My Mother, Marilyn Monroe

Hard to believe that this is the same woman who gave birth to me, but here she is in her full fifteen years old glory, on Scratby beach or somewhere else equally exotic in 1952. 

Talk about glamorous. 

I remember my heart always picked up speed when I saw this photograph.  It was like looking at somebody else - which I guess we all are before we become mothers ourselves.

Happy Mothers Day, Mum.  And thanks for... you know, lots of stuff I never realised I had to be thankful for.

Miss you x

Chillaxing

Once in a while I have to remember to take my Chill Pill.  This is no mean feat (as opposed to the meat feast I'd much prefer and which goes down a heckuvva lot easier) because my genetic make-up does not provide for chilling very easily.  I come from a long line of irritable, short-tempered, cantankerous, narrow-minded miserable bastards relations whose main enjoyment in life appeared to be the witnessing of someobody else's misfortune.  You could tell my Grandfather either the most sophisticated humorous tale or else the basest, simplest joke and he would no more raise one side of his lips in a smile than he would swap a pound for a Big Issue. (Sadly, yes, I also have the Tight Genes).  But if he happened to spot Mrs Cranberry from over the road slip on a piece of potato peel and fall arse over Playtex into the rest of her rotting vegetable heap, then he'd live off the image and the retelling of the vision for the next year or so.  Never mind Mrs Cranberry spent the better part of the next three months head to toe in a plaster cast, oh no, this merely served to make the story THAT much funnier.
My mother, I may have mentioned, took a particular dislike to Himself (up There) and accused Him on several occasions of Ruining Her Life.  Even now my brother and I will throw our hands up in despair and wail "Oh God, now it's RUINED!" (in jest - although...) in memory of her favourite expression.  Everything was against her.  Actually, rain mostly.  Which He is clearly in charge of.
My mother would invent scenarios in her head - which were frequently projected into her daily life and, inevitably ours.  She would expect  Bad Stuff to happen.  In fact, sometimes it felt she took a kind of perverse delight in it.  It made her right in her expectations.  "See?!  I told you it would rain.  I said it would!  Didn't I tell you?!" Weird.
And she'd smile in her victory. A crazed, wild-eyed, demonic smile.  Remember Anthony Perkins in Psycho? There y'go.
My father could frown for England.  He didn't so much wait for bad things to happen like mother, but he'd growl and snarl and seem to make it his sole purpose in life to be the Butt of every irritation known to man. His favourite phrase? "Typical!".  Which meant pretty much everything from us unwittingly bringing dog muck into the house on our shoes to Leeds United losing 3-2.  In our house, hands were thrown into the air and slapped back down onto the thighs with Morris Dancing monotony.
And seething.  Seething was Big in our house.  Just the noise of air passing through clenched teeth was enough to send my brother and I stairward to the sanctuary of our bedrooms for the duration - at least until the next mealtime.
Mind you,  I have to remind myself that all this was probably during an age when "Relaxing" was a little-known pasttime - indeed luxury.   Especially with twin-tub washing machines that started off in the kitchen and ended up in next door's porchway, frisky fishmongers who thought nothing of calling round unannounced and slapping their wet Halibut on mother's draining board and days of the week with a "y" in them (especially rainy ones).
So you see, it's no wonder that I find chilling a difficult thing to come to terms with.  Yes, I get incidents that annoy me; things that I'd much rather hadn't happened or wouldn't keep on happening.  But I have to learn that unless it's within my power to actually control these events myself, then there's not much I can do about it, is there?  I have to learn to go with the flow - to let the mop flop where it chooses - to take my chill pill and relax.

Remembrance Day

Today is the 11th anniversary of the death of my mum. Made more memorable by the fact her Birthday was the 11 / 11 and when we have that minute silence on Armistice Day I don’t think of poppy fields, I think of my mum. Much the same as when the digital clock is showing 11:11. Bit of a habit.
Here she is/was in her full-blown twenty-something glory, looking (I always thought) like a proper movie star. I was never sure why she was holding that monkey but I think this was a pretty regular occurrence on the British Beach at one stage. Poor thing (the monkey, not mother). This photo (along with another which I MUST dig out because it’s just so damned gorgeous but I think it’s in the loft) was always my favourite picture of my mum because she just looks so happy*. The one on the left was taken when she and my dad were courting and I think the eyes say it all… cheeky minx – and the bottom one is of their Engagement on the Isle of Wight - oh the glamour!
Aged 62, she‘d only been a grandmother for 4 ½ years and my anger at her leaving us so suddenly at this stupidly early age tormented me for a long time. Even moreso because one of the last things she said to me was “I’m glad you’re making another go of it” (my marriage at the time) and for ages after I thought I SHOULD be making my train wreck marriage work just because she’d said this and I took it like a “final dying wish” thing that I was honour bound to make succeed in memory of her.
But whenever I looked at photographs of her like these and saw the sheer happiness that filled her face when she looked at my dad, I knew that where I was, was quite simply the wrong place.
And so I got out.
Which I’m still not sure how she’d have reacted to. Mother was a funny fish. She could be breezy and surprising one minute then unhappy and unapproachable the next. I was never sure how to handle her. I think she felt the same with me – which is why we never really had that 'mother-daughter' thing.
But I do know that if she hadn’t died just at that precarious time in my life, then I’d probably still be trying to make the best of a miserable marriage because I thought that was what she would expect of me. The fact she wasn’t around for me to disappoint any longer made my decision easier.
Jeez.
And I was going to make this an upbeat post too!

*in later years, the result of being with Dad and/or a glass of Sherry. Result of both = state of unparallelled bliss!

Memories of Mum

Following my lovely interweb friend Keris's post on her blog today, I got to thinking about my own mum - and all the things that used to annoy her... here's just a taster:

1. It was raining. And ‘He’ (in that great Upstairs in the Sky) had Done It On Purpose to upset her. No, honestly. I even caught her once when I about ten and it had been raining ferociously (as it always did in the Seventies…?) and she’d been standing at the kitchen sink. One of her hands was gripping the side of the worktop so angrily that her knuckles were white and the other hand brandished a meat cleaver which she weilded dangerously towards the kitchen window at the rain-rivuletted pane. I heard her giving the Almighty a few choice words as to what she thought of His idea of weather for that Monday morning. How could I remember it had been a Monday? Easy. That was her Wash Day. And He knew that, didn’t He? He did it to spite her….

Of course she could very probably have been going through the Menopause or been pre-menstrual or something but at six years old, you kinda (I kinda) thought I’d done something horribly wrong to upset mummy and steered well away for the rest of the day, maybe even week… month. Can’t remember. Don’t want to.

Anyway. Next one.

2. It was raining. And ‘He’ had Done It Again because it was Wednesday and He Knew Wednesdays were shopping days and because it was also half-day closing (now those were the days) she had to get it all done in the morning. Why couldn’t she have done it on a Thursday? Don’t know the answer to that one. Yes I do now, it was the only day that Grumps could drive my Mum and Nan into town. Only on a Wendesday, ok? It must have been his half day off work or something but it just had to be a Wednesday, and that was also market day which meant cheaper produce… so that was it. Ah, it’s all becoming a lot clearer now. I think.

Right. Next.

3. It was raining. And …… yes, you can guess the rest… only this time she’d just had her hair permed and set and He had done It on Purpose to make her look foolish and dampen her hair so that it resembled more tiny white mouse tails than loosely teased curls. All because He hated her. He did. And, as usual it was ‘Typical’… she didn’t know what she’d done ‘to deserve this’ and God was ‘punishing her’. I never found out what for.

And lastly,

4. It was raining. And we’d just driven a million miles to Burton Bradstock to stay in some god-forsaken Caravan park for a fortnight in the summer holidays and because the grass was soaked we couldn’t put the awning up. Why we couldn’t wait and put the awning up tomorrow I could never understand but again, He had Done this to upset her and to punish her. And still none the wiser as to what she had ever done to deserve being punished in this (always wet) manner.

You get the picture.

Things my parents used to say that I'm (scarily) starting to agree with...

1.There truly aren't enough hours in the day.
After having scoffed at the ridiculousness of this statement (backed up by scientific research into time management- probably) for years, now I'm, ahem... older - I can actually *smell* time passing faster than it used to. Anyone else getting a whiff of it?
2.There really is a Time and a Place. Makes perfect sense really, doesn't it? And if you don't believe me (or them) then you only have to watch an episode of Dr Who for absolute confirmation.
3.Don't spend what you haven't got. Blimey. In today's mental economic climate, how true, how true... mum and dad didn't buy anything on the HP. The mortgage was their only debt therefore they never had a foreign holiday and only ever bought stuff for the house after fleecing my brother and I into paying 'Housekeeping' for the weeks we'd been away on holiday. Win-win (to them). One year we came back to find half the Cotswolds in our living room in the form of a tacky fireplace (with alcoves) which stretched the entire wall.
3.Make do and Mend. Ta-dah! E-Bay. Need I elaborate?
4.It's better to arrive 20 minutes late than 20 years early.My dad used to say this during every car journey we ever took and I always groaned because he never went over the speed limit even when my bladder was stretched to its capacity and we still had another five million potholes to navigate - through. Now, though, it makes perfect sense.
5.You can't do any more than Your Best.I used to think this was another way of saying 'Go away, you hopeless non-achiever and carry on counting ants in the back garden.' But it's an undeniable truth.
6.There's nothing better than a cup of tea, a dog at your feet and the love of a good wo/man.Apart from substituting the dog at my feet for a bloody good book, I'd have to say that's pretty much spot on!
There are loads others but now I want to, I can't think of them.
Anyone got any corkers?!