A Tale of Two Prams

Hello, thank you for dropping in, it's good to see you here.  We are still floating on a happy baby cloud here.  Tom Kitten arrived rather late and, in the end, rather dramatically, but mother and baby are both doing well.  Postnatal care has changed a lot since she was born in 1989: mums and babies stayed in the hospital for eight days for a first baby, four days for subsequent babies and at least ten days for babies born by Caesarean section.  I wasn't allowed to bring her home until feeding was established and I had shown the midwives that I could bath her on my own.  After returning home, the midwife made daily visits until the baby was ten days old, at which point we were discharged into the care of the health visitor.  The Teacher's experience was quite different: after two days in the hospital under consultant care she and Tom Kitten moved to the midwife-led unit for one night before coming home.  The midwife visited on days four, six and eleven.  The health visitor came on day fourteen and, having given The Teacher a verbal list of things she must and must not do, will visit again in four weeks' time.  Thank goodness for grandmothers who can show nervous parents how to bath a baby, dress a baby, wind a baby, launder baby clothes and generally help to build up their confidence.  We are all losing track of time and dates but Tom Kitten is absolutely adorable and we are all smitten.

When I was expecting The Teacher my parents-in-law said that they would like to buy a pram for us.  We went to the County Sleep Shop in Shrewsbury and, after much deliberation, chose a Silver Cross pram which, with its metal shopping tray, cost £158.  Of course, we didn't bring it home with us because that was thought to bring bad luck, to have a pram in the house before a baby was born; no, the shop owner suggested that he should keep it in his store room until we rang him to let him know that the baby had arrived, so that's exactly what we did.  It wasn't a coach built pram, the carry cot detached from the frame so that we could fit it into the boot of the car, but it had large wheels and springs and it was wonderful to push.  The springs meant that I could bounce it up and down the eight steps to my front door with ease and without disturbing either The Teacher or the shopping which was on the tray underneath the carry cot. 

Early this summer, we returned to the County Sleep Shop with The Teacher and bought a pram, this time from the daughter-in-law of the man who owned the shop the first time we visited.  She told me that her mother had bought a pushchair there from him in 1958. The Teacher also chose Silver Cross, but this contraption is so much more than a pram: it's a complete travel system.  There is a frame into which fits a carry cot, a car seat or a pushchair seat, which can be angled anywhere between upright and recline and face backwards or forwards.  There is a change bag for baby paraphernalia, a parasol for sunny days and there are various covers for wintry days.  It doesn't sing, dance or make the tea but it is definitely a multipurpose vehicle.  The wheels are small, but the woman in the shop assured us that they think these are "the best for our county".  There are no springs to cushion Tom Kitten's ride.  No springs and small wheels, and yet Silver Cross describe this affair as having "a multi terrain off road chassis" and being "robust and built for adventure".  Pish pshaw!  I think that would be a rather uncomfortable adventure.  Would you like to know how much this marvellous contraption cost?  £795, and that was a special offer as apparently the list price is £1,000+.  When I told her that we paid £158 in 1989, the woman in the shop said, in all seriousness, "The cost of living has rocketed since then."  I looked her in the eye and said, deadpan, "The cost of prams has rocketed since then."  

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

On 16th October

Hello, thank you for calling in, and many thanks for your congratulations on my new grandmotherly status.  When I was a child, a grandmother had grey hair and false teeth and wore an apron all day, which is not a route I am ready to go down just yet, but my cousin has assured me that she has heard that these days, grandmothers can be superglamorous.  I have aspirations.

I hope to tell you more about our adorable new bundle later this week, but today I think I need to talk about 16th October - well, two 16ths October, to be precise.

On Friday 16th October 1987 I woke up full of excitement.  I went to the bathroom and when I came back to my room in the rented flat I shared with two friends, I turned on my second-hand, black and white portable television to listen to BBC Breakfast Time as I pottered around the room getting myself ready for the day ahead and packing up my things, ALL of my things because today I would be moving into my very own house!  Completion was due to take place at midday and then I would be A Homeowner. 

 



This is an extract from the surveyor's report.  Mine is the middle house.

 

As I looked at the television I realised that something was wrong: Nicholas Witchell was on his own in a temporary studio.  I listened more closely and discovered that storm-force winds during the night had caused massive disruption and destruction across the country.  I went to the window and, looking out, saw that everything was exactly as it had been the previous day.  I felt a bit confused.  Shortly afterwards, the Best Beloved rang me from his home in South Buckinghamshire.  He had booked the day off work and planned to drive up to Shropshire and help me to move house.  He told me of the terrible winds during the night.  In the morning, he had gone into the bathroom and thought, "Where's the window?"  He looked out of the hole where it had been and spotted it on the other side of the garden, with lots of other debris which had been picked up and dropped there by the wind.  Apparently, here in the west midlands we had been in the eye of the storm, winds had raged all around us but the air above us had been completely still and we had slept on in blissful ignorance as the Great Storm of 1987 passed by.

The Best Beloved's journey was long and tortuous as many roads were blocked by fallen trees but after several hours, he arrived and we collected the van we had hired.  Our first task was to collect the bed which I had bought during the week, so we drove to the shop only to be told that the bed wasn't there but at the factory on the industrial estate and that we should be quick because the factory closed early on Fridays!  The Best Beloved put his foot down but we were too late and as the factory was closed over the weekend, we had to sleep on the floor for three nights until it reopened on the Monday - fortunately, the house was carpeted!

 



Throughout the process of buying my house I recorded every important detail in a journal.  This extract shows the details of the van hire.

 

We had an interesting visitor that first evening in my new house: a television licence inspector.  He said that there was no record of a television licence at my address and I replied that I had only moved in that afternoon and hadn't had time to transfer the licence from my previous address.  He didn't believe me so I invited him in and showed him the boxes everywhere and the blankets which I had hung at the window as temporary curtains.  He still appeared to be very sceptical and the following week, I received an odd letter purporting to be from the General Post Office, which administered the licences then, informing me of the penalties which I would face if I didn't buy a television licence immediately.  The letter was typed on very thin paper, not headed paper, and I still don't believe that it was genuine.  All very odd.  Perhaps he was casing the joint with a view to burglary?  My second-hand, black and white portable television, cardboard boxes and blankets for curtains obviously weren't sufficiently enticing.

 

So let's move forward thirty years to 16th October 2017.  Flashman returned to work after paternity leave and so I drove over to The Teacher's house early in the morning to help her with Tom Kitten (he's not called Tom and he's not a kitten but his mother and I have decided that it's a good blog name for him, so that's how he will be known here).  We knew that the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia were on their way to Ireland and Wales but the Best Beloved, who is something of a weather nerd, had assured me that we wouldn't be affected here.  The sky looked very strange as I drove westwards, thick and uniformly grey but not misty.  The temperature was unseasonably warm, more than twenty degrees Celsius and apparently, it was the hottest October day since UK records began (the average temperature here at this time of year is  fourteen degrees Celsius).  Later that morning, the solid grey sky was blushed with pink and the shafts of sunlight which fell across the floor were rose-coloured.  Outside those shafts, the light was gloomy and dim and The Teacher commented that she's not used to having to put the lights on in the morning.  The atmosphere felt most peculiar, as if it were full of an invisible something, and the orange sun burned high in the sky.  The Mathematician, who had flown in from Guernsey that morning, told me that the skies were the same in Guernsey, in Birmingham and in Loughborough.  I have read several different explanations of the cause of this phenomenon but according to the Met Office, Ophelia dragged sand and dust from the Sahara Desert and ash and debris from the forest fires in Portugal up into the atmosphere where the particles scattered the blue and green light in the spectrum, leaving the red and yellow to dominate.  In the afternoon, the winds whipped up, we watched twigs and branches being wrenched from trees and thrown around the garden and we felt very glad to be safe indoors. 

In the evening, I went to a poetry evening and listened to three poets tell stories and poems, their voices rising to be heard above the howling wind outside (and the humming bar fridge inside!).  Fifty people had booked tickets but less than half that number attended and those of us who had made it were lauded for our efforts in braving the weather.  It was a memorable evening.  It was a memorable day.
 

 

 I hope you and yours have all survived the winds.  See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

 

What A Wonderful World

Hello, thank you for popping in.  I'm just popping in as well, to apologise for my absence here and assure you that I shall be back soon.  A wonderful thing has happened and we are all somewhat distracted. 

 

 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

On Freshers' Week

Hello, thank you for calling in, I'm delighted to see you here.  I am counting my blessings and I hope you are all safe, wherever you are.  I am certainly not going to gripe about the weather when there are hurricanes and earthquakes on the other side of the Atlantic.

 

Thirty-four years ago this month I packed up my suitcase and went off to college in Essex, beginning an adventure which would last for three years.  The Hall of Residence was over-subscribed but all first year students who wanted it were guaranteed accommodation, so I was allocated a place in a shared house which was earmarked for demolition to make way for a new road.  There were eight of us altogether, all girls, and my bed was in the room at the front of the house which would have originally been the lounge.  I had to share this room with another girl who, unfortunately for me, had never had to share a bedroom before and frankly, there was a good deal of tension because she had absolutely no idea of the give and take necessary to make it work.  She was selfish.  There, I have called a spade a spade.  All of the rooms in the house were full of girls except the kitchen and the bathroom - oh yes, there was only one bathroom between eight of us, no shower, and the loo was in the bathroom so if you needed a wee and someone was in the bath you just had to cross your legs and hang on.  There was a table and chairs in the kitchen and another in the large hall, but we had no sitting room.  We had no 'phone, no television, no washing machine, obviously we had no computers and none of us had a car, so how on earth did we cope??  Fabulously well.

 

I think that this year's crop of Freshers would be absolutely horrified.  A condemned house?  Sharing a room?  No ensuite shower room?  Trips to the laundrette?  No telecoms?  No cars?  How on earth did we survive??

 

There was another difference, too: Freshers' Week was the first week of term.  We had to contend with a full programme of lectures and tutorials as well as finding our way around, both the college and the town, making new friendships and a full programme of social activities.  We got up at 8am every day and went to bed at 3am every night and the excitement, the nerves and the adrenaline got us through.  The evening activities took place in the Student Union bar and I have been trying to remember what I would have been drinking - certainly not spirits, firstly because they were too expensive and secondly, because they were too middle-aged!  I don't think I was drinking beer then so if it was alcohol it was probably cider, or possibly a glass of the ghastly wine which was served in pubs then.  I don't remember any of the girls getting drunk to the point of incapacitation, although I do remember being scared by the behaviour of some of the boys who drank eight or nine pints of beer and couldn't control themselves.  The point of our evenings was, I think, to meet each other, to have fun together and to celebrate our freedom. 

 

 

Me in October 1983 in Cedar Avenue, Chelmsford, writing a letter!

 

In many British universities Freshers' Week now lasts for a fortnight.  The teaching doesn't begin until the second week, or possibly the third, so for at least a week, the activities are purely social and appear to revolve around alcohol - The Mathematician told me that during her Freshers' Week, three years ago, more than £1,000-worth of alcohol was laid out in her Hall every evening for a week.  I was shocked.  She pointed out to me that this was for more than one hundred students so it worked out at less than £10 per student and I pointed out to her that you can buy a bottle of gin for less than £10 in a supermarket.  I certainly wouldn't drink a whole bottle of gin every evening for a week or two.

 

I am trying to work out why this bothers me so much.  Well, for a start, the extra week or two at the beginning of term means that an extra week or two's rent has to be paid, and you have to pay extra for the Freshers' Week activities.  What bothers me more than that is the total reliance on alcohol, the assumption that you can't make new friends or have a good time without it.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a drink as much as anyone does, certainly as much as any fifty-two year old woman with a penchant for Sauvignon Blanc or a gin and tonic does, but I can meet new people without being drunk, even though I am naturally quite shy.  I suppose the point of the alcohol is to remove the initial reserve which may hold people back and prevent them mixing with each other, but I think it may be more useful in the long run for students to learn how to do that while they are sober.  After all, being a student is all about learning, isn't it?  It has also been reported this year that at some universities, students are being issued with wristbands which bear the name and address of their hall so that if they get very drunk while they are out and can't remember where they live, a friendly soul/ taxi driver / police officer can ensure they get safely home.  Really??  Shouldn't they be learning some personal safety strategies, for example, that you don't get so drunk that you can't get yourself home safely, and that when you go out, you stay with your friends so that you can look after each other?  Two years ago a young man went out clubbing in Shrewsbury and got so drunk that he rang his mother in the early hours of the morning to tell her that he didn't know where he was and ask her to help him.  She drove to Shrewsbury and spent a couple of hours driving around, looking for him, but couldn't find him.  A search was mounted and a few weeks later, his body was found in the River Severn.  Every time this happens, and it happened again a couple of weeks ago, there are calls for the river to be fenced off, but I don't hear any calls for people not to drink so much that they place themselves in danger. 

 

When I was a Fresher, we were all issued with a friendly little booklet, produced by the Students' Union, which gave us advice about all of this, and other personal safety tips... including what to do if you were arrested by the Police!

 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

 

 

 

A Visit to The Greek Orthodox Church in Shrewsbury

Hello, thank you for dropping in, it's always lovely to see you.  The weather here has been sunny and rainy and windy and calm and warm and chilly and we have even had hailstones, but we are thankful that we don't get hurricanes and we are counting our blessings.

 

We have had a busy time: The Mathematician came home last week after a three-week tour of Europe.  There is great energy in our house when she is here, which is great but can sometimes be just a teensy bit tiring!  She has been putting everything in place for her return to university in a few week's time and I am increasingly aware that she won't be in this nest for very much longer as she already has a job lined up for next year, after she graduates.  I am trying to hold on to every last little scrap of her that I can.

 

The weekend was a busy one but as it was Heritage Open Days I was determined that the Best Beloved and I should fit in a visit somewhere.  This annual event describes itself as "England's largest festival of history and culture", when "places across the country throw open their doors to celebrate their heritage, community and history" and I am always surprised by how many of my friends are unaware of it.  Perhaps the marketing isn't good enough?  In the past we have visited some gems which are not usually open to the public, a National Trust property without having to pay and, last year, the church at Melverley where we heard a talk about its history.  This time we needed a place which was open on Saturday, not too far away and not too big as we only had a couple of hours to spare, so I went online to find out what was available.  I found the perfect place: the Greek Orthodox Church in Shrewsbury.

 

So, on a rainy Saturday lunchtime we parked the car in a lane and found ourselves walking through an estate of very new houses with very shiny cars parked on their driveways.  We followed the path and at the end of the road, rather incongruously, we found what appeared to be a small, medieval parish church, which indeed it was until it was virtually abandoned in the nineteenth century - the parish registers are empty after 1870 - but by the time it was purchased for £50 by the Community of The Holy Fathers of Nicea the First Ecumenical Council in 1994 it was being used as an agricultural storage building.  There was no glass in the windows, the door was not original and didn't fit properly, there were holes in the roof and in the internal plaster, the floor was rotten, the west wall was dangerously bowed, the internal walls were black with dirt and stained by water leaking through the roof and the building was full of unwanted agricultural clutter and squirrel droppings.  However, sad and neglected though the building was, it's history was lengthy and showed that this had been a spiritual place for thousands of years.

 

Standing outside the south wall, Father Stephen showed us the line of stones at its base which were laid in Saxon times; above this line were the stones laid in the twelfth century and above the windows, the stones laid when the church was restored in the sixteenth century, in 1545, when Henry VIII was King of England.  The bricks which formed the west wall were laid in the early eighteenth century, in the first year of the reign of Queen Anne, elegant, red, smaller than modern bricks.  Believing the church to date from the Saxon period, between the fifth century and the eleventh century, the Community felt that they were returning the church to its original, Orthodox purpose.

 

(For those of you who know as little about Orthodoxy as I did last week, I think I should explain here a little about the Orthodox Church:  in 1054 the Christian Church divided into two factions, an event which is known as the East-West Schism as the traditional Eastern Orthodox Church separated from the Western, Latin Church, which eventually became the Roman Catholic Church.  Father Stephen explained to us that therefore, all churches built before 1054, as this one was, were Orthodox churches.)   

However, an archaeological dig carried out earlier this year revealed that the land the church stands on has been used for ritual purposes for more than four thousand years!  A wooden post was dug up and sent away for carbon dating and as Father Stephen has written, "We were expecting this to be about 700 AD.  The results have now come back and to our total astonishment it turns out to be dated to 2033 BC - a time when the ancient Egyptians were still building Pyramids about 4,000 years ago.  This makes it late Neolithic / early Bronze Age."  Wow!  The discovery was linked with excavations carried out in the 1960s and 1970s which revealed prehistoric burial mounds and cremations, slots for standing stones and a processional way.  I felt a bit peculiar when Father Stephen explained all this to us as I realised that my feet were standing on land which had been trodden by those worshipping their deities for thousands of years before me, and the cup of tea I was then brought by one of his church members was most welcome, I can tell you!

The church was restored in 1996 and a bell tower and gallery were added, as well as a carved icon screen, which incorporates some of the wood from the old oak floor joists and pews, and a new holy table.  The restoration work revealed fourteenth century wall paintings which had not been apparent beneath the grime and the stains, and these were conserved in 2005.  The Community has added its own painting to the walls and icons have been painted by Aidan Hart, a well-known iconographer who is a member of the church.  I had never been inside an Orthodox Church before and what I found there was very beautiful, a building which honours its past whilst serving its present.  I also found warm, welcoming people who served us refreshments and honestly and openly answered my naïve questions about their church. 

 

 

 

 

 

The wall painting you can see on the left of this photo depicts the murder of St Thomas a Becket and is the oldest figurative painting in Shrewsbury, painted sometime between 1375 and 1385.

 

I was happy to find there icons of our local female saints, St Winifride and St Milburga, and, best of all, St Melangell, with whom I am a teeny bit obsessed at the moment - I have visited her shrine church twice this year but haven't yet found the right words to share those visits with you.  Perhaps this image will inspire me? 

 

 

See you soon.  Keep as safe and dry and warm as you can.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Would You Like An Antler?

Hello, thank you for calling in, it's lovely to see you.  The sun is shining today and I am watching a butterfly flutter by outside the window. 

I was chatting with a friend in a rose garden over a pot of tea and a Shrewsbury cake, a good friend whom I have known for more than twenty-five years, a friend who shares my love of the countryside, the seaside and nature's treasures.  We were laughing about my shell collection (larger than it should be) and my fossil collection (much smaller than I would like it to be) when she said, "Would you like an antler?  I've got three but I've really only got room for two."  That's not something you hear every day and I burst out laughing.

 

My friend explained that while she was running a Wildlife Watch group several years ago, she took the group to visit a deer park and they were given a guided tour by a ranger.  They found some antlers lying on the ground and my friend brought them home.  Gentle reader, I can reassure you that no animal was harmed in the acquisition of these antlers: they are shed by the deer every year and new ones grow in their place.

 

So, here is an antler from a fallow deer.  It's rather beautiful, I think, and very tactile, and much as I would like to keep it, I really don't have anywhere sensible to put it, so it's going to a very good home - The Teacher is taking it to school and giving it to "the man who looks after the fossils and skulls" so that it can be used by any teacher in the school to help the children learn about deer, antlers,  life cycles, conservation, beauty, awe and wonder, those sorts of things.

 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2017

Hello, thank you for popping in.  It's the last week of the school holidays here and it's pouring with rain - no doubt the sun will come out next week once everyone has returned to school!  Actually, it may not be the last week of the holidays for us because the Best Beloved has no work lined up yet for next term, which is a bit of a grim prospect.  Hey ho.

 

We spent the weekend at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival and for the first time in the nine years we have been attending, the sun shone all weekend.  I shall repeat that because I can't quite believe it myself: August Bank Holiday and the sun shone all weekend!  We arrived very early on Friday morning and left at midday on Tuesday, exhausted but very, very happy.  I wrote a comprehensive post about this festival in 2015 which you can read here if you would like to, and this year the formula was repeated but OH, THE SUNSHINE!!!!!! 

 

As usual, there was great music, dancing, food, crafts, a beer tent, a wine bar (because not all folkies have beards and drink beer), bunting, face paint, a children's festival and a real family atmosphere with something for everyone.  I'm afraid I took very few photographs.  I sat in the sunshine, drank cocktails, knitted, listened to music, watched people and drank up the aforementioned atmosphere.  In the evenings, I wrapped up, sat in a marquee drinking wine and watched some amazing bands.  There was happiness everywhere, and colour, lots and lots of colour.  The days were full of colour and the evenings were full of light.  When I look back on this year's festival in the future that's what I shall remember, colour and light.

 

If you'd like to see some more of the festival, hop over to Three Stories High where Jo has shared some wonderfully colourful photos. 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x