October musings. 26th October 2010

What is it I like about being outside.

I think ever since I was a child, I always loved to feel free, and that freedom was in fields, and streams, hillsides and trees.

Playing outside made time stand still, until the spell was broken by being called home for meals.

I like the smell of damp stone walls, and the grittiness of a country lane, the sound of wind sighing through trees.

Childhood felt like forever.

Being introduced to the Lake District was a veritable feast! Here were greater hills, and fells and colours coming and going with the weather.

Raging torrents, quiet becks, light on water, a sense of absolute timelessness.

I have loved to be on top of a hill, or fell, as it reduces other things to a correct perspective. Time to just glory in the view laid out far below. It still is the same today, when I can finally struggle to the summit of wherever we choose to go. Thinking time. Special time. And this autumn, I have had the sense of loss more keenly, of those hills and fields of my childhood, as my dad is now no longer there, buried alongside my mum, and surrounded by the view he loved. Last year, I did not have the time to appreciate the changing colours of the leaves, and the feeling of the year winding down. I was sorting out the sale of dad's home.

So, I have relished spending time in the garden. Grubbing about in the soil, and watching the maple by the summerhouse gradually turning into a deep deep glowing red. Still a work in progress!

Yesterday was a glorious day. Crystal clear blue sky, and sharp light. leaves backlit in the late afternoon, with the sun lower on the horizon.

Damp earth, clearing fleshy nasturtiums, bitten by frost. A first pruning of the roses.

Robin singing, goldfinches twittering, and sparrows squabbling on the bird feeders! A noisy, sociable family.

And today, with its leaden sky, and rain, I can still go in my mind's eye to the glory of yesterday remembered.

October is a last burst of summer before the garden is put to bed.

A treasured find.

Last year, in the process of sorting out dad's paper's and house, (he had asked me to put things in order), I found a diary tucked away in the very back of a drawer in an upstairs wardrobe.

It said,

"1940 War Diary", and as I began to read it, I was transported back to the days when my dad was a young man of 20 years old, stationed in London during the Blitz.

I put it down and the next morning I told dad I had found it, and did he want it destroyed? (as he would never talk about the War, except to relate an odd funny story or two).

I also said to him that it had moved me deeply and it was really important to the family that it was preserved and read as a lasting testimony and record of that time.

He asked me not to read to him, but said I could do with it as I wished.

So only after the subsequent events of him moving into the Residential Home last April, 2009, and then the sale of his house, followed by his death in in March this year, have I been able to work at scanning in each page and editing them.

Since then I have had it typed, as the whole diary was handwritten, all 187 pages, in a small note book.

It documents the times of all the air raids, and the sense of gritty determination of folk to carry on as normally as they could and keep a sense of humour.

A young man revealed through his writings, one of 20, having his own thoughts, feelings and sometimes writing in the current slang of the time.

A treasure to find.

I am in the process now, of having it published.

But several weeks ago, The Times newspaper was asking for reader's stories about the Blitz, for a feature on the 70th Anniversary , which began on 7th September 1940.

I sent in an extract from dad's diary, but did not hear anything afterwards, until yesterday, as I opened the paper, there was the extract in print!

It will be dad's legacy to us as a family.

So in the month that holds what would've been his 92nd birthday on the 17th, I was pleased to see it there.

(Click on the extract to see the larger version. )

A taste of early summer..............

I woke very early this morning to the sound of the dawn chorus just gradually coming to a crescendo.......blackbirds, robins, a thrush, chaffinches, being the predominant singers. I lay in bed and listened, and the memory of last winter disappeared in a mist....

A delicious feeling.

Going outside in the garden last evening the scent of the blossoms hung on the air, apple, and rowan, laburnum and lilac. I really feel like Browning, when he wrote his letter from abroad, which I have included at the end of this piece.

Yesterday, Timelord and I went for a walk.It was a circular route of about 5 miles starting and ending in Alcester. It was a near perfect late spring day.

Part of the walk took in the Heart of England Way.

We set off after, (for me at least!) the obligatory cup of tea in a little café.

Walking over the bridge, I stopped to look at the two rivers which merged under its arches.......and saw the unmistakeable iridescent blue flash of a kingfisher as it flew to one of the banks. The stones on the parapet were warm to the touch!

The walk continued climbing up a hill and passed a folly called Oversley Castle, built in the 19th century. We hardly met a soul, and wandered on along field paths and lanes, edged in tall white cow parsley, and wild buttercups and mayflowers. The sun warm on our faces. Such glorious peace.

The trees all fresh green, and now and again, a splash of yellow in the distance of a field of rape.

England does spring so well, that when we feel that it will never arrive, suddenly we are gifted with all this beauty to drink. A feast to the eyes and senses. A skylark singing, two buzzards suddenly dropping out of the sky to the ground.........a green woodpecker disturbed and calling as he flew over head.....

What a delicious day.

We eventually stopped to have a lemonade in a small village called Wixford, and sat in the pub garden which ran down to a quiet river, by another old bridge. I took off my shoes and socks and liked the feeling of the cool fresh-mown grass underfoot. We ate our sandwiches and fruit and wandered on..........

Arriving back at the bridge where we began, there was a heron standing in the river, fishing. Once he realised I was about to take his photo, he flew off. But it made a perfect end to the afternoon.

Let's enjoy this brief spell of early summer while it lasts...................

"OH, to be in England now that April ’s there
And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough	5
In England—now!
II And after April, when May follows
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That ’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over
Lest you should think he never could re-capture
The first fine careless rapture!
And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower,
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!"

The story of the Tippler toilet and the clouds of ash!

The street in the photo is the one where I was born. East Street, Rawtenstall

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=53.715872,-2.291036&z=18&t=h&hl=en-GB

You can see it on Google Maps.

The last house on the right with an outhouse attached, is number 12, where I spent my early years until I was 13 years old. The outhouse contained the toilet and next to it, the dustbin shed. There used to be a small wooden door in the outer wall of this shed, for the dustbin men, or the "ash chaps" as they were then known, to be able to open and collect the bin, and take it to the cart at the bottom of the street.

This was no mean feat, given the gradient!

I cannot recall what on earth happened in the wintertime, when the cobbles were frozen solid or there was snow covering the ground!

We had coal fires then, and each morning when my dad got up early, before he went to work, he would clear out the remains of the ashes from the previous evening and take them out to the yard to deposit in the dustbin.

The story goes, ( and the continuing saga of the volcanic ash has prompted me to write about it) that one morning after a night of little sleep, due to one of his young daughter's keeping him awake, he went off down the yard in a stupor, and duly deposited all the ashes in what he thought was their usual place!

He found himself completely enveloped in hissing steam and with misted up glasses!

By this time he had fully woken up, and realised what he had done.

He had thrown the whole of the still extremely warm ashes down the tippler toilet..........!!

I have added a link about tippler toilets which explains how they were made and how they functioned.

It used to frighten me when I was small as it was such a long drop down from the seat. I am not surprised then that children sometimes fell in! It was like some deep dark mysterious well. And when the pan at the bottom tipped the contents into the drain it made a noise that scared me stiff if I happened to be sitting on the seat at the time!

How we take all our mod cons for granted now!

http://www.archive.org/details/TheLongDropToilet

Saying goodbye. April 8th 2010

I wish you could have seen the church yesterday, dad. When we walked in behind your casket which was covered with beautiful red roses, for Lancashire, bright gerberas, and spring flowers, it was moving to see so many people.

Not bad for someone who was 91!

And we had your favourite psalm, 121, "I will lift up my eyes to the hills".

The hymns you wanted were all there.

And as I stood and sang, I thought,

"What a privilege to have had you for my dad"

I was speaking to someone last night on the telephone, when we had arrived home. The daughter of my mum and dad's closest friends.

She said, "I have been to a few funerals lately that have been very depressing, but this made us smile, laugh, and remember him as he was. It was such a lovely tribute to your dad. He was so well thought of by so many people."

It was indeed a celebration of a life well lived.

And when we went to lay you in the ground alongside my mother, looking out down the valley, and surrounded by the hills, we were all very touched when 5 of your carers from the Residential Home, and the two managers, came along, in amongst the family and friends who gathered for the committal . They all loved you, and enjoyed your stories and said you were a wonderful man. It was the carers' day off, and they made a special journey for you.

They brought a teddy bear and a Burnley scarf, which we placed alongside you in the earth.

Having dropped in a red rose, it was time to leave you there. That earthly part of you.

You had no fear of death, knowing it would be a fulfilment of your faith in the power of the Resurrection.

And I quote from the Message version of the Bible which puts this very succinctly and bluntly!

"And face it-if there's no resurrection for Christ, everything we told you about is smoke and mirrors, and everything you've staked your life on is smoke and mirrors.

Not only that but we would be guilty of telling you a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised Christ up- sheer fabrications if there is no resurrection.........

...........But the truth is Christ has been raised up............

Death swallowed up by triumphant life!!"

I will miss you dad terribly, but you are home now, all struggles over.

Love you.xx

Thanks For the Memories, dad.

Well, dad, I never thought that you would leave us all before you were 100 years old.

As I spoke to our oldest member at our church here yesterday morning, to tell him you would not make it after all, he had tears in his eyes.

I know that you and he had decided that you would celebrate being 100 one way or another. Various hilarious suggestions having been made!

He is now 96. And you would have reached 92 later this year.

You always made him laugh, and he and his wife always asked about you.

That seems to be a recurring theme. These are some of the things I have received in the last few days:

"Always interested in people........great raconteur.......always cheerful, and always

had a story to tell.........had my mum and dad in stitches, and I can still visualise them all laughing now, never a dull moment................... lucky to have had a such a lovely caring and funny uncle, the best, and a privilege............

Your dad had a full life, was greatly entertaining, and enjoyed company, will be greatly missed."

We miss him, warts and all. Another silence, where there was his voice at the end of the telephone, answering "Mr Smith" Another empty place.......

Another end of an era. A passing of a different age.........

A multitude of impressions in my mind.................the clash of wills between us........his stubborn black and white views at times, his pigheadedness!! Yes, but he was loyal to a fault, determined and courageous in his last couple of years, as his health and age took their toll.

I was there, in his beloved Valley, in my mind, the other evening, smelling the damp of the old stone walls on the hillsides, hearing the wind, looking at the lights twinkling down in the town, and along the roads which snake their way through until they reach the outskirts, where they climb up and then disappear out of sight eventually dropping down to the other side of the boundaries.

One into Yorkshire, one into Burnley, and one meandering along the Valley floor towards Manchester, the other into Accrington.

He never wanted to leave Rossendale, and his beloved hills. He and mum chose their place in the local cemetary and it comforted him to know he would be buried there.

My mother is already there, since 1990.

So, dad, we are going to say our very final goodbyes on Thursday this week, April 8th. and you will have your wish to have the service at St Mary's Church.

I must digress here and tell a very well-known story amongst the family which sums up how dad could be at times. He had been in his life time, an active member of three different churches, (not all at the same time! ) spending some years at the local Baptist church after the death of my mother. When his sister died, he decided to go back to his roots, where his family had worshipped, been christened, married and died. His sister, (my aunt) and her family being regular attenders at St Mary's Church. And we ourselves were members there and married there before we moved South.

Some time after his sister's funeral service, dad went to see the vicar at that time and said he had decided to "Come back to St Mary's, and did the vicar mind? and "Oh, by the way was it alright for him to have his own funeral service there?"

The vicar, David Parkin, who already knew dad, said "Certainly Mr Smith, " and then got out a small notebook and asked him "When would you like it?"

Dad, of course had been outwitted, but told the story with great relish, laughing at the telling!!

And I dreamt about dad last week, in the midst of all the multitude of things which had to be done, as I stayed with my cousins.

I dreamt that I was with dad once again, walking along the track to the local farm, and for some obscure reason I noticed he had cut himself when shaving!

It was a beautiful day, and the wind was stirring the leaves in the trees, in the warmth of the sun.

I asked him "What are you doing here?"

"I've been doing all this organising for you to have your funeral. What shall I do now?"

" Don't cancel it" said dad, " You all go ahead and enjoy it! The doctor says my heart is fine" !!!

Well, dad, to me that just about sums up how you were........and on Thursday, we will go ahead, as you wished when you first asked David some years ago.

Dad's Obituary in the Rossendale Free Press

Leslie Smith

APRIL 01, 2010

A LOCAL government worker and Free Press contributor, Mr Leslie Smith, latterly of Haslingden Hall Residential Home, died on Sunday March 28 after a short illness aged 91.

Born in Rawtenstall, he worked for many years in local government, serving in senior positions in the rates offices in both Bury and then Manchester up to his retirement.

He served in the Royal Army Pay Corps in London during the Blitz, before joining the Signals Regiment and landing in Normandy on D-Day.

Married to Ethel in 1942, he was a widower for the last 20 years of his life.

He loved to write and was a regular contributor to the Rossendale Free Press under the pseudonym of Owd Nick. A series of his short stories was read on Radio Blackburn and he had a contribution published in The Bedside Guardian.

He had a lifelong interest in Lancashire dialect and was an active member of the Edwin Waugh Society and the Lancashire Authors Association, writing many short stories himself and becoming a speaker at various societies in Rossendale.

He served as church warden at St Paul’s Constable Lee for many years, then was a regular attender at Kay Street Baptist Church and latterly at St Mary’s Church, Rawtenstall.

He leaves daughters Vivien and Shirley, sons-in-law Stephen and Neil, grandsons James, Jonathan and Alan and their partners, nieces and nephew and many good friends.

His funeral will be at St Mary’s Church, Rawtenstall on Thursday April 8 at 1pm, followed by interment at Rawtenstall Cemetery.

Family flowers only. Donations welcome for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the Stroke Association, via the funeral director Dawn Johnson for Fred Hamer Funeral Services, Rawtenstall.

To sleep.......perchance to dream....

What is it about not being able to sleep?

When my routine, such as it is! is disturbed, or I come back again from up North where I have spent 3 nights in another place, I find it hard to settle down.......

Trying to get to sleep is an art in itself........so many thoughts whirl round my head...........in random succession......

I have always been a light sleeper and have resorted in the past to putting the bedside clock in a drawer....sometimes wrapped in tights!

It's a bit like the Princess and The Pea but with a different slant!

I am not like my cat who can sleep anywhere...........and cats even have a poem written about it!

Cats sleep anywhere

Any table, any chair

Top of piano, window ledge

In the middle, on the edge

Open drawer, empty shoe

Anybody’s lap will do

Fitted in a cardboard box

In a cupboard with your frocks

Anywhere, they don’t care

Cats sleep anywhere

Then my dear Timelord husband can sleep at the drop of a hat.........oh that I could!

When I was small, I did not sleep then either, keeping my parents awake, or waking them very early!! When apparently my dad asked the doctor about it, he told him I had "too much nervous energy".

I woke my parents one morning about 6.00am or so, to ask them what a brontosaurus was! I had a full set of Arthur Mee's encyclopaedias, and I loved the pictures and stories.I got the answer I was expecting!!

I read at an early age, and I had the joy of teaching Matt to read before he went to school at 5 years old.

Schools in the area then, near Portsmouth, had 3 intakes a year, so he went just after his 5th birthday in April.

Not all children are ready to read at the same rates.

But I digress.......

Sleep.......according to Shakespeare........"knits up the ravelled sleeve of care" quote from Macbeth.

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast"

I love the thought of sleep being the balm of hurt minds........ nothing better than a refreshing night's sleep, a natural sleep, which comes creeping in like a wave and closes over our heads.

I wish....................!

I had to take sleeping tablets for a short time around Christmas, as the doctor felt I wouldn't cope well without them after a very stressful few months.

I would take one, only to wake 4 hours later in the small hours, back to where I began!

It's interesting to decide what to listen too in the wee small hours........

I have a digital radio walkman, so I don't disturb my slumbering hubby.

Radio 2 is too stimulating,

Radio 3 too full on, as I get involved in the music and then am wide awake!

Radio 4 .........no

Radio 7.........well the jury's out on this one, as it serves it's purpose if I really cannot sleep and there is a story, or classic serial.........trouble is then, when I get to 6.00am I am too tired to think about another day!

Jazz FM same as Radio 2!!

So, here I am, sun pouring in on a beautiful day, after a night of sleeping and waking.........

Here I go..............................and the first thoughts I always have are always the same.........that will never change.

Love you Matt. It's one of " Your" days. Glorious sunshine, and blue skies, birds singing, and maybe, just maybe a promise of spring?

New beginnings.

Last July we had a visitor from Down Under. Brisbane, to be precise, and it just so happened that at the time it was like summer!

Tim, pictured here with Stephen, had come for an interview in Birmingham for a job with Scripture Union. http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/YouthEncounter/41589.id

It is as though a wheel had come full circle as Alan, our younger son, went to work with SU in Queensland in 2003 for just under a year. He stayed with Tim, who was SE Queensland co-ordinator. Tim along with his wife and 2 and a half year old daughter, arrived yesterday in London.

They drive to Brum today. Pancake Day.

Pancake Day was the day we arrived in Australia in 2004 to stay with Tim and see Alan, for a few weeks. Alan made us pancakes that evening!! I have photos of him tossing them in the air! A family tradition here, and also nationwide.

The job Tim will be involved in is one which Matt would have loved. It is promoting better relationships between Muslims and Christian youth.

he would've been so excited about this project!

So for us there is a sense of delicious continuity here.

A kind of what goes round, comes round!

But Tim and family have left beautiful sunny blue-skied warm Brisbane for the biting cold of this English winter, which has seemed to last and last this year.

A lot to get used to.

A life lived outdoors for a life of warmer clothing and central heating, and lets face it, in Tim's own words yesterday

" London is so cold and grey and gloomy today - a long way from the blue, bright heat of Brisbane. Glad to be here and gearing up for drive to Birmingham tomorrow."

And this morning, it was lighter earlier, and I watched as the sun began to creep over the horizon through the trees. Eventually pouring in through the bedroom window.

Blue sky day for Tim.

I heard a blackbird sing................and I thought, well he thinks spring is around the corner, even though we cannot see much evidence of it yet.

It was encouraging on a day when I'm streaming with the cold virus kindly given to me by my Timelord husband!

Stops me feeling too sorry for myself.

And hopefully I will be able to make myself pancakes at teatime!

Timelord is not a fan!!

Looking back, looking forward........ Birthdays February 2010

The beginning of February for us is one of a flurry of
birthdays.
Friends and family. Six in all from the 4th to the 18th.
What to buy? What to send?
This resulted in us going to the Touchwood Centre in Solihull, early in the month, for a "once in a blue moon" shop!
We are not shoppers, preferring other pastimes.
Timelord calls the place Torchwood, I wonder why?! He really thought it was so named! Must run in his Timelord veins.
It was an absolutely gloriously sunny afternoon, but also extremely cold.
The sunset afterwards in the cold blue sky, just beginning to have a sprinkling of stars, was amazing.
It's hard to believe that this was our 4th year of birthdays without Matt.
The first of those February's was spent in stressful anticipation of the trial at Stafford Crown Court of the lorry driver who was instrumental in the deaths of Matt and Chris. Later in the month we scattered Matt's ashes at the Lizard.
It also snowed very hard then too.
Seemed to match all our moods.
But this year we actually enjoyed ourselves and laughed a lot and had a lot of fun. It was the first time in 4 years where there was a sense of life returning. It was the same at Christmas and New Year. A new sensation. A sense of, and I almost daren't say it, anticipation of what the year can bring, instead of another year knowing we had to somehow go from January to December, and then heave a sigh of relief........

We seem to have been in a land like Narnia, where it was "always winter and never Christmas".
Well, I think I can sense a thaw.............
This new sensation brings it own peculiar thoughts.
As Matt is frozen in time, and we move forwards, and our lives pick up a new rhythm, is it as though we forget?
No, and he would have been pleased that we enjoyed our birthdays.
I have discovered that writing about him, talking about him, looking at his photo, and listening to him talk on the videos we have of him, we take him with us.
I know I felt at first that in time he would somehow fade, and I would have to work hard to cling on to him.
But I can see him as large as life, laughing, smiling, pensive, and I carry him in my heart.
Yes, I missed him phoning me on my birthday and saying "Happy Birthday mum" and going out together as a complete family for a meal. I will always, always miss him. That pain is forever.
And as Matt once wrote on a postcard he sent to us, we will see him again, in time.