Little Boxes

I am a bit of a squirrel and after reading Millie Johnson’s book ‘A Spring Affair’ I decided to have a bit of a clear out myself. I am the one who says to my daughter, ‘tidy house, tidy mind.’ You can imagine the response and her bedroom still looked like a major explosion had happened in it. Until, that is, a friend was coming over for a girly day in. For two days before she attacked things that I wouldn’t go near without checking my vaccinations were up to date, but they say penicillin grows on mould so maybe I was being a little melodramatic. According to Tabby I was anyway. Well, she emptied all her drawers and her cupboards into a huge heap on the middle of the floor. ‘I don’t know what I started,’ wails she. I went to look, it looked no different to me but she assured be it was such a mess! Over the course of the entire two days she medothically hung clothes up, sorted the washing, gathered her make up together into a little basket, bagged up rubbish for recycling, throwing away and the charity shop and sorted her CDs and DVDs. At the end of it all there were three bags of rubbish besides the recycling and I mean black sacks, not bad for one room. She polished, vacuumed and washed walls, changed the bedding and cushion covers and really worked hard on it. At the end of it all she came downstairs. ‘I hate to say this,’ she says, ‘but you were right.’ ‘Oh?’ said I innocently, ‘what do you mean love?’ ‘I feel really sort of clear in my mind, it looks really good and I feel so much better.’ I resisted the impulse to say I told you so instead congratulating her on what she had acheived.
All this made me think about my own tidiness. I love everything to be neat and then I can relax and write or do whatever without that nagging guilt taunting me. I also like things to be neatly put away so … I collect boxes. I have always been a collector, as a child it was those little wooden matchboxes , scrap books, little charms from jamboree bags, ‘diamonds’, -well coloured glass beads - and I had a place for everything. Today I still collect, glass bottles, books, bits of paper with interesting writing on, all my papers from University, pens, pencils- forever searching for that perfect pen or pencil, little things that I won’t throw away in case it is useful, paints, art paper, brushes, wool, sewing things, oh, and of course boxes. I used to have a beautiful collection of tins, old tins that I kept buttons in, pressed flowers, ribbons, needles and pins, all the sort of things I use from time to time. Useful things yes! Then I moved house two or three times and each time I had to thin my stuff down until now it is , and I even say so myself, a manageable amount for the way my life has changed. So, why is it I am still drawn to keeping little boxes, tins, containers that could hold….. I find it so hard to throw these things away and I do use them from time to time. I am good at justifying. Harry recently said to me, ‘Do you really need all these jars in the shed.’ ‘They’re for when I make jam or pickles and things.’ Says I. I went to look, I was never going to fill four boxes of jam jars, sauce bottles, pickles jars etc. How easy it would have been to say ok I’ll keep one box but the memories of when I wanted to make pickled onions and jelly after someone had given me a lot of fruit to use up and I couldn’t find a jar anywhere… this was after I had thrown everything away on one of my moves… sprung into my head. Instead, I had to go through every one and keeping those that looked pretty, had a nice shape, was just perfect for sauces and on and on. Why can’t I just throw things away?
I got to thinking about my life while I was having a clear out today and it has been so complicated, sad, bad, unhappy, ecstatically happy, so many things I didn’t want to remember, so many things I did and it suddenly dawned on me. I even store little boxes in my head. Many things from my childhood I didn’t want to remember so I started to build a cupboard with lots of little boxes in it, a bit like my grandfathers shed. I filled each little box with those I didn’t need to look at often and labelled them ‘ for when I know the answers’ Then, to counteract the bad ones, I filled the box next to it with ‘happy memories’ then ‘my Grandparents’ or ’sunny days in the garden’, ‘ sad times’, ‘painful times, ‘joyful…’ and so on and so on until my mind was an organised room of memory boxes. Once that was done I was content, the past was no longer an issue, I learned to forgive, and I could look forward to the rest of my life wthout the jumble of thoughts and feelings tripping me up or popping up just when I didn’t need them to. In this case it was tidy mind, tidy life… Well it has hardly been that but little boxes are important to me. I know where everything is when I need to look at it or use it, There is always room for more, They don’t get in the way when I don’t want them to… it keeps me happy anyway. Today I looked at a small cardboard box that I had been saving ‘just in case’ and decided it hadn’t been used for nearly four weeks so I threw it away, I was proud of myself for that but I did notice in the store the other day a nice little set of basket work drawers that would look so nice beside my settee…….

A trip into the past.

I do apologise for the same blog entry as in my other blog www.wordangell., I have just run out of time to get another one written before midnight... I hope you like this one anyway... tomorrow? I will do better, I promise.
Have you ever had one of those days that is absolutely brilliant? Today was one of those days for me.
I was born in Hastings, a seaside/fishing town in East Sussex. It became over the years a very touristy town but I remember as a child where now stand tall buildings and housing estates, once were fields of sheep and huge mansions. The history of Hastings is well known and as part of that history many museums, buildings and places of interest still remain, very much commercialised unfortunatley, but, never-the-less the historical connections remain strong and there for people to see and relive. I lived most of my life in the shadow of Hastings castle, on a cliff overlooking the seafront. Opposite our house was a special lift that was reported to have taken Queen Victoria down to the old town. It has been preserved and renovated. On the East Hill is the Old Town lift, beneath the cliffs lies the Old Town itself with its unique fishing huts and fish market... well it was there once. They still fish from there but the big market has long gone to commercialism, still a nice place to go though. Anyway on the East Hill is the castle and nearby, the caves. Full of stories of smuggling and its use as a bomb shelter during the war, the caves are now a museum, but the caves and tunnels used to travel underneath the town. In fact as children we knew of one house at the end of the row we lived in that had the end of one of those tunnels. But I digress.... the point I am eventually trying to make is that when you live somewhere with somewhere special, historically, curious, or what ever, you never tend to go there. I visited the places after I'd left there and we actually lived on the West Hill back then!
Today I live in Gosport, Hampshire. Home ,once upon a time, to the sailors of the Royal Navy. The Naval Dockyards are still there and the Navy ships but I have only visited the Historical Dockyard before I lived here, never since. Well apart from a works do on the Warrior. Today, the writer's group I belong to were invited by another group to Titchfield to a talk by the curator of the 17th Century Village we have here in Gosport. And no, I have never been there. Always keep saying 'we must go there, sounds interesting,' but never do. That is all about to change. I have never enjoyed a lecture or a talk so much in all my life. It was interesting, factual/ historically correct and taught me so many things about where the customs and saying we use today come from to how to aneasthetise a sore throat for up to 8 hours using a plant you might grow in your garden. I knew a lot of the history but never in such detail before, this lady made it live! If ever anyone reading this comes to Gosport or lives there, I recommend going along and visiting living history at the village if you haven't been before.
So often we miss so much in the hub hub of life. I have always tried to make my children aware of the world around them and to be able to notice the little things in life. Today showed me that I was right, the children of today have everything yet have so little. Material things are nice but what good are they of you don't notice the beautiful things around you that are free. To run in the wind and play in the rain, make mud pies, get dirty, understand how wild animals live, watch the seasons change and know how the world around will change, to make toys from nature, forage for food, grow your own food, cook your own food, understand the natural world and that it has all you need to survive, and, well, just be one with the world. We might have so many material things but most of them keep us indoors and shut away. Get out there and find out how the real natural world exists, or existed in the 17th century. I am sure that we would all find life so much more interesting and healthier. That is my thoughts and lecture over for today but what a GREAT DAY. I recommend heartily, a trip into the past.

Certificates that tell a story

My task today was to look through various papers and try to marry up dates and information with the photographs I was sorting yesterday. It seemed rather strange looking at familiar names on birth and death certificates. The very first one I came across was my great grandmother’s certificates, birth, marriage and death. I had no idea just what information could be gleaned from a certificate. The marriage to the gardener seems to have taken a bit of a twist. As I read the marriage paper it agreed with common knowledge that her husband was indeed fourteen years her junior, no problems there. I also know that my grandmother was a tailoress with her own business, so it rather threw me to discover that not only was my grandfather a poor gardener he was also illiterate. His signature on both the wedding certificate and my grandmother’s birth was merely a mark.
This called for more personal information and unfortunately my grandmother died in the 70s but my mother has a wealth of information in her memory. This marries up nicely with what I am trying to say on my website; we must talk to the older generation. I now find out that there are quite a few discrepancies in the information from the newspaper cutting on great grandfather’s ‘suicide’. My great grandmother was a bit flighty by all accounts and liked her men. Now there are two stories here, one says that she got pregnant by an important visitor and was married off to the young gardener to save face and the other says her brothers, concerned she might get pregnant, arranged the marriage for her to ensure the family name remained honoured. However a third factor has come into play here, my grandmother’s birth wasn’t registered until she was three years old. Hmm something more to be looked into, methinks.
As for my poor great grandfather and his suicide verdict while temporary insane, there is a lot more to the story. What were in the letters the coroner refused to publish I wonder, who were they from? My great grandmother was possibly resentful for having to marry the poor gardener. The brothers bought a farm for him to run to keep face. Still unhappy she often left him with the girls while she went off for months at a time to stay with her parents. While she was at home, she wore the trousers and held the purse strings. If he went into town with the other farmers he would have to ask his wife for tuppence in order to buy cigarettes, about five I believe, so that he could be like the other farmers. So you see there is a lot more to the story and I cannot help feeling a great deal of compassion for this man. It is quite easy to see why he suffered from depression.
I don’t think there are any tales that connect our time with this story yet, but who knows what I might uncover in the days to come, meanwhile do go and talk to your elder generation. You will gain so much knowledge and they will enjoy your company and the chance to reminisce. Who knows, you might uncover your own interesting tales.