rising star.

Jean shipwrecked her Alf Garnett father
with a series of Bullworker boyfriends -
left him shouting at the wall -

dived into the 60’s with abandon
and met my Dad -

who looked more
like Trotsky.

George, b. 1920, d. 2000.

Jean, b. 1931, d. 4th Jan. 1978.

As a standard precaution, owners of moored rowing boats remove the rowlocks from their boats as a deterrent to theft.

‘*A rowlock (British) or oarlock (US) is a device that attaches an oar to a boat. When a boat is rowed, the rowlock acts as a fulcrum, and, in doing so, the propulsive force that the rower exerts on the water with the oar is transferred to the boat by the thrust force exerted on the rowlock.’

When I was younger, as an ‘only child’, I often used to befriend others from large, chaotic families with disorganised, messy homes, where I could visit, stay over, blend in, disappear even, and become just another ‘one of the children’ in the pack. These were homes where it was difficult to aportion blame for anything, where routine was sabotaged, where anarchy could break out at any moment. In short bursts, I loved watching and even joining in, before having had enough and going back to the relative order and tranquility of my own small family for some regenerative solitude.

By the time I was a late teenager, I was a part-timer on the edge of three families like this. One of them was headed by a theatrical, divorced Irish matriarch with fiery red hair. She had seven children, and a young boyfriend - one of the local ‘gentry’ - a man many years her junior. He and she (I’ll call her Eileen) would float through the piles of neglected washing-up wrapped in not much more than a sheet, raid the fridge and return to bed without a thought about whoever might be around. My friend was one of the middle daughters; her family lived on the other side of the river.

The second family were Anglo/American and members of some sort of hippy sect, very much outsiders in the local community. The children all had long hair, they were tall and thin and wore no shoes in the summer. I was friends/involved with the youngest boy; he lived on this side of the river.

There were cross-overs - members of both these families knew each other. My boyfriend’s best friend was my girlfriend’s little brother.

Along with me, another itinerant-on-the-edge, who knew both families and dipped in and out of staying with them, was a young student, of no fixed abode, from one of the Northern provinces of Iran whose family had sent him to the U.K after the fall of the Shah. He had jet black corkscrew curls and beautiful green eyes. I’ll call him Kayvan.

One Christmas-time, when I was with my boy/friend, a tragedy happened.

A whole crowd had taken the ferry from the other side of the river to this side. Everyone was drinking; they were in seasonal high spirits, all bright-eyed and reckless. They missed the last ferry back. Most of the group canvassed for a place on a spare sofa or floor. My girlfriend’s youngest brother and the Iranian boy declined; they went for a walk.

No-one saw them alive again.

After meandering around, drinking from a hip-flask, they ’stole’ a small row boat and tried to row back across to the other side of the river. The boat had oars, but no rowlocks. It was a blowy night, the sea was not rough, but not calm either. The tide was on the turn, flowing out to sea, and it was cold. They never made it.

My friend’s brother’s body turned up five days later, just after Christmas. Ten days after that, the body of the Iranian boy was discovered washed up on a beach three miles down the coast.

Two young lives ended. A tragic tale. But, you might be wondering, apart from knowing the participants at one remove, where do I fit in to all this?

Here’s where. A few days after the boys disappeared, between Christmas and New Year, I was at home and the phone rang. It was a crackly long distance call when such things were rare; the voice on the end of the line was Iranian.

Somehow, Kayvan’s father had my name and number. Eileen was distraught and had taken to bed, refusing to speak to anyone. The Anglo/American family had no telephone. I had been deemed sensible and communicative, a suitable point of contact. I was nineteen.

In broken English, he wanted to know, could I tell him, what had happened to his son, please?

What to say? And yet it seemed there was no-one else to do it. I told him what I knew; I struggled to make myself understood. I was forced to repeat things I had not wanted to say even once. When I finished the line went dead.

There were several contacts after this first one. I had become the father’s port of call, not an official, but a half-familiar disembodied voice, on the edge of an alien outpost in a foreign land. I relayed the contents of the coroner’s report. My friend’s brother, my boyfriend’s best friend, had suffered an asthma attack as a result of the shock; he died quickly. Kayvan had tried to swim to safety, but exhaustion and exposure overwhelmed him.

Sometimes, around this time of year, I remember them both - I think of a shocked gasp - and green eyes - lost in all that sea.

* dictionary.com
…………………………………….

I’m feeling my age today.

Last week an old friend rang me out of the blue, twice.

We’ve known each other since we were seven; we both started at a new school on the same day, late in the year, half-way through primary school. I was wearing bright blue ski pants (none of the other girls were in trousers, or had short hair) and a baggy charity shop jumper, she was wearing her old school uniform; a weird tartan ensemble comprising a skirt and a fringed poncho, and seemed as tall as a teenager. My family had moved from Kent, hers from South America. We were both fish-out-of-water, so of course, we became friends.

blacklace,

Her mother, C, was Spanish; a tall elegant woman, always impeccably dressed, with a light accent which made my name, when she called it, sound exotic and unreal. She had recently divorced my friend’s father. He’d been an executive with a large multi-national technology company; they had lived all over the world, in Argentina, the Caribbean, Honduras, in big houses with servants, in pockets of post-colonial privilege echoing back to the 1950’s.

That life had come to an abrupt end. C and my friend had moved to a cramped two bedroom-cottage and now lived in considerably reduced circumstances. There was no room for all her fine linen and china there; it had to be put in storage. The cocktail cabinet with gramaphone took up nearly the whole length of the wall in the tiny ‘drawing room’ and sat largely unused, except, on odd occasions, when my friend and I would tear in straight from school, dress up in beads and fruit, and play her mother’s Harry Belafonte records, dancing about clumsily, pretending to drink cocktails.

Cocoanut Woman

C would tell us glamorous tales of her times abroad as a young woman, of handsome boyfriends, embassy parties, entertaining. It all seemed a far cry from the austere world my parents inhabited, the dust and rubble of their renovations, our menagerie of flea-bitten animals and the bags of home-made cottage cheese dripping into a bowl by the sink.

Her old world was another planet compared to the litter strewn streets and industrial disputes of Britain in the 1970’s. But even though she was reduced to collecting driftwood from the beaches to help heat her living room, somehow she managed to turn it into an enchanted game. (’Look, girls, the salt has made the fire burn blue. Aren’t the flames lovely? Just like sapphires.’) During the infamous power cuts, the ‘black-outs’, C would make thick Spanish omlettes and grill chorizo on the gas stove, we would eat by candle light; she would even allow us some Spanish wine diluted with water - Brits, on the whole, didn’t drink wine then - as a tonic ‘for growing girls’.

As my friend and I continued to grow, and grew apart, I would still bump into C from time to time in town. I was an awkward adolescent with centre-parted long blonde hair which I would allow to fall in heavy curtains over my face when I wanted to hide. Without being invasive, she would sweep it back, fix it in some hairbob from her pocket and make time for me.

Some years later, when my own mother died, C would visit sometimes with home-made food and, whenever we met, she would look me up and down, smile gently at my rats-nest hair and hoyden clothes and despite my surly gaze, press ahead, determined to give me tips on how I could look after myself more and make the most of my ‘lovely hair’ and ‘figure’.

C’s life was hard, single parents and divorced women were rare then, but she kept up the sophisticated front and although this often grated on her daughter, who would roll her eyes and mouth ‘fantasy-land’ at me, I admired her style. There were men-friends - I recall one guy with a fast power-boat, who used to take us water-ski-ing - but she never found anyone permanent, never re-married. When her daughter eventually married and moved away, to London, we talked at the wedding, but after that, lost touch.

So, the first phone call out of the blue was an unpleasant surprise, to tell me this; C had been diagnosed with an agressive form of cancer and had only a short time to live. She wanted to see me one more time. Would I go?

How could I not? I knew it would be difficult; of course, for her, facing her mortality, but also for me, stirring sharp bedside memories of my own. I found some photographs, to give us something to talk about, bought a cheerful pink pot plant, rang ahead, and set off to see her, once again, in reduced circumstances.

In spite of being scared, lonely and in pain, she had dressed in co-ordinated colours to meet me, and was determined to be dignified. Making time for her was the least I could do. We talked, mostly I listened; but, perhaps because I’ve been there before, I dropped the funereal formalities and, I’m happy to say, made her laugh several times.

It was difficult. Afterwards, I went for a long, pointless drive and ended up in the car park of an ornamental garden, not knowing quite how I’d got there.

The second phone call I had been expecting, I just wasn’t sure when it would be. My friend rang a few short days after my visit to the hospice; C died on Friday.

We sent a mixed spray of white flowers to the funeral and, for some reason, I had the impulse to ask the florist if he could add some black lace ribbon to the bouquet, I muttered something about the lady being Spanish. He said he would see what he could do and nipped next door to the haberdasher’s. He came back with a metre of pretty black border lace, like a stocking top, and said that he would make it into a rosette.

I think she would have liked that.

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Whenever I see or hear of a motorcycle accident, my heart misses a beat.

My father was a motorcyclist in the years after the second world war, before car ownership was widespread and the roads in Britain became congested and dangerous. He always told me that his motorbike gave him, a Londoner, the freedom of the road, an opportunity to see parts of the country he would never otherwise have experienced. He used to take my mother out in a sidecar on trips to the North Kent Downs and, eventually, they bought a car and moved there.

By the time I met J, I would be distorting the truth if I said that the motorbike, the smell of motor oil and the roar of engines, played no part in the chemistry. He had been a despatch rider and survived, so I squared the statistics (it’s a dangerous job with a high fatality rate) with evident experience and skill, factored in my desire for adventure, and bought myself a crash helmet.

But gradually the roads have worsened, the statistics have crept closer and so has my fear. Last year, one of J’s friends, a motorcyclist, disappeared. It was thought that he had gone to Liverpool to visit his ex-wife, but, in fact, he had come off his bike on a sharp corner and both he and his motorcycle disappeared into the undergrowth. His body was found by walkers a fortnight later. Nobody wanted to say it, but all the motorcyclists were wondering; had he survived the impact? How long had he lain there injured and alone? They waited for the post mortem with trepidation. (He was killed instantly, it was discovered, so that was some solace, at least.)

Earlier this week, we were watching the news when a chilling item came on; there had been a motorcycle accident in S*uth Dev*n. The young rider had been struck by a car coming out of a turning and pushed into the path of an oncoming lorry. His motorcycle caught fire. Unbelievably, the ambulance taking him to hospital was involved in a second collision and although the casualty was transferred to another ambulance, he was dead on arrival. They showed footage of the charred machine. We watched in sober silence. The thrill of the road palled a fraction more.

This afternoon, when I was out walking Dog, my mobile rang. It was Jnr’s [other] grandmother. She was upset. She had some bad news. Her first grandchild, Jnr’s cousin, who is 24, had been killed in a motorcycle accident on his way to work. It wasn’t his fault, the police believed. The car coming out of the turning hadn’t seen him. His motorbike caught fire… there was a second collision… we might have seen it on the news…

I told her I was sorry, so sorry… if there was anything I could do…

J knew the young man when he was 10 and a rising teenager. The last time Jnr saw his cousin, he was very small and probably wouldn’t remember. I met him a couple of times on family occasions, but some while ago now; I thought he was quirky, funny, and bright. For a family already touched by tragedy, it is a terrible loss.

For us, the circumstances are simply too close to home.

For Julius.

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Today, apparently, the title of ‘The World’s Greatest Elvis’ is being hotly contended by tribute acts across the globe.

A person would have to’ve been a dedicated hermit not to’ve heard of Elvis. Even the most passive cultural filter (i.e alive, and not living in a cave) will have their own personal Elvis references…

the_filter_queen,

Here are mine:

1. Squirrel Burgers: A documentary on Elvis is responsible for planting the horrible concept of the squirrel burger in my imagination.

2. My friend Carole came to stay with us for a whole week after Elvis died in the summer of 1977. Her mother, Norma, an Elvis fan, was hysterical with grief and ‘couldn’t cope’. It seemed to last for the whole of the school holidays, Carole coming to stay, going home, coming back again. Poor Norma, my mother said, fancy being so obsessed, at her age. She didn’t mind, Carole was an easy-going girl and more useful around the house than me. Turned out, Carole’s mother had been having an affair all along. Carole was a bit less helpful and easy-going, after that.

It’s Now or Never

3. September 1977: I went on a German exchange trip to Bonn. When I arrived, my German penfriend, Julianna, greeted me wearing a black armband in honour of Elvis. No smile. Great. She didn’t brighten up much more than that for the duration, either. Plus, she was a diehard Kiss fan. Images of Gene Simmonds’ tongue lolling down from the shiny posters on the walls in the room where I slept have never left my dreams. Unfortunately.

4. Once I taught a home-student who was the image of young Elvis. His father was a mechanic who owned a garage and together they spent their weekends racing hot-rods. He had recently been recognised as dyslexic, like his Dad, but his mother was determined that, unlike his Dad, he was going to pass English. I told them I was no expert on dyslexia, but I found lots of books about dare-devils, stunt men, F1, anything with cars and car chases in it. We both enjoyed ourselves; I like cars, too. But whilst I was trying to get him to concentrate, his father was busy being distracting, revving engines on the forecourt outside, until the mother would burst out in her marigolds and shout at him to stop. It was a nigh-on impossible job. He tried hard, I tried hard, but it was too late by then, too close to the exams. He didn’t pass. I was touched, though, when he asked me to suggest a name for one of his rally cars. (Guess)

Here’s sweet, haunting, EmmyLou Harris singing,
Boy from Tupelo

5. We nearly called Dog Elvis, until we realised we would probably run across an Elvis fan with a pit bull at some point, and came to our senses.

6. Elvis died the same year the first Apple computers went on sale. It was the same year that Steve Biko was killed. Star Wars began. Never Mind the Bollocks and Talking Heads 77 were released.

7. J’s Elvis reference is this: Elvis? He rode a Honda in that film, what was it called, Roustabout?

the_honda,

And here’s a C & W classic by Kirsty MacColl (RIP)
There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis

8. FYI: The plural of Elvis, is, apparently, Elvi.

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Past: Memories of Pavarotti

Covent Garden on a summer’s evening. A crush of people flowing up the underground steps; I was caught up with them, cramming into the Plaza to find a space to stand and listen for free. It was exciting, like being there at the start of a bullfight, before the blood and gore. Every pub and bar was overflowing with boozy people; all of us, ligging it.

I’ve never much liked opera; for me, a Comprehensive kid, it has always been one of the most elitist of the arts, exclusive, excluding; you need an entree, someone to hold open the door, to help you tune-in your ear, and even then… well…

I was wearing tight, bleach-splashed jeans, DM’s and a white vest; the sides of my head were shaved (believe it or not). I was loaded with ear cuffs and chains. My boyfriend, a bit taller*, a bit more pumped up than me, looked much the same. (Boys and girls did, then.) He was an out-of-work model (believe it or not) who I’d met in the bar where we were both moonlighting; he was the reason I was there. He was my entree; he’d been to Public School. We were both experimenting with crossing the tracks.

I can remember the heat and the press of people, me standing on an upturned beer crate*, leaning against him and - when eventually everyone fell silent to listen to Pavarotti sing - feeling vaguely bored, looking at the top of his arm, thinking I’d like to bite it.

We lasted a summer; no regrets; that is my memory of Pavarotti. RIP.

Since then, I’ve been taken to Tosca, in Birmingham, by a woman, and I’ve listened, whilst drunk, to an atmospheric old vinyl LP recording of The Great Caruso. I have to say, of all of those brief sorties into the arcane world of opera, the last one was the best.

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Present: For the first time in a long time, I’ve had a chance to:

1. Make soup (Borscht, from my Jewish Cookbook)

2. Lie in the hammock and read a good book (bliss)

3. Paint my toenails

4. Make a French apple tart

5. Listen to music (not opera) for a whole afternoon

Of course, there’s still the bag of unopened post to deal with, a school uniform to sort… and I need to find someone to fix the roof tiles…and replace the cooker hob…and very soon I’m going to have to go round there and give the place a coat of paint… but I’m not thinking about that right now.

Right now, I’m just glad to be alive.

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