ONE AND TWO HALVES

One and two halves a reprint from 2009

by Moannie

We were three, though for a long time, it was just Mick, my older half-brother and me. 

I was Pollyanna  [well, Mollyanne a] always smiling, not a great thinker, a follower, his shadow. He could make the sounds of instruments with his mouth; drums of all types, a flute a  Saxophone.  I sang  'Money is the root of all evil'  and he played along, all jazzy, like the music we'd only recently discovered. He was wound tight, St. Edith's had done that to him. He kept secrets the way he kept his sweets in their paper bag, all screwed up in his pocket so that he had to suck the paper off. Never shared. I would eat my weekly twopenny worth of Bulls-eyes, or Humbugs or toffees in one go, stuffing my cheeks and sussing up the streaming saliva, then beg 'G'us one,' but he never would. 

After St. Edith's it was just him and me...playing Dick Barton:Special Agent in the hidey hole under the eaves, or we'd play shops with the meagre contents of mum's kitchen, or Jazz bands. We'd sprawl on mum's divan bed with the tapestry cover of a jungle scene with lions and tigers and he'd be Tarzan to my Jane, or we'd play mum's few records over and over and he would copy the instruments until I could not tell if it was the record or him playing the snare drum or the trumpet. When Harry was there, before mum married him, we would leave the house and run, always run - to the park, or to the bridge over the railway where we would gaze in fascination as the snorting black and shiny monsters chuntered along the tracks.

He grew up to be tight-lipped, quick to quip, holding nothing dear. If St. Edith's was the cause, he never told me...he grew a moustache and a goatee beard, and he grew away from me. He wanted no ties of love, or emotion, not even for his mother who died with just me there, holding her hand. He came to her funeral, then left. We have not met since then, thirty years ago.

When Tony was born I was ten and Mick twelve. I fell in love instantly. At first I was forbidden to go near him, then gradually I became useful. He was the Prince-the chosen one, the wartime baby who needed the butter and the orange juice, eggs and milk and sweets [candy], all rationed, but he blossomed and thrived even though his baby teeth grew out in blackened and decayed stumps he was still beautiful and I adored him, which was just as well as he became my shadow as soon as he could walk. Mick dropped me like a hot potato and it was then Tony and me.

 But there was something in him that curdled, like milk left out in the sun, and the loving brother grew up and became someone else, self-absorbed, a braggart, an opinionated - the French have the perfect word which translates as near as dammit to- a...hole.

When mum was dying I called him-he turned over and went back to sleep.

We tried, many times to get back to something resembling family, but it was false and finally failed and it has been many years now since there was any contact.

There are many and valid reasons why they became what they are-and why I am who I am. Mick never knew his father, adored his mother and watched her abandon us then make a disastrous marriage and cling to it, even though we, the reasons why she married were anathema to the man and we hated him. He escaped through National Service in Suez and never went back home to live. Tony was wanted and loved and spoiled, but was born of Harry's gene pool. He loved his father, had no reason not to, but he was left alone with mum when I left home at eighteen and she began her long fight with Multiple Sclerosis and he despised her as weak.

I had no spine, no backbone, I wanted the fairy story, the loving father and mother, the laughing playing siblings, the gingerbread house, the happy ending.
I do not miss my half-brothers-they only ever made me unhappy, bringing JP to anger and me to agonise over each visit.

And in the end I made my own fairy tale.

THE PRUNE ONE

An old photograph

The other day, as we were finishing our lunch, he looked up and asked me 'Do you remember where we were when we had our first argument?'

I was instantly transported back to a Sunday afternoon in1955 and Leicester Square, London. I felt my flesh taut on my bones, brushed my hands through my Hiltone blonded Doris Day DA and warmed to the September sun on my face. The bench is warm too where we are sitting as we wait for the afternoon showing of a film we both wanted to see and heard the voices  and the light Sunday traffic as a distant hum.

We've been 'going out' for a few months; though it really added up to perhaps less than fifteen of my days off from the Hospital.  By the time I had paid for essentials there was little left of my salary for trips home and I seemed to be forever trapped in debt-by the time I had repaid the Paper man for the cigarettes he 'put on tick' for me and the odd half-crown borrowed from someone to replace the holey black nylons I managed to get through as if they were made of cobwebs- I usually only had enough for one trip to Dreamland Ballroom and the first packet of cigs.

I cannot remember if we had three separate trips to London together, or if the 'argument' occurred on the same day that we had to run from Soho, all the way down Regent Street looking for a loo, with me in agony, bursting my bladder; not a romantic scenario at the time. Or was it also the day that we ate at a Chinese restaurant in Soho where I caught the Dysentery that would see me interred in a Hospital for infectious diseases for three months? [The restaurant was closed by the Health authorities shortly after our visit]

Kimo sabe, as we say in this house [this was either a phrase used by the Lone Rangers companion, or the actual name of the Lone Rangers companion] What it means chez nous is 'who can say?'
The argument began as a gentle discussion of fruit,of peaches, which were only just becoming available in Britain as our economy expanded. JP was saying how plentiful they were in the south of France. I said that I loved plums, the large dark juicy Victoria, and pointed out a couple seated next to us who were sharing a bag of them.

'Oh, you mean, Prunes!'
'No, prunes are dried plums.'
'Non, they are pruneaux '
'I think you mean prunus which is the generic term for plums, damsons, greengages etc.,'
'Eh?'

I tend to forget that his English is pretty basic; when we first got together he had: yes and no, I'm hungry and, I love you.

'What do you call those round sweet greeny yellow fruits?' I asked.
'Rene Claude.'
'Well we call it a Greengage and it too is a member of the family Prunus.'
'No, a pruneau is what you call a plum and what we call a PRUNE!'

Now I'm getting a bit het up. I stand up and I'm afraid I took a stance, very Calamity Jane with hands on hips.

'Well, here in ENGLAND a prune is a dried up wrinkled PLUM.'
'And in FRANCE it is a PRUNEAU!'

I can't believe we are shouting, or why. He is standing now and facing me, mouth tight and eyes blazing. I walk away from him to the edge of the square and look back and see that he is walking in the other direction. I slow down and walk around the edge of the square tears falling as my anger dissipates. He has the train tickets and the money for the cinema. I hate him, arrogant French boy.  Head down I bump into him.

'Prune,' he says.
'Plums' say I.
And he holds me and kisses me and all is well with the world.

'Oh yes,' I say.  'I remember it well. And a plum is a plum and a prune.'

SO HAPPY TO BE BACK

I don't think anyone has missed me, and that is a bit, well, sad really. I know I am not that prolific but it has been 20 days since my last post I had thought to see  at least one or two...'Moannie where are you' [s].

The saga began when I finally got truly mad at Hayhohell and cancelled my contract with them, and, at the same time cancelled   BT who have done nothing wrong, but we decided to put all our eggs into the basket at Sky, thus saving a bundle [eventually, we hope] This all happened on the 1st of this month and I, in my blissful ignorance believed it would all be fixed and finished by the eighth.
Hayhohell however lived up to its name and reputation and refused to give me my mac code so that Sky  has made me wait till the 18th to do whatever magic they had to do to get me connected. The parcel arrived with all the bits and pieces I needed to get it done but...and there's the rub, I didn't have the nerve. Today the wonderful Debs and Gary came by and he fixed it for me and now I am back and it is as if I had never been away.

Well it is for you 'cos you didn't miss me.

Twenty days of twitching, of irritability; of dusting and weeding, cleaning in corners that have not seen a duster since we moved here seventeen years ago.I have walked and wormed and weeded until dog and garden have yelled 'uncle'.  I've begun baking, even using yeast  to great effect [pizza dough] and disaster [Chelsea Buns] and brought out my Encyclopaedia Gastronomic  to produce some great meals much to the approbation of JP. I've dillied and dallied and a couple of times lost my way home and the time CREPT BY.

I could have used that time to my advantage, storing up posts in word, but nothing happened when faced with that blank white page; there is something about this small rectangle which gets my creative juices flowing.
Hayhohell still showed me the little place where my emails are stored but it mocked me, creeping up from 6-to-155 and of course I could not access them. It has been awful.

And now that I am back, in touch with the world and my friends and I can ask Google questions [I have a list]   it feels good.
Don't let me down Sky, you have my on-line life in your hands.

HELLO WORLD!

ANOTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE

Another piece in the puzzle.

I have used that title intentionally, because I am beginning to think that these posts, dedicated to my past are bits of the jigsaw that, completed, and read in the correct sequence [I purposefully publish out of order] will help me to understand why I am me.

Gretel S. [Mutti] really deserves a chapter all her own in my story. Not just because she was an extraordinary woman, which she was, but because of the effect she had on my life.

Born in Holland in I9II Mutti moved with her parents to Germany when she was eleven. I am not sure exactly when she moved back to Holland but it was there she married an Englishman, Norman S, and had a daughter, Marjorie. The marriage broke up, Germany invaded Poland breaking their treaty with Great Britain and war was declared. Wrapping two Persian rugs around her middle and with only what she could carry, Mutti brought her eight year old daughter to England as the Germans marched into Holland. She arrived when the country was in turmoil.


 Unprepared for a war that was inevitable - thanks to the dithering of Neville Chamberlain the Prime Minister of the period, men were hurriedly conscripted and trained, factories converted from peacetime products to producing uniforms, guns and ammunition, tanks, planes and field kitchens. The powers that be, requisitioned schools, houses and land as headquarters, living accommodation, training bases, and stores. Khaki, pale blue, and navy blue uniforms now predominated and the accents of all nations could be heard in the towns. Sign posts and place names were removed from roads, sticky paper strips criss-crossed windows in trains and blackout curtains in every home cut out any chink of light that might lead an enemy bomber to its target.
Rationing began; gas masks were distributed and were obliged to be carried at all times. Municipal parks were dug up and planted with vegetables, and Barrage Balloons looking like floating elephants protected important sites. Lorries collected iron railings and garden gates to be turned into shells for bombs and bullets and the Black Market was born.
After living for a while with her estranged husband Mutti moved to Bedford to be near her only brother Paul, who was a Trades Union leader.

Mutti was a sturdy five foot nothing of energy, with the face of a mischievous but rather plain, elf. If there was something she wanted or needed she would find a way to get it. She would badger people into submission using a mixture of coercion, persuasion and moral blackmail. She sold her rugs and some jewellery and bought a large run down house and proceeded to beg or borrow the means to repair and paint it. When it suited her she would play the poor refugee who had escaped Hitler by a whisker. 
She had the idea of creating a housing billet where officers could rest and relax; near enough to London to commute to their offices, yet far enough away to avoid the nightly bombardment. Having conceived the idea she followed it through by shaming those who were doing nothing, to help her in her plan. Beds and bedding were donated; shops were scoured for the necessary equipment for her kitchen and for all the other essentials. 
Mutti knew her antiques and was not above trading the food her officer’s food stamps brought her, for more rugs, fancy tables even object d’arts. Eventually she had room for eight officers and her fame as a cook ensured that the waiting list for places grew and the numbers stayed constant. She knew how to make a little go a long way. Cream was a thing of the past and butter rationed so she would take the cream from the top of each bottle of milk, letting it stand for a while before draining off any liquid then whipping the cream to top her coffee or her fancy puddings. Her soups were legendary; made from a stock pot that was always on the go. It began with a chicken carcass or meat bones with onions, celery and bay leaf and then took all the leftovers that came back from the vegetable dishes. Nothing went to waste, ever. She bought day old bread and stale sponges for half price. The bread was held under hot water for a second then baked in a hot oven until it was as crisp and fresh as new baked. The sponges were soaked in sherry and made the base for sherry trifle. She gave her men Goulash and Blinis, bashed tough steak into submission, tied pieces into sausage shapes and pressure cooked it in rich gravy until it melted in the mouth, salted runner beans in the summer glut for winter delight and made her own Sauerkraut. In a time of restrictions, her officers ate very well. 


She did not waste money on sending soiled washing to a laundry. Monday was washday and beds were changed to crisp fresh linen and she would still be ironing at eleven in the evening. She had one particular and peculiar quirk which she credited for her boundless energy. Every afternoon after lunch she would retreat to her bedroom, remove her shoes, climb on the bed and cover herself with a rug. She would close her eyes and sleep for precisely ten minutes and wake refreshed. Wherever she was in the world [and I have witnessed this in London and New York and heard of her search for a bed or bench in Franco’s Palace in Madrid] she would enter a hotel lobby, remove her shoes, lie back on a couch, close her eyes and sleep for the required ten minutes. No one disturbed her. By the time hotel staff decided to rouse her, her ten minutes were over and she was up, shoes on, shopping bags retrieved and on her way. 


Her fame spread and her bank balance grew. She grew close to one of the officers, Reginald Floyd, a tall buffoon of a man who could see at once that her dragooning character was a perfect foil for his own laid back laziness. Marjorie went to Bedford Girls High School and became a perfect English rose.


Sometime in the late forties Mutti bought a large rundown hotel in The Bay, and with her usual formidable energy and courage turned it, in double quick time, into a convalescent home. She took patients from all over Kent for two weeks of convalescent care and some of her very good cooking; with the aid of a regular turnover of German girls, and a number of her ‘stray lambs’; girls like me who needed tender loving care. Reginald or Flukenbush as she called him drove her around in his large black Packard, to the station, to the Wholesalers or to the Bridge Club where they played every Thursday evening. For the rest of the time he played solitaire in their sitting room, changed the occasional light bulb or parked outside the Pier and waited for the showgirls to exit from the Summer Show.

I953 and I enter her world.
I was given a card to take to the Home for an interview with the owner, Mrs Gretel S. who needed a cleaner and general dogsbody. I had been a week without money and I was very hungry. Mutti looked me over with her small twinkling grey eyes, saw with her amazing antennae that I was a waif in distress and hired me on the spot. ‘Time for lunch, my dear’ she said in her comic Dutch/German accent. ‘Come and join us’. It was stew, not any old English stew with gobs of fat floating on thin tasteless liquid; but Mutti’s stew. Succulent meat, bite tender vegetables and soft fluffy dumplings floating on rich thick gravy. I ate three bowls, an act that became part of the folklore of the Home.


I worked from Monday to Friday with Mrs.Robinson- a long term member of Mutti’s staff - I stripped and remade beds, vacuumed carpets and swept the oak-stained and polished floorboards. We dusted and polished furniture, cleaned windows and bathrooms, and folded linen. If all that was done Mutti would find me another job. Dampening and rolling pillowcases, sheets, table cloths, shirts and blouses ready for the iron. Or she would have me stringing runner beans, shredding cabbage or simply stirring a pot. Mrs. Robinson, [Robbie] knew better than to show her face. If her work was done she would hide herself in an upstairs room and smoke another of her endless cigarettes. I however was in some kind of heaven. 


The work, though never-ending, was not hard and everyone was pleasant. Mutti’s assistant, Erna, a tall grim looking German woman was a bit severe but Mutti herself more than made up for her. We had coffee at eleven around the big kitchen table. For the first time in my life I tasted proper roasted coffee and with Mutti’s famous ‘milk top cream’ it was sublime. There would be cake, almond slices, or biscuits and the conversation would be mostly in German. I was told that after a while there would be no translation and I would soon pick up enough of the language to follow what was being said. Sometimes we would sing. Around that table, with our coffee and cakes, one of the girls would hum something and another would pick it up. I learned to sing Das wonden ist dast Muller’s luste [probably not quite right but that is the phonetic spelling] A Roundelay, you know, where one singer starts and the next begins midway, then the third and so-on. The first time it happened it made me cry. I couldn’t believe such happiness existed. I sang all the time and no-one told me to stop. At the top of the house in the attics I would sing 'Oh Mien Papa' from Madam Butterfly, and hit the top note [just]. I was almost delirious with happiness. At the end of the first week I bought a bottle of Hiltone bleach and became a blonde and would remain one for the next eighteen years with a few hiccups along the way. After three weeks I moved into one of the attics at the top of the house and, at eighteen and a half I began to venture into what today would be known as teenager territory.

Marjorie was three years older than I. At first she was distant. I was just another of her mother's stray cats and I think she would have loved to have Mutti's attention to herself, but little by little we became closer until we were inseparable-at least when she was home from the hospital where she was in her third year of nursing training.

Because of Mutti and Marjorie I would begin my own nursing training within a year.

Because of Mutti I became a good cook, learned to appreciate music and gained knowledge of antiques, spoke German and a little Dutch and discovered that caring comes in all shapes and sizes and that by 'paying it forward' can be endless.

YOU ARE MOST WELCOME, FRANCIS, ALBERT.

Mister London Street is a natural born writer. His work seems effortless, his caricatures as sharp as razor-blades and his insights illuminate the human condition. No-one can take the mundane and turn it into magic the way he does. I tell you this as a preamble to this next post because, although I have given up aspiring to his degree of perfection, he does often inspire me with a subject, and this one was dislodged from my porridge of a brain by Absent minded a post about  his recurring Daydreams.

As a child, a young child my recurring daydream centered around the house of Rupert Bear [the only books to which I had access] His house was my house. I warmed myself at his hearth, ate at his table with my mother, my brother and a new father. And my father had a 'bear' look about him. His hair was the colour of Rupert's fur and he had a soft beard of the same hue. He was big, cuddly, bear like and I would sit on his knee sometimes. We would have Rupert Bear type adventures and at night he would read me to sleep.  These daydreams stopped when mother met Harry.

The next, and last recurring daydream began shortly after we bought The Meadow of Pears [I have given the English translation because I STILL cannot find the accent aigu] our Lavender Farm in the Alpes des Haut  Provence. A large rambling Mas of pale stone  set on a promontory 11km from Sisteron.

It was 1972 and this was taken as our car rounded the corner and I got my first glimpse of our new holiday home with it's eleven hectares of ancient Lavender. For twelve years we spent every holiday - Easter, Christmas and the long summer break here in this lovely setting. It is isolated from the  tiny village way above us, a few houses, nothing special-a  goatherd who ran his  flock over our land, farm workers, one holiday home; perhaps three vehicles a day going up or down.

Francis Albert had retired...and I missed him. I was more than a fan, short for fanatic...I did not want to be Mrs. Sinatra, had no fantasies that we would meet and that he would fall in love and whisk me away from my beloved JP, I wanted to be the one he would call when he was down; that was my original daydream. Then, lounging in the courtyard with the doors to the house open and his music pouring out on the rare occasions that I was alone-they expanded. We met accidently.[I never could work out how] He was not well and was very unhappy. We invited him to the farm should he need a bolt hole. The unfinished upper half of the building which we had always meant to turn into a suite-was made over for him and one day he arrived, no fanfare, no entourage, just him in a hire car. Sometimes I imagined that he wanted to be alone and I prepared meals for him and took them to his room-or that he came to our table and ate my food with gusto. I daydreamed that we would talk for hours, about family, regrets, gossip sometimes. Then he would leave as easily as he had arrived . 
These daydreams came, just once in while, each one more elaborate, down to the ingredients of each meal, the contents of each conversation. Sometimes it was just a phone call to say 'hello, how are you', or a card for a celebration. We were his big secret and he was ours..

They daydreams stopped when he married again and he was happy.

We saw him once, much later at The Royal Albert Hall. Number one and only son bought tickets for us to see the Show with Sammy Davis and Liza Minneli. They opened the show and were both brilliant but when Francis Albert's figure entered I stood up, cheering and whooping 'I love you Frankie' and did not care that he was two millimetres high [this was before big screens] It was enough that I was in the same room with him.

Now I don't daydream about what might have been, I reminisce. 

AUSTEN-ITUS HAS STRUCK AGAIN

Dear Readers. I am suffering from my annual case of Austen-itus. It affects me every year at about the same time causing me to speak slowly and distinctly, avoiding contractions, split infinitives or slang expressions. I find, at these times that my back is held straighter, my hair tidier and my smile shows less teeth and is bestowed upon all and sundry, even upon those who look at me oddly.
I tend not to shout or say 'what?' and I call my husband Mr.F...e and try very hard not to respond with my usual profanities when he gets on my w.... joshes me.
My dog tends to regard me quizzically when I do not raise my voice to him as he attempts to water my plants, and 'Bad Boy' in a softer, more genteel tone does not stop him chasing fledglings.

This malady is brought on by repeat showings of most of Miss Austen's works beginning with the definitive film of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle followed by Emma and then Persuasion and then last night the dreadful version of P&P with Kiera Knightly only rescued by the 'I love, love, love you' of Mister Darcy.

Each year this malady manifests itself with the symptoms I have listed here, but, thankfully it lasts but a few days...or even hours if the Master requests I revert before he is obliged to shut me in my room to recover. Already I can feel a swear word coming on...the strain is too much. And of course, Miss Austen did not smoke, did she?

Where are they now?

[all these pictures enlarge with a click]

While it may be true that once I seemed to know everyone in my town, from the local Beach Photographer [oops! there's another story] or the one time headmistress, later 'crazy' woman, her matted hair pushed under a tea cosy, who shook her walking stick at any school-aged girl and shouted 'Get back to class, now!' -to the woman who sat in a small windowed cubicle mending nylons - that familiarity ended years ago as the town grew and it's population flourished.
Now, up here in the village-which is truly a small finger of the Bay, I believe I can say we are back where we started..

The Butcher's shop is next door but one to our right and they know my name, and JP's. They know when I have family over for Sunday lunch as we discuss the merits and price of each joint. Rob knew when I had my hip operation and I know where he is taking his family on his days off. Thanks to my requests he now sells Quail and wild rabbit, Pheasant and Venison.

To our left is our Dentist, Stavros, who has become a dear friend and not only because he has saved my mouth from a fate, for me, worse than death or taxes; filling in the Cumberland Gap that kept my mouth closed for a month, but because he really is a sweet, funny and generous gentleman.  Next to his surgery is the Chemist, that JP keeps afloat with his huge monthly prescription. I am commanded by the Chemist  to fetch her should JP have another hypo, and as Stavros has demanded the same thing, and I know they mean it-I shall pour glucose into his mouth and run to them...well, hobble.

Opposite is a Funeral parlour. JP swears the boss sizes him up every time their paths cross, and next to their 'shop window' which contains a large coloured  photograph of two fine black Shires pulling a black and gold hearse/carriage is a TV  repair shop, though lord knows how it can make a living with electrical goods so cheaply available in Superstores. The owner's name is Chris, but to us he is Matt- for his extraordinary likeness to the late, great Matt Monroe.

A small break for the Village Hall and a Tea Shop then another short row of  two shops, a Co-op and a Londis, and both, happily for their customers, vying for our custom for what is basically the same stock.

To our right we have a Video store, two hairdressers, a Florist, 2 Charity Shops, pet store and a Garage. All in all we are pretty well catered for.

When what is now our sitting-room was a shop, an ill-fated project we began in the certainty that we were too young to retire and because it seemed like a good idea at the time - I would sit near the register by the  window, wrapped in a poncho and sketch passers-by.

Looking for something totally different- [actually some flower paintings I had done ages ago so that I could prove a point to JP. He had bought me a huge bunch of trumpet Lily s and suggested that I paint them - I told him that I could not paint flowers-he said 'rubbish'...end of explanation.] - I found these sketches that I did at the time, Good Grief! JP just reminded me that was all of fifteen years ago. Well, the middle-aged must be old, and the kids, adults. All caught in a brief moment in time.