We found this photo of my mum. It was lurking under the bed and she came across it trying to find a photo of me as a child for some dreadful fund-raising thing we were doing at work. She looks really great I think - a bit of Munroe in there? So we rescued it from under the bed and it's on our wall now (that's why it's a bit wobbly sorry because all our family photos are on the wall going upstairs and I had to risk life and limb leaning over a banister to get it) Mum has total recall of the day this was taken, at work (notice the typewriter she is leaning on) and it's probably over 50 years ago. It makes her a bit wobbly looking at this because she was full of hopes and dreams in those days and she is not sure that too many of them came to pass. Although she produced me - how good can it get, I ask you? Still, she has seen a nasty divorce and the death of a child as well as her other child being seriously ill. It has not been a barrel of laughs. She is finding more contentment these days though. Settled in a flat near us, she like the area and is forging new friendships and although she is loath to admit it, is perhaps more settled than she has been for years. She still likes a moan and is robust in her criticism of nearly everyone (mainly me though) but in the main I think she is doing ok.
What she has never lost and what an inveterate conflict avoider like me has never had, is the ability to tell it how she sees it.
Mum (sitting on her settee with her chum)
I think Eileen and George (residents in her building) may have something going on
Chum
Yes indeed, I have seen them linking arms and the like. (Do not get involved in what "the like" could be - I find it best not to)
Mum
She's a lot older than him - it's a bit strange if you ask me
Chum
I knew her first husband you know, if he'd have had both his legs, he would have never have looked at her.
Me (interjecting to try desperately to inject some positivity into the conversation)
She's a very handsome woman though
There then follows five seconds silence while Mum with furrowed eyebrows considers this.
Mum
Are we talking about the same woman?
Well, this was unexpected. I really liked this. I mean really, really. Possibly one of the best films I have seen this year. We went on a day off which seenmed to be a pensioners' day out. They were giving out lists of future performances for the seniors club but HOH said I wasn't allowed to get one. I thought that was a missed opportunity for HOH. He would get a cheap ticket and a cup of tea and biscuit.
Despite the stellar reviews I wasn't expecting that much from this film really. I sometimes really like Mike Leigh and sometimes I really don't. His thing about Gilbert and Sullivan was one of the few films I have ever walked out on (I have probably only ever left about five films early in my whole life - unless you include "Love Actually" which I left mentally by falling asleep about two thirds of the way through - a mercy for all concerned) The Gilbert and Sullivan film antipathy could have been because I don't really get G and S although I realise that they are the very air that some people breathe. I remember in my twenties going with a friend to her new fiance's house for celebratory drinks and someone - apparently unbidden stepped up to the piano and gave us all a rendition of a G and S number. It was all deeply unnerving. I was partly worried because I thought the same might be expected of all of us and I remember wondering if my version of Wham's Last Christmas was going to cut it. Digressing.
However, would recommend this. Firstly, it is beautiful. Just lovely to look at. Secondly, it seems to capture it's time and place perfectly. Thirdly Timothy Spall is just amazing. Turner seemed to me to be complex, sometimes heartless, sometimes kind, always immersed in his work and Spall makes him a human.You don't need to know about painting or anything. Just go. It's very good.
So, I have given up a bit and brought this home. Just to look at, you understand. Not to actually do anything with. It's just helpful, to be thinking about it - a bit.
There has been a lot of talk about the Tower Poppies and whether they are appropriate and what to do with them after Remembrance Day. Just to throw my two penneth in. I think they are dignified, beautiful and very moving. However, not as moving as the four million people who have taken the time to come and see them and remember. Surely, that is their prime purpose - not to be pretty or ugly or whatever. Just to make people stop and remember. For what it's worth, I also think they should be dismantled. They are not a tourist attraction. It is the shock that stirs the soul. So many. Would this not become diluted over time?
Anyway just for today, a poem from the beautiful Siegfried Sassoon. Remembrance. Gratitude. Yet not to forget what we are grateful for and the horror of it from someone who earned the right to tell us what he thought.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
When I was a teenage Christian, many things were different. Tambourines were de-rigueur, choruses were found in a yellow book and the youth meeting consisted of telling you lots of things NOT to do. If you were a female type person, chief among the no-nos was make-up, short skirts and dangly jewellery - for this way sinfulness and unavoidable lusts would follow. Although I kind of understood the thinking behind this (well, no I didn't actually but in those days, it wasn't really done to ask) - for someone like me, who had a bit of a hankering for lip gloss and love beads, it was a challenging time. Men were men and girls wore dufflecoats. When I left school and began to earn a bit of money I led a mini rebellion by coming to church wearing blue mascara and a skirt above my knee. Most of my rebellion got in under the wire because the senior leaders were too busy dealing with a bohemian girl who had joined the youth group and encouraged the menfolk to indulge a little too freely in the "community" aspect of church - especially with her. This she managed to do without the aid of make up or short skirts. By the time she had been dealt with (most successfully by someone's wife with a pointy finger and various "non-Christian" threats) the whole of youth womanhood at our church, had run wild and was unabashedly wearing perfume. The genie was out of the bottle.
So when I look around now and see young women in church with hair straightened within an inch of its life, beautiful cat like eye liner flicks that make them look like Nigella and heels that are not doing the church floorboards any good, it makes me smile. I am glad that the old tyranny has gone and girls no longer have to sacrifice eyebrow plucking and person hygiene for Jesus. EXCEPT (and you knew that there was an "except" unless you are new here) I hope that we haven't gone too far and replaced an old tyranny with a new one. I am very keen on the church being a place of safety. The concept is very precious to me even though it can be as rare as hen's teeth to actually see it in action. I hope that girls who don't want to partake in high level personal grooming feel free not to do so. I hope that church is a place where females can feel free to be themselves whether that involves wearing lip liner or just a bin liner.
