Birthday Blog: Fabulous Sisters

 

 

A typical Quentin Blake, sent to me
by Heather in 2019

 In counting my blessings [see recent blog] I naturally think of the past too and the reason for the immodest title of this blog is that my 89^th birthday approacheth. This will be the second birthday which I have had to celebrate solo, as it were. For most of my life, it was Our Birthday as both my sisters conveniently arrived on My Birthday towards the end of July; Esme, two years after me, and Heather, six years later. As The Birthday came into view, our Mother used to borrow a long table [from where I never knew or cared] and our friends, ‘on The Day’, used to sit with us round the table to celebrate with, always, egg sandwiches and some sort of paste sandwiches too, plus individual trifles in squat drinking glasses with layers of cake, fruit, custard and differently-coloured jellies. Astonishing how strong that memory is! The annual event hardly varied t

Birthday photo.
July 1941.
Heather, 1; Esme 5; Averil 7
Mum 39

though boys from ‘my gang’ were later added. Each year, the local rag, The Chad, aka The Mansfield Chronicle Advertiser, sent a reporter to check the facts about our ages so that a tiny paragraph recording our coincidental births, would appear. We were quietly proud of that, feeling slightly clever at having stumbled into a once-in-a-million happenstance without any effort at all! Mum assured us that our ‘on-the-same-day’ birthdays made us special! I should mention that this important occasion was Always Marked by having our fine, eternally straight, hair sculpted into rags the night before so that we each had curls for our parties, to wear with our ‘best dresses’, all remembered fondly, even decades later, as Golden Days.

Definitely a birthday photo as curled hair shows.
Probably 1944
We were 10,8,4.

With mature consideration, I  marvel that my mother, this down-trodden, impoverished woman whose own life was lived in a state of almost perpetual anxiety, had particularly fine, natural mothering instincts ,which she used, in her quiet, modest way, to considerable effect. She had had the good fortune to grow up in a loving, contented family, best friends with her two brothers, experiencing and learning instinctively the value of familial harmony. I do not recall my father ever having been present at our annual bean-feasts, a real plus for us and our mother, in itself! Life was always carefree and spontaneous in his absence as we relaxed happily with no need for the anxious checking of his reactions or the urgent need to control our behaviour and Not Catch His Eye, so that we didn’t unwittingly overstep some arbitrary parental line and invite disaster! We didn’t realise for many years, how lucky we had been; we lived our lives, unknowing that the unconditional, unwavering, kind and patient love of one parent, is enough. Two, better perhaps; one, more than sufficient.

Mum  [right, middle row] with her
nursing colleagues. 1950s. She undoubtably 
experienced emotional  support from them.

Looking back, which I seem to do rather more of these days, is not to wish to go back to those childhood days; not at all. One secret of successful ageing, is to accept the inevitable losses, the difficulties, the deprivations, acknowledge the present decline with good humour and move on. Optimism is the best quality and you are lucky if that comes naturally. The answer is 'Carpe diem', to ‘seize the day’ and savour the people and activities you still have left, enjoying the fewer ‘Hellos’ and letting go philosophically, of the more frequent ‘Goodbyes’! There was an unstudied joy and exhilaration in these remembered birthday parties with our curled hair and our best dresses, our happy, busy mother and our friends, which exemplified the best of our childhood and are to be cherished. And now, remembering, there is also the poignancy of loss and regret within the reminiscences. Mum died in 1986; Esme in 2017; Heather in 2021. And I remain, slightly dazed to be the last woman standing. But I do remember. I see Summer’s end; watch the Autumn leaves fall and occasionally catch Spring back there while picturing three little girls, good friends, secure in the warmth of their mother's love and enjoying life when they could.

At a family wedding, I think.
 2000

We three again, possibly 1952

Heather at her 80th party, July 2020

Esme on her 80th. July 2016

Averil in Bruges in July 2023.
Nearly 89.

Brugge with David

Bruges Town Hall on the Burg

Slightly apprehensively, I set off on July 10^th for Bruges. Apprehensive in case the journey was too demanding; but also thrilled to be going back for a visit to see friends. I just caught the train from Ely on July 10th by seconds and in rather a virtuous circle, had the almost identical scramble for the Ely train from King’s Cross on July 14^th

King's Cross Station

Scrambling for trains is fine for the young but for me, now, with walking pole and small case, physically unable to run, it is less than ideal. However, each time the essential deed was done [by a whisker] and on each occasion, a seat was immediately found; in Ely, the deck was cleared by a lovely middle-aged lady who offered to fetch me a coffee; in King’s Cross, from a considerate New Zealander with dangling 13 month old son squirming in his arms, who immediately gave me his seat in the crowded carriage. A reminder that the dowager’s stoop and the walking pole suggest an aged person in need of assistance; not necessarily the picture one would choose to present. However, on each occasion I did see how very kind people are to those on the upper slopes of ageing. AND did recognise how much I appreciated their kindnesses.

Celebratory bubbles with friends.
This became a familiar scenario.

David, my son, my essential companion and porter, and I, arrived at our little tourist house around 6.00 p.m. and had already received an insistent invitation from the couple next-door who are also friends. I neither eat a meal in the evening nor go out because of insufficient energy but Maria-Aida’s command to drink bubbles with her and Jan, could not be refused. In the event, we turned up at 7.00 and spent a wonderful two hours over bubbles and delicious food and chat. Another dear friend was also there and the evening proved to be both a great welcome back to Brugge and a harbinger of the days to come. That is, what seemed like non-stop socialising as friendships were renewed in various quarters. At times I did feel slightly like visiting minor royalty!! We had no time for wandering along canal-sides, as envisaged, or refreshing memories of favourite spots or shops. But we did experience a constant thrum of pleasure as we admired the beauty of the buildings en route to seeing more friends, and then felt the delights of greeting them and feeling the warmth of their friendship.

On our last morning, we had nearly two free hours [a first] and David suggested a visit to Sarah Pacini where he would buy me a birthday present. Although I did a half-hearted demurral [I neither need more clothes nor have many occasions to wear different outfits] I was delighted to go to my favourite shop and off we set. As we entered, a strangely familiar face popped up and an enthusiastic greeting came over containing my first name. It was a young woman with whom I had become friends over the years when she worked at Sarah Pacini but her name had gone which I did my best to hide. The next half hour passed in a frenzy of her finding outfits for me to buy while she simultaneously did the same for her niece whom she was ‘officially’ helping to choose clothes. I noticed a slightly helpless look on the niece’s face and knew a similar

Brugge branch

expression hovered on mine. This lovely whirlwind of help no longer even worked at the shop but she took over, as to the Manner Born; order was restored and choices made; David paid. It was not until I was back home in Bury that I undid the clothes parcel and saw the till roll which showed that my son had paid nearly 100 euros too much. He had been charged 17 and a half % sales reduction instead of 50%! Sarah Pacini [Brussels] will repay to my account! I was unable to give my son’s bank details as he is on holiday in France. Great end to a super week!

Hotel Amsterdam, Woensdagmarkt 5
Thursday 13th July 2023

Schaarstraat.
One of our many destinations to be with friends

L'Estaminet, opposite Astridpark
Lunch with friends here.

Counting My Blessings!

 

View from the Abbey Gardens' bridge
over the Lark, near the tennis courts

 W

June 28th
Suffolk Flower Flash
Angel Hill
Unsolicited photo taken
by one of the flower girls

ith ageing, I mean Serious Ageing, at least, some opportunities arise for reflection which may, or may not, have been present in earlier days. I realise that I now have time, space, maturity and inclination to ponder on Life and present circumstances. Engaging in this process seems to have developed in me a greater capacity to notice details, delight more intensely in the visual and truly live in the moment.

I loved living in Bruges and did not want to leave it but decided that it was time because of increasing feelings of old age arriving which came with a desire to live closer to ‘family.’ My youngest lives in Bury with her daughter so I had visited the town several times but hadn’t truly appreciated its charms until I began to live here last February. I have grown to love the place and its many splendid buildings, gardens, historical features. I have fallen particularly in love with the Abbey Gardens where I walk practically every day, in company with many dog walkers, lone walkers maintaining their health, bird lovers going to listen to the canaries in the aviary, families en route to the playground and teenagers perhaps going to the tennis courts or in search of green privacy for a kiss or a smoke!!

St Edmunds' Abbey in its considerable heyday

I am quite bewitched by the history of the Abbey with its architecturally beautiful Abbey ruins to remind of splendours past and the famous ignominy of Henry V111 who seized the treasures of the largest Benedictine Abbey in Europe in 1539 and systematically demolished it to demonstrate his power and control. Between 1536 and 1541 the Dissolution of the Monasteries covered the disbandment of not only monasteries, but also friaries, convents and priories. Henry expropriated their incomes and disposed of their assets, often to fund wars but particularly to accumulate their wealth in his coffers. The Dissolution abruptly severed the old way of life for perhaps as many as 12,000 people directly but with consequent indirect negative effects on surrounding villages and towns like Bury St Edmunds. Henry did not have a long life but he managed to fill it with destruction, violence, grudge-filled hatred and countless deaths. It remains a pleasure to ponder the fact that his sister, Mary Tudor, briefly Queen of France, then Countess of Suffolk, married in a reputed love match to Charles Brandon, was first interred in the Abbey when she died in 1533 aged only 42, then was later transferred to St Mary's Church, [built 1424-46] where she remains, acknowledged and admired as her brother never was.

Mary Tudor & Charles Brandon
Duke & Duchess of Suffolk

En route to the West Front, about to
pass the Chapman gravestone

The West Front built into part of the Abbey ruins

The church abuts the Great Graveyard at which I gaze as I pass, savouring its variety of seasonal green accoutrements. Presently, the gravestones are totally hidden beneath, and behind, the tallest nettles and highest, frothiest trembling grasses ever seen! I often finish my early Gardens walk along the tree-lined avenue leading directly to the West Front homes built into some of the ruins; another object of my admiration. At this height of summer, that particular allee is so thickly arched by the copious leaves on the branches curving to form a natural arc, that the sensation is of walking within an airy tall green tunnel. Delightful. Along there I generally nod to the large gravestone of William and Harriet Chapman who died in the early18^th century; I love their Austenesque names, perfect for any of Jane’s exquisite novels set in villages and small
communities like Bury St Edmunds! And following that, I arrive at the first of the West Front houses which has the most special exterior, perhaps six-sided, though all are touchingly attractive to the historian’s eye. This little row of dwellings, created mainly during the seventeenth century by burrowing into or adding on to, the existing ruins from the 1540s, using rescued Abbey stones, are both historical and imaginative and certainly induce a longing within this passer-by!

Wolf  in terrifying close-up

Passing in parallel to, and in front of, the West Front mediaeval constructions, after glancing to the left to check the statue of the legendary wolf is still there, poised on the grass, guarding the Elizabeth Frink statue of St Edmund, I come to another favourite spot; the Rose Garden, supported financially by the generosity and far-sightedness of John Appleby, one of th
e few men to have penned any autobiographical account whom I would love to have met. He was an American pilot who trained other pilots in celestial navigation and was stationed in Suffolk for the last few months of WW2 and several months afterwards. He clearly fell in love with Suffolk, bought a bike and explored as much as he could. He even learned how to produce brass rubbings with which he became obsessed! He loved his time here so much that he wrote about it after he returned home and gifted the royalties from his Suffolk Summer [1946] to establish and maintain a rose garden, still here in the Abbey Gardens. His book is still on sale here though he is, no doubt, long gone. I am always touched with his writing and with his clear-sighted generosity.

These above I experience almost every day and each time, I experience an active delight and appreciation. And as I pass, I often acknowledge my good fortune in having a loving family dependably there, for each other and for me. And I can see why I wake up each day, benedictions as the French say, intact, understanding why I do wake up happy to greet the day!

King Edmund, murdered for his faith,
holding a cross.
Dame Elizabeth Frink

Rare portrait of Henry in 1509 before power
corrupted him. 
Meynnart Wewyck

                                                                                           

Panorama of Abbey ruins

                              

 

Abbey Gardens en fleur

Blakeney Blog

Blakeney

Considerable excitement last Friday as Cait, my daughter, and I set off for a house in Norfolk. I have hardly ever been to Norfolk so was keen to discover Blakeney on the northern part of the Norfolk coast. My other daughter, Sian, had booked a house there for eight of us to gather for the long weekend. She and her husband and 12 year old daughter, Genevieve, [Gigi] had been in England and Carcassonne for over 2 weeks from their Truckee home in north Carolina. on holiday and catching up with family, SO obviously a big deal when the Californian contingent is in town!

The house......

The house was superb with the biggest garden imaginable. Even allowing for the assumption that there had once stood at least, three terraced cottages where the large house was, with the long gardens for vegetable-growing, so beloved of the late Victorians onwards, the grounds were huge, with views of the sea at the edge of the land. The weather remained in the ‘perfectly-sunny-with-light-breeze’ experienced for several weeks though the 30 degrees plus on Sunday were pretty unbearable by the afternoon. Meanwhile, back in Bury, the same extreme heat frazzled all the leaves on a beautiful young weeping salix on my kitchen terrace and simultaneously reduced the fuschia flowers in the hanging basket nearby by two thirds. A treat awaiting me on my return.

.....and part of the garden near  the terrace

In the meantime, we thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the terrace under an ample parasol enjoying the remarkably well-equipped kitchen and the several sitting rooms. It was just a wonderful opportunity to chill out, enjoy the family gathered together with the sole purpose of being together, and make relatively brief forays to the local quay with its fishermen, boats, holiday-makers and sun-seekers [quintessentially, ‘perfect’ as a description would fit!] with dedicated crab-hunting for the 12 year old and her father; strolling and occasionally buying, from one of the beach-side shops-in-sheds for most of us; a visit to a beach one late afternoon for almost everyone,[I stayed home to read The Sunday Times, alone, a rare treat] and one afternoon in Holt, another perfect little Norfolk town where most of the shops were Sunday-closed, though not all, permitting several of us to buy one or two items of clothing like trousers and tops. We left on Monday morning for various destinations in what can only be described as a reluctant departure after an amazingly satisfying interlude of 3 or 4 days. I felt privileged to have spent quality time with some of my best friends. I also appreciated spending time in the formerly

Crab fishing in the quay; a popular sport

unknown, beautiful Norfolk

Blakeney quay

.

Perdendosi

  

Edmund de Waal, ceramicist, writer, poet.

The term ​perdendosi refers to the musical process which almost always comes at the end of a piece and directs sound, rhythm and tone to gradually fade and die away. On my Easter theatre trip to Cambridge with U3A, I took the opportunity to visit Kettle’s Yard and go to the wonderful Lucie Rie exhibition.

                             From the Kettle’s Yard shop I bought a beautiful little book, Perdendosi. 

This is a collaborative work by photographer Norman McBeath with ceramicist, artist and writer Edmund de Waal. It is a study of leaves at the stage of their transformation when they have lost all colour, and become more like parchment than plant, taking up the most extraordinary shapes, giving the leaves unique identities and character. Many of the superb photographs were taken at the start of the pandemic in a time of daily news of increasing deaths and infections. Although not a direct response, this period did have

Norman McBeath: photographer, printmaker.

a profound influence on how Norman McBeath saw the leaves.

Edmund de Waal offers his own train of thought and associations in his accompanying text Twelve Leaves, which he describes as both autobiography and a journal of reading. This is a uniquely personal, oblique and moving text, in which he draws from poets including Proust, Goethe and Celan in exploring his own emotional response, stimulated by living with these extraordinary images.

It is interesting how strong a grip this little book has had on me. The black and white photographs showing leaves on the cusp of decay, detailing the process of deterioration, have an almost mesmeric effect on the observer. The images are beautiful but one's attention is drawn to the final decay of these still living, but parchment-like leaves; they are beautiful but also frail. Thoughts of human deterioration, frailty and decay are inevitably planted in the mind.

Perdendosi is a perfect description of the process of late ageing with the gradual approaching end of life for all living things; I now have a lovely name for this late stage of my life! I look at myself and realise that I am  in a state of human perdendosi, contented with this inevitable process and its many manifestations. The mirror shows me a face poised in the gradual downturn to oldest age and death but, as the music grows fainter, I slowly see how contented I am with this inevitable process and its many manifestations. I feel strangely at peace within my perdendosi. My personal music is slowly slipping into the beginnings of the final, perhaps prolonged, diminuendo and I strain to appreciate it because it is so precious in its calmness and completeness. Increasingly, I breathe in the peace experienced within this personal perdendosi and I quietly relish this special individual experience with its occasional challenges, while appreciating the vast universality of this process. Like childbirth, my perdendosi is experienced as entirely individual and private even as it takes its place within the universality of its inevitability.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832

One of the allusions made by De Waal in his text is to Goethe writing his Nightsong and sending it to his friend, Charlotte von Stein. He signs it, dates it and places it “At the slope of Ettersberg, 12 Feb ‘76.”

                                                                      I am weary with contending!

Why this rapture and unrest?

Peace descending

Come, ah, come into my breast.”

Schubert sets it to music in 1821. De Waal writes, “ It is a song of a letting go, the descent, the perdendosi of leaves.”

“The Ettersberg beech forests are cleared in 1937 to make way for the Buchenwald concentration camp. Goethe Eike, his oak, is preserved and it is named. It stands in the centre of the camp. On 24 August 1944, the camp is bombed and the oak burns all night long. The DDR government casts its stump in concrete. It has a plaque. No leaves.”

Goethe Oak,
Buchenwald Memorial

One beautiful old face to represent human perdendosi

  

Boccaccio's Miniatures

Boccaccio  by Andrea del Castagno.
Uffizi, Firenze.
c1450

 I recently took a few books to Oxfam with the intention of giving, not buying; my small apartment has little room for more books but a passing glance at an Oxfam shelf as I was leaving permitted me to see the inviting title of Boccaccio’s Decameron.

An illustration by
the Master of Jean Mansel

Of course I had heard of him and his most famous work but knew no more so reached out to read! Reader, inevitably, I bought the book which, although it summarises the story of Giovanni Bocaccio, born in 1313 in Florence, in fact, it contains a record of copies of the hundred miniatures, painted between 1430 and 1440 by two Flemish artists to illustrate the French translation of the Decameron completed in 1414 for Philippe Le Bon, Duc de Burgundy. Guillebert de Mets copied the texts which were illustrated by 100 miniatures painted by two unknown artists, generally referred to as  'the master of Guillebert de Mets'; the other, who had illustrated the stories of Jean Mansel, was referred to as ‘the master of Jean Mansel.’ In addition to the visual delight afforded by these miniatures by the two artists, they are also a superb record of daily life in the mid fifteenth century, its architecture, geography, events, towns, forest paths, customs, clothes and relationships. A realistic depiction of daily Flemish life preserved but presented as the daily mediaeval life in Italy a century earlier.

Illustration by the Master of Guillebert de Mets.

The entire manuscript appeared in the inventory of Philippe de Bon’s library after his death in 1467. We know, from a book-plate in the manuscript, that it then passed to the library of Charles du Croy, book-lover and Knight of the Golden Fleece who became Prince of Chimay in 1486. After which, it entered the library of the Marquis de Paulmy who set up one of the most important sections of the Librairie Arsenale in Paris where it still resides, classified under number 5070 in the Manuscript department. Somehow, the traceable six hundred year journey of this amazing work of art so that we know its location now, is perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the whole creation!

Il Decameron de Messer
Giovanni  Boccaccio
Citadino Fiorentino
MDLXX11
1573

My Oxfam book gives the translation of the bulk of the original text, setting out to explain the meaning of the miniatures and we learn that the original hundred stories were supposed to be told at a rate of ten a day, in ten days. This explains the title: Il Decameron which translates from the Greek as ‘ten days’. It opens with a graphic account of the bubonic plague as it raged through Firenze during the entire Spring and Summer of 1348 when, it was judged, that three fifths of the population had perished. The terrifying description bears all the hallmarks of having been written through experience. The storytellers, all invented, are three young men and seven young women, all from aristocratic families and none related to another nor with any suggestion of romance in the air, live rich and happy lives but have now escaped the dangers of plague-ridden Florence and gathered in a large, luxurious country residence where they decide to entertain each other by recounting stories. They are self-confident and comfortable and enjoy telling often, risque stories. 15 of the  stories are described as 'indecent' while 41 are love stories with often explicit sexual details and ten other love stories end in blood and death.

Florentine citizens after fleeing their plague-ridden city

The author, Boccaccio, claims that the first 3 stories seem to best sum up Il Decameron. The first denounces the illusion and ambiguity of the worship of saints; the second brands the indignity of the Roman clergy while the third suggests that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all equal. These were, in fact, really dangerous ideas to broadcast in the fourteenth century so the first three stories identify themselves subtly, by implication. It is also suggested that the only divinity that Italian men of the latter end of the Middle Ages worshipped, was Venus, Goddess of Love!

Pietro, a nobleman, and Agnolella, a plebeian,
reunited after fleeing family opposition
to their love.

Helpful peasants misdirecting the pursuers
of Pietro and Agnolella.

Philippa, after being caught by her husbanddd
committing adultery, cleverly uses the law
to outwit him and the magistrate.

Cuckolded husband to the left.

Boccaccio's statue in the Uffizi, Florence.
1845.
He is regarded  as one of the three
great names in Italian literature:
Dante; Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Above, a selection from the Decameron miniatures, placed chiefly according to the eccentricities of the website, not the compiler of this blog.