Things my mother taught me

Me (11), Mum (48), my sister Marian (7)

A friend with a twisted sense of humour rang this morning and asked, in a mock-sincere voice, "Tell me, how does it feel to be almost seventy?" My reply was a common two-word expletive!

When my mum was in her mid-sixties and I was a mere 28, I asked her what it felt like to be her age and she told me, "Like a young woman trapped in an old woman's body."

Now, I know exactly what she meant and she was so right. My personality, my spirit, my humour, my like and dislikes, even my ambitions, haven't changed one bit. What has changed is my energy level, my sex drive, my optimism and my ability to carry out certain tasks without pain and joint stiffness getting in the way.

I would say that three days out of seven, I wake up feeling so aching and exhausted that there seems little point in getting out of bed. I cancel a lot of arrangements because I just don't feel well enough to enjoy them. I can no longer play the guitar as my fingers won't bend sufficiently. I am now enduring the legacy of the severe whiplash I suffered when I was 40, in the form of a stiff, painful neck which produces frequent headaches, and permanent pain mid-back and in the lumbar region.

I take supplements. Vitamin D, zinc, fish oils. I have recently added Co-enzyme Q10 in the hope of increasing my energy and decreasing my blood pressure. I read up on herbal and homoeopathic remedies, I tinker, I experiment with this and that, which was why I started this blog in the first place. I still hope that my current exhaustion is just a passing phase and that I will wake one day full of the joys of spring. After all, it has happened once this year, about three weeks ago. I got up and started whistling and singing, then stopped in my tracks and thought, 'Wow, this is what normal must feel like!' But it didn't last. Next day, I was back to poor sleep and feeling tired out once again.

I know I shouldn't write myself off because of my advancing years, though it is tempting to think I've had it! Some 70-plus-year-olds are bouncing with vitality. My sister and her husband, for instance. He, poor man, has just broken his leg in two places while skiing. He's 75 but is looking forward to being back on the slopes next season. My sister, 67 this year, walks miles in the Lake District fells every day.

My mum was very wise. She was fascinated by health and the human mind and body and would have loved to have been a doctor, but was forced to leave school and start work at 14 to support her ailing parents, she being the only child. I have just remembered a dream I had once, involving her. In it, I was crippled and in a wheelchair and she stood in front of me, telling me to get out of it and run. So I did. I stumbled and swayed and suffered pain at first, but the more I ran and the faster I got, the better I felt, until all my aches vanished away.

I think the core message was exercise. Something I haven't done much of for a long time, since my gym kept having the lockers broken into and robbed so I stopped going. There are no parks around here, no places to walk. I do a few desultory stretches at home and have put on a stone in weight since this time last year. There is a council swimming pool, but it is two buses and a long walk away, if you don't have a car. Yes, I know; excuses, excuses. But who fancies shivering at two bus stops on a cold winter's day when they are still damp from their swim?

Last Saturday night, I was at a 40th birthday party. The band was great and nothing could keep me off the dance floor. I was the oldest guest and I danced the most. Yesterday, all the pain in my back and neck had gone. Today, it's creeping and creaking back again. But I know the answer: get off my typing chair and dance. As I wrote in an old song of mine:

I was not a model child. Sometimes I ran wild until they caught me.
Then at times I'd look around, hear the sounds the teachers hadn't taught:
Screams of a dollar hot in the hand,
Scenes I could not understand...

For life is a search after gold, they tell you.
If your life could be bought or be sold, they'd sell you -
Don't give them a chance, dance away, don't give them a chance, dance away.

So that's what I need to do: dance away. Watch this space, to the accompaniment of Absolute Radio '70s!

Hair and there

I am off cat-sitting in Camden Town again on Friday and while I am there, I intend doing something about my hair. Many moons ago, it was long, flowing, hippy-like and auburn.

Gradually, it faded to ginger...

At this point, it was a lot shorter. Then I had it cut really short - well, short for me!

But I missed my flowing locks and let it grow again. Now, though, it has so much grey in it that I have to colour it, with the inevitable consequences; dryness, lack of lustre.  So now, with the mighty birthday coming up, I have a strange desire to do something really drastic. Short and spiky? Or long with purple streaks? I won't know will I go to a trendy Camden salon and see what's on offer. Perhaps Mr Grumpy won't recognise me when I get back. (Mind you, he returned from the Turkish barber's yesterday with no hair at all!)

A big birthday

I have a birthday coming up next month. A big birthday. A completely terrifyingly huge one. I'm not looking forward to it. I don't want to be this age. It's not right. I feel wounded by it. I want it to go away and not bother me. I want it to not tell anyone, and definitely not bring me one more wrinkle or grey hair.

They talk about entering one's second childhood. The unfair thing about that is that the second one doesn't restore the wonderful skin and hair and energy and flexibility one had as a child. What's the point of having a second childhood if one can't run to the top of a grassy hill and roll down? If one can't turn a cartwheel on a whim, or leap over a park bench as I used to do without a second's thought. If one can't eat some rich, yummy concoction of cake, jelly and ice cream without wondering where the Rennies are?

I was a great jumper once. Imagining I was a horse, I would mentally rear up on my hind legs, take a run, gather my muscles and leap from one grass verge to the next, across someone's concrete driveway, all the way up the road to the park. Once or twice, I even leapt the width of a double driveway. At 13, I could jump my own height over a rope. Yet I never entered for competitions. I was hopeless at school games. But I was great at being a fantasy show-jumper. All I ever jump at now is my own shadow.

I guess if my birthday won't go away, I'll have to. Hole up in a nice hotel somewhere, all by myself with a laptop, a Kindle and a bottle of champagne and forget the birthday is happening at all. A trip to the Mediterranean would be nice. Shame my birthday is in March, though.

American poet Samuel Ullman had a lot to day about ageing. Here's a quote:

'Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.'

Philosophy notwithstanding, don't you dare send me a card with the actual number of years on it. If you do, the wrinkles may just appear on your backside after I've kicked it!

Muddling along

A good friend told me I should stop writing my blog as it was getting too personal and might be seen by the wrong eyes. I replied that I didn't care who read it and as it was my blog, why was I wrong to write about personal matters?

The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought that perhaps I shouldn't moan and grumble about the ups and downs of my life, as who wants to read about that? So now I am in a dilemma. Should I simply delete the whole thing? After all, it's a real mish-mash, a mixture of diary, thoughts, snippets, poems and photos. It's come a long way since the outset, when all I intended to blog about was my attempts to find cures for my various ailments.

I had thought that by experimenting with various creams, pills, potions and snake oil, I might be helping others who had dithered about which was the best herbal sleeping pill to buy, or the best ointment for their arthritis. It was going to be a medicinal trial and error log. But other things crept in and now it's a different blog entirely, that doesn't match its title.

So... what do I do? Ditch it and start another? Delete it? Leave it to waft around cyberspace forever? Since starting it, I haven't kept a diary. This blog IS my diary! Yet, at the same time, it isn't, because I feel that certain subjects - especially my relationship - are taboo.

It's a muddle. I'm a muddle. Aaaargh!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone. And for those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful festive season and a very happy and healthy New Year.

In case you're not on Facebook, here is a link to my new blog in which I have posted a Christmas story I wrote recently.

http://lornareadwords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/joes-christmas-star.html


See you in 2015, if not before!

Presents Past

The pun in the title was a terrible one and I apologise, but you can blame my dad. He could never turn down the opportunity for a word-play or a spoonerism and "Sass the pugar, please" was heard round our dining table on a daily basis, spoken in shades of Scouse.

As I wrapped up this year's presents - not nearly so many as in previous years and not because people have passed away, but because several of my close friends have declared that they have everything that they need and would rather have donations to charity - I found myself remembering presents I received long ago.

One of my earliest memories is being in a cot and tearing the wrapping paper off a small green wooden boat. I recall feeling hugely disappointed at this uninteresting gift, which was probably all my parents could afford in 1948, and putting it to one side and playing with the wrapping paper instead. At least the green boat was new, or newish. My only other toy at the time was a threadbare nightdress case and this is why I can pinpoint which Christmas it was, because the following one, I spent in hospital and the previous one I was too young to remember.

The nightdress case was called Spot. He was half a white (or rather, grubby grey) dog, with one embroidered eye, one black ear and half a mouth, and looked a bit like the dog in this photo I found on the web. The other side of the case, which is where the zip was, wasn't embroidered at all. I adored Spot and cuddled him in bed every night. The following December, I can still remember being sped to hospital in an ambulance with the siren going, as I had a bad stomach pain and a temperature of 105F.

Once at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, I was x-rayed and they decided I didn't have appendicitis after all. They didn't know what I had and so I was kept in for observation and was unfortunate enough to catch a dysentery bug that was sweeping the hospital. I then had to spend a month in an isolation room, my only contact with other humans being with the nurses who tended to me and brought my food, and my parents who could only peer through the glass window and blow kisses and wave to me. I was there till the New Year.

Even as a four-year-old, I knew I was being treated cruelly. I remember telling a nurse I was going to be sick. She did nothing, I was sick and I got slapped and shouted at for throwing up on the bed. As if I could help it! I felt a huge sense of unfairness. I had warned, her after all.

Another time, I was brought a mug of Ovaltine that was scalding hot. A nurse stood over me, ordering me to drink it. I couldn't as I would have burnt my lips, so, with a flash of childish logic, I folded the cloth napkin I'd been given over the top of the mug and sucked the liquid through it, protecting my lips. When the nurse noticed what I'd done, I got screamed at, had the mug snatched away and earned another slap. Can you imagine a child being treated like that today? But these were the harsh post-war years when nursing staff were hard to come by.

But back to Spot and the first heartbreak of my life. He was taken off me in the hospital and burnt, for fear he carried germs. I have never loved a toy so much before or since. When I was ten, my maternal grandmother gave me a big, beautiful doll called Rosemary which must have cost her a huge amount of money in 1955, but I refused to play with her and she was consigned to the back of the wardrobe forever. Just seven years ago, I found her in a box and put her on the bonfire, as I felt so terribly guilty about never having loved her. Too late, I realised she was wearing my Christening robe, so that got burnt as well. I can just imagine what my mum and gran must have been saying about it 'Up There'!

About fifteen years ago, I read an article by Beryl Bainbridge in which she recalled having been admitted to Alder Hey as a child and being terribly upset when they burnt the toy she had brought in with her, for the same reason that they destroyed Spot. It was such a coincidence that I wrote to her and received a lovely letter back.

As for the green boat... As I got older, I started to sail it in the bath and had it for many years, until the wood got too rotten and soggy with soap and it had to be thrown away. I honestly believe that the fewer toys children have, the more they value them. My friend's kids break brand new toys within hours of getting them. They certainly wouldn't have the same one for ten or more years. Except perhaps a teddy bear... Oddly enough, I didn't get my first bear until I was 25, when a boyfriend bought me one. He and I split up and I did a runner and forgot to pack my bear. I hadn't formed an emotional attachment to it - or to the boyfriend!

I bet I'd still have Spot with me now. Hand-me-down or not, he was the best present ever.

Mr Turner - bore, boor and boar!

I went to see Mr Turner yesterday. It was beautifully filmed and the sense of period was terrific, as was the acting, but... why on earth did director Mike Leigh think it was a good idea for Timothy Spall to play the great artist as a snorting, grunting hog? It was a very long film, too -144 minutes - and about thirty minutes in, I began to feel that if I heard one more snotty snort and one more set of wheezing, bubbling lungs, I'd throw up. 

Despite extensive Googling, I have yet to find any evidence that the real-life Turner was as porcine as he was portrayed. I read that Spall tried some grunts a few weeks into the filming, and it was decided that he should keep it in. In my opinion, it was a big mistake. There was just too much of it and it got a bit Tourette's-ish.

It was a pleasure to see a film that engaged the mind rather than just the eyes, but it would have been greatly improved by a bit of tightening up and the loss of fifteen minutes or so. For a start, the opening featured credits rolling silently over a blank screen, which got me thinking "Gerron wiv it!". Why couldn't they have been rolled over the opening shot of the Belgian (or Dutch?) dawn, with the windmill and the canal and Turner standing on the hillock with his sketchbook?

I would have omitted the long-drawn-out scene in the Ruskins' living room, which contributed nothing to the story (was the young Ruskin really so lisping and effete as he was portrayed by Joshua McGuire?) and would have shortened the ghastly, wheezing death scenes of both Turner Senior and Turner Junior. To draw them out so much was unnecessary and, like the grunts and snorts, smacked of overdoing things. 

Another complaint. The only sex scenes were the ones showing Turner claiming droit de seigneur over his poor maid (I thought the bookcase was going to fall over and crush the pair of them!). Why didn't they put in a gentle, loving one between Turner and Mrs Booth, as a contrast with the near rape of the maid? After all, Mrs Booth had spotted that Turner had a sensitive soul shining through the gruff, snorting exterior, so what would have been wrong with a little tenderness? Marion Bailey gave a luminous performance as landlady Mrs Booth, who accepted Turner for what he was and didn't care if he was called Mr Mallord, Mr Turner or Mr Booth. I think Bailey deserves an Oscar even more than Spall, as what she did seemed effortless, yet the love and amusement in her face and the play of emotions in her eyes are lingering in my memory far more than the stomps and snorts of boorish behaviour of Turner as portrayed by Spall.

I must admit that it was wonderful not to have one's ears blasted by a musical soundtrack. It was refreshing to hear birdsong and the clip-clop of hooves. I wouldn't go and see Mr Turner again, but, like all Mike Leigh films, it left me feeling challenged and with more questions in my mind than I went in with. Is that the mark of a good film? Whether it is or not, it is definitely the mark of an interesting one.