Hubby used to ring me from work in the evenings, he worked a late shift for several years. He didn’t go out to work till the afternoon and came home after midnight. I worked a day shift, so we really only saw each other over a late night meal or at weekends. Then his firm changed the shifts, so he had to start an hour later and finish later too. They also made the workers take a day off in the week and have to work Sunday mornings too. It was awful. That telephone call was our only communication in the evening.
He hated the job and was being bullied. He went to work on a motorbike and a few times when he got home late he was so exhausted he would fall off it. He used to say that he did more work than two people. Sometimes they would take on new workers but they could not keep up with him and some would not come in the next day because they could not cope.
I was so glad when he finished there. We managed to spend few good years together before he died.
I realise now why I can cope without him in the evenings, I spent so many years waiting for him to come home, and that’s why I struggle to sleep at night, my mind expects him to return later.
Now I’m tired all the time, I try and do things and end up shattered.
I get fed up of having to take tablets everyday. Sometimes they have to be tweaked to adjust how my body copes with things. Currently I’ve stopped one type of tablet and have started on something new. All this takes time to get used to.
Life consists of doing a few things to try and keep contact with friends, but not really being able to cope with day to day tasks. My sister bought me a jar and bottle gripper a few weeks ago. It’s been a godsend because I’ve lost strength in my arms and hands. People of a certain age will have heard of Pansy Potter, the strong man’s daughter. I used to be really strong and, able to pick up heavy weights or open tightly closed jars, what happened to me? I’ve suddenly realised I have got old. I don’t mind looking old, but I wish I was able to get back some of my fitness. I know it’s important to keep moving if you have Parkinsons, but it’s hard when you feel tired. I want to go back in time. I want my life back.
Home I hear the accent of a fellow midlander and I’m home again. There’s a twang, a sound that I recognise. I tentatively ask them if they will say where they are from. Usually I get a friendly response. Then we discuss where we come from. Either the same town or close by. Memories of town centres, historic areas, parks and zoos. So many things have changed. But hearing a friendly voice takes me back over 40 years to when I left. I can’t go back, my family has all left, homes sold. Only a couple of relatives and friends left and I can’t drive far so it’s out of the question to go. But I’d like to drive down on a nostalgic trip. Some negotiation with friends required as I couldn’t get on a train on my own I don’t think. Anxiety is not a good friend.
We were out one day, and Hubby saw an old tandem across the floor of a garage. He went over to look at it and fell into an inspection pit. Luckily, he was OK!
We bought the tandem (which was two bikes welded together) and my hubby even took the local MP round Penkhull on it!
One day we rode 100 miles in a reliability trial with the local cycling club. It was fun and we got back in seven and a half hours, despite one of my pedals falling off and having to borrow a spanner to fasten it back in place. One chain wheel was on the opposite side of the tandem, so it had unscrewed….
All this happened about thirty years ago when I was a lot fitter.
We would take the tandem or our bikes out and explore the local countryside or cycle from Stoke up to Rochdale, or down to Walsall.
We decided to cycle up through Leek one day, then up to the Roaches. We saw a signpost for Flash so decided to take it (the highest village in England apparently). We were tired but swooped up and down the hills. But I was nervous, two of us going downhill on winding roads was nerve wracking! I was a bit scared and kept houting at my hubby to SLOW DOWN!
Eventually we came down and round a corner and……
We almost ran into a five pony, pony trek that was spread across the road. Hubby turned the handlebars and dropped us into a shallow ditch at the side of the road!
I admit cursing him for being so reckless. But we gathered ourselves back together and set off again uphill, then swiftly down again. I kept telling him to go slower. But he was enjoying himself and we had averted one disaster, what else could happen?
This time we came round a corner and just managed to stop, in front of a scout Jamboree. How many scouts and cubs? Goodness only knows. HUNDREDS of them! Hubby and I had been lucky not to hit one of them, like a skittle, probably knocking others over too!
Again, we got ourselves sorted out. By then I was ready to go home. We saw a TV mast somewhere up on the hills as we headed Westwards and soon, we were looking across the beautiful Cheshire plain, looking at peaceful and hopefully flat farmland to cycle home over. We stopped off at a place selling ice-cream before pedalling downhill towards Macclesfield or Congleton, to be honest I can’t remember because I was more bothered about the danger of going downhill too fast! I think I was probably very grateful that we got home in one piece!
My first crush was a boy in my Junior school. I think I was about 9?
For one year he was in my class. He was tall, I think he had dark blond hair. It was the time of the Lone Ranger on TV and he reminded me of him.
No notes were passed, no looks exchanged, but I would sit behind him in class and listen to him when he answered the questions the teacher asked us.
Time went by. I was wearing glasses by then and had to put up with being called “specky four eyes!” and nasty names because my surname wasn’t Smith or Jones. I wanted him to come to my rescue but he never did. Eventually it was the end of the year. He was put in a different class. I had to get on with life. But then I fell in love with Slade the Rock Band, or was it Starsky and Hutch? Anyway I moved on. And no I actually wasn’t crushed but it made a good title!
Eight years ago my friend Kate who was the main maker and creative director of Penkhull mystery plays, was in the process of painting this ‘ head of Trent’ for our Mystery Play about the river Trent. This just came up on my Facebook memories.
I’m really hoping the twentieth anniversary production happens next year. We did all sorts of mystery plays, one about Sampson and Delilah, about James Brindley who designed and built the Trent and Mersey canal, and this one about the river Trent from its source to where it runs into the North Sea at Hull, that was fun, we had a spirit of the river character, cricketers at Nottingham, Vikings invading, and I painted a large lighthouse for the final scene. I hope we get to do something again and that I can still paint without too much shaking.
Drawings from a few years ago at the Dorothy Clive garden that came up on my Facebook memories today. Happier days, when things were not so difficult. Sometimes time should be allowed to go backwards. Even if it’s like the film back to the future. A few hours to tweak the space time continuum. Then I could still be happy. But nil desperandum I need to get on with life. No regrets? I don’t think so.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
My list are:
The first: Old Yeller (can’t remember the author)
I read this when I was about 10 or 11. I had only ever read gentle children’s adventures and Old Yeller is the story of an old dog that has caught rabies. I remember being shocked by the story, by the descriptions of what happened. It was the first book that felt realistic and not safe. I’m glad I read it as it opened my mind to the world.
The second : The Plague Dogs, by Richard Adams.
Set in a laboratory where dogs and other animals are experimented on, two dogs join forces and escape. Lost on the Cumbria fells they eventually meet “the Tod” a fox, a wily character. All three animals are being hunted by the lab and the police who have dubbed them “the plague dogs” because of scaremongering by the press. Will they escape ?
(Richard Adams also wrote Watership Down.)
The book influenced my style of writing, there is a section in one chapter on how to write a newspaper article. The book also gave me an idea of how animals can suffer at the behest of mankind.
The third book is: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood.
I read it in the 1980s before it was very famous. I’ve seen the TV series which is far more in depth than the original book. As a young woman I was shocked by the mysogeny of the world the women in it lived in. I saw it as a warning and never believed that anything like it could happen in the real world? And yet so many things have happened that seem to want to drag women back to the home and dispel the rights they have fought long and hard for.
I would recommend all of these books if you want to open your eyes to different ideas.
What would I have done without the caring nature of my friends? Each time I have been down there have been caring words that have helped to bring me back up.
No one turned against me, no one ignored me. They were all there in one way or another. Life can throw bad things at you and your family and friends, so we all need to care for each other. And why not? No one should think they are superior to others. What would life be like if people didn’t care for one another? I don’t want to find out! Support and kindness are two other great qualities to value.
They didn’t exist, then the green light started blinking… The cursor came later, they were glorified typewriters. I don’t know if they came with a mouse?
I wasn’t a member of the computer club. But about five were lined up in the science lab at school. I sometimes saw green text on them.
One day I went to an exhibition about computer art. There was a pc set up and on the screen it said type something, a phrase, can’t remember. But I typed the words… Nothing happened,,, I typed again, and again and again.. Nothing. I typed till the screen was full and the original message had gradually disappeared off the screen!
I wonder what the people running the exhibition thought? It was only a few months later that I found out about the ENTER key!
Mallaband-Brown 