Stockton on Tees is a small town near to Middlesbrough. My mother was born and grew up there, but although she would say she came from Stockton she actually came from a small village just North and West of there called Norton. My mother, Kathleen, was the youngest of five children - a Catholic family.
Recently I skimmed a Fabian tract on a shrinking birth-rate written by Sidney Webb in the early years of the 20th century - he was so concerned that only the Catholics and Jews were still having large families, but he needn't have worried! These are segments of society that take life seriously, when you think about it, and the children would do well. But he was a racist - he couldn't help it: he thought that the Anglo-Saxon race was about to be overwhelmed by the Jews and the Irish and that this was a terrible thing.
Early in the 20th century my Irish-named great grandfather, Michael O'Grady, was working on shipbuilding in Newcastle. In the census he specified that he worked on both iron and steel ships, I can imagine him being dogmatic about it; and the census return shows he kept a servant as well as a wife, Isabella, and a daughter, also Isabella, and two sons. Perhaps at a time when there were fewer ships to build he did a strange thing: he left his wife and children and went to Australia. Did he promise to send them money? Did he write? I don't know. One of his sons fought and died in the Great war. The other went to visit him and eventually settled in Hastings, New Zealand, where he had a second-hand clothing shop that did quite well. He married a widow with two daughters and was comfortable. He often wrote to his sister, Isabella O'Grady the second, back in Stockton-on-Tees, and when my mother wrote to him he always sent her a Postal Order for five shillings. My mother remembers a little shrine by a window on the stairs to her other uncle, who joined the Durhams (the Durham Light Infantry) and died in France, along with rows and rows and rows of others. A photo, some medals, a prayer. His name is on the Menin Gate.
Isabella O'Grady married a veteran of the First World War. I think she might have thought herself lucky to get him, with the shortage of men about the country. His name was Harry Walker, a native of Stockton, and I think they met through church. She told my mother that he was always asking her to marry him, and she refused several times, until one day in 1919 he said to her, "You might as well marry me, you're not doing anything else." The truth of it hit home. She was already thirty one! She didn't have a job - perhaps she just helped her mother keep house, and went out each day to buy the meat and vegetables, flour and fat. They made cakes and bread; they didn't buy those. Once she dressed up in her best costume and had her picture taken, She wore a two piece costume in a light colour, a large hat, a rather vacant expression, and her Holy medals. He had been through the war and had been invalided out, gassed. He had a raking cough for the rest of his life. At this time he worked as a shop assistant, I think in a gentleman's outfitters, but the cough became a problem, and later he had to work as a gardener where the cough didn't matter so much.
After they married, babies came quickly. First Moira, a bright little girl, then three boys, Terence, Austin and Dennis. Then my mother, born twelve years after Moira, when her mother was about 45. So Isabella the second had the five children, a husband, her elderly mother, Mrs O'Grady living at home, and to make it more difficult, a prolapsed womb. My mother said she didn't think her mother paid much attention to her when she was a baby, because her mother was so busy, and that she was cared for by her Grandma and by Moira, that as soon as she could be pushed out in a pram with the other children, it was Moira who pushed her. The children, of course, played in the road, and at the end of the road was a council park, and they played there too. At night she slept with her grandma, a very pious Catholic, because, my mother said, she was a convert, "more Catholic than the Catholics". Grandma sang to her the "Guardian angel from heaven so bright" song as a lullaby.
Moira passed an exam and won a place at a posh school. She might have gone into an office to work after that but war broke out so soon after she joined the ATS. I imagine she was very good at the work she was given. What Terence did in the war I don't know. Terence and my mother didn't like each other. He was good at bursting other people's bubbles, and she wouldn't have liked that. Austin joined the Navy, until he had a nervous breakdown. Whatever happened to him in the Navy was deeply traumatic and he was never able to lead a fulfilling life afterwards. Dennis, the next brother, turned out to be C3 - he had a damaged ear-drum, and became very deaf later in life, but he was also reliable and always employed. I don't know what he did during the war. My mother was a schoolgirl in the war, and it was during this time that she became her mother's companion and pet, and she got all the attention she had wanted, and not had, from her in her early years.
Harry Walker, my mother's father, who coughed terribly, became very ill with his chest, and was hospitalised at intervals. In 1945 Isabella visited him in hospital and he said to her "I've always loved you, you know." My grandmother did not say she loved him. She had always refused to visit his family. My mother remembered walking to Thornaby with him to visit his sister, of whom he was very fond. On these walks he taught her the song of the Durham Light Infantry "We are the boys" and he also taught her music hall songs, such as - "You Can't Play in Our Back Yard Anymore" and "On Mother Kelly's Doorstep". I think he sang well. He had at times tried to lay the law down to Isabella, and she had somehow or other turned all his children against him. Although people said she was "a lovely person", my grandmother Isabella seems to me to have been spoilt and resentful. Anyway, after this hospital visit, my grandfather died, and Isabella regretted that she had not said anything kind to him, even, "I loved you, too." She had just made a face and a scornful noise. This is what she told my mother at the time, and my mother told me. He was 53 when he died and my grandmother got a war widow's pension, I believe. He has no memorial.
At some point the old lady, the first Isabella, contracted gangrene of the foot and couldn't be cared for at home any more, so she went into a hospital for old people. I don't think it was a workhouse, but it was like one. There were long wards full of the elderly. One day they visited her and there was an old lady looking miserable with a black eye and bruises. Mrs O'Grady nodded towards her and said: "She attacked one of the nurses". Nothing more was said. Mrs O'Grady was liked and respected, and was well-known in her Church. She died soon afterwards.
I look at the pictures that come up in the picture archive, Stockton-on-Tees, because I am interested in the world that my mother grew up in, and I see that the people who were her contemporaries, whose lives were documented in their schools and church outings and football teams, were amazing, cheerful people, somehow harder and sharper than we are, and it seems to me that my mother must have missed them all her life, these people who made up a society with a real sense of itself, defined in time by wars and other hardships.
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
New day, Sunday
It seems that everyday when I wake up, I feel tired. In the winter I was tired and cold, and now summer is here I'm warm, but still tired. Last night in bed I made a plan for today, and today I can't remember the plan. I think it was about the allotment. I must go there because the plants need more water and I have some onions to plant in the empty patch.
When you feel tired it's very tempting to eat sugar. I looked in the biscuit tin and I saw Mint Club biscuits and Orange Kitkats but it's too early to eat biscuits. Coffee - with thin milk. One day I'll be slim again.
Yesterday was one of those days when you can't help but eat. First, I ate a banana that was speckled and needed eating, and some yoghurt, and I walked down to the shops for a First Holy Communion card. I needed it urgently, and while I was looking I remembered my friend whose husband died last week, and I bought a With Sympathy card. It was difficult knowing which kind of With Sympathy card to get, but in the end I bought one with a cross on it and a promise of eternal life. I thought, I don't think Caroline believes in Christianity and eternal life, but it might comfort her to know that other people do. Am I one of them? I think it is the best myth on offer, and I believe in it but at the same time I know it is a myth. A lot of people think you can't do both simultaneously but their minds are not subtle. They have an equals sign.(=) They have a does-not-equal sign. They don't use both at the same time. But when we think, we sometimes use both.
For example, a man looking back at his marriage; he might think: "She loved me, we were happy," but in the next second he thinks: "She didn't love me, we weren't happy." and he worries and worries, trying to know the truth until perhaps at last he thinks: "She did and didn't love me, we were and weren't happy".
Anyway, yesterday I bought these cards in Smiths. Then I had to find a present for the First Holy Communion child. I wanted a beautiful book of prayers. My favourite one is by Sister Wendy and it's called "A Child's book of Prayer in Art" and it seems to teach that God is always there if you look, always has something to tell us. Of course, my town, my little town sells nothing like that, even in the busy charity bookshop that's run for the hospice, by volunteers. It was there I bought a children's Bible. I checked it for scribbles and so forth and it was pristine - but the illustrations were twee rather than dramatic. I was sorry about that. In our children's Bible at home, the pictures were very dramatic and realistic. The home I am referring to is Rivermount. I remember the Bible in my brothers' bedroom, in Rivermount.
After I came out of Smiths I remembered to turn on my pedometer. I had walked to the shops, so walking back, I thought, would take the same number of steps, so I could double the total. Now I can't remember how many steps it took to get back from the shops but I think it was a couple of thousand.
Tim was there when I got back from the shops and he was pleased that I had bought the card and the Bible. We wrapped the Bible in tissue paper with stars on and we both took one end each to wrap and sellotape down. We worked perfectly as a team, wrapping the parcel. I looked at myself in the mirror and I wasn't happy. Middle age has gone to my hips and I hate the way my skirts stick out. I changed my skirt but it wasn't much better. I wore jewelled sandals. I put make up on in the car and Tim held the mirror for me. He was pleased when I put on my make up; the shiny lipstick.
At the Church I felt underdressed: so many women had worn their party dresses, and particularly, their high-heeled shoes. I have not worn these for years. But it was lovely to look at women wearing their very best clothes; things they had bought for weddings. We were in the second pew from the front because our friend's child had been allocated that pew. Our friend has just separated from his wife but they were acting as if they hadn't separated at all. It was very odd. How much time do people spend, pretending? How often are we taken in?
Our hostess, who had never been friendly to me while she and her husband were actually together, (the men are friends) was very friendly to me and invited me Wild Swimming next Wednesday. It is something I have longed to try. I hope I can get into a swimming costume. I think I have one I bought for our cruise last year. I don't think I wore it - I was too embarrassed.
Anyway, they had prepared a cold buffet which was a mixture of children's food and adult's food, and we had nothing to do but sit in the sun and eat it from paper plates. When we had talked with the people who seemed to want to speak to us, we had to talk to each other, and after a while of this we decided to leave. We were then promised cake. Amy, the elder daughter who was with her teenage friends, came down and spread lemon drizzle on the lemon drizzle cake, and we ate slabs of cake, told Amy it was delicious - it really was - and off we went.
We changed and spent a couple of hours at the allotment watering and weeding and picking strawberries and digging potatoes, and I felt happy. I always feel happy when I am wearing my Wellington boots.
I remember getting those boots. It was when we moved to Ampleforth. The church held a fundraiser - a bring and buy sale. For weeks people brought all their strange stuff - not just toys and not clothes, but more practical things, like chimney pots and old radios and garden tools - to the church hall, and then there was a great sale and you could buy practically anything there. I was beginning to realise that there was plenty of mud in country life and the fact that the boots were in my size was a stroke of luck. I wore them outside for eleven months of the year, those two years we lived in Ampleforth.
In the evening the three of us - Tim, our son Ethan and I, went out to the Old Barn Arts centre. I had bought the tickets to something called Pop-up Vegetarian Soul Food Cafe with Acoustic Music. Catchy title. The reason we were there was to see what the acoustic music was like, because Ethan plays the guitar in his bedroom, and he sings. He has a nice voice. I think people would like to listen to Ethan's voice. He needs a gateway from the bedroom to a place with people who might want to listen. The acoustic act consisted of two guitarists, possibly related, a girl who sang and a boy who looked shy and just played. Ethan thought he was probably the better guitarist. Anyway, it turned out the girl worked in the cafe at the weekends, so the staff had turned out to hear her play. I don't know how many of the audience knew her - I think quite a few. Some of them were quite elderly, and the music probably wasn't their thing. But who can really dislike a sweet voice and an acoustic guitar? You might call it "unchallenging" or "inoffensive" but it won't put you off your spicy vegetarian Jambalaya, which was what we had. At the end of the evening Ethan went up to the cafe lady and introduced himself and said he thought he would like to play at the next Soul Food evening, but he could only play about 7 songs, and she said that would be alright, he could share the evening with another musician, And that will be fine.
So that's why I had so much to eat yesterday.
One thing that happened last week was the election, which resulted, as we all know, in a hung parliament, which made me feel better. I feel happier to know that some of Theresa May's horrible plan to sell off and privatise the NHS will be effectively opposed. But the future looks awful, economically. I can't see how Brexit will benefit anyone who makes money in this country. I wish we could all just forget about it.
Another think that happened was that it was my father's birthday, he would have been 85, and I thought about him. My step-sister got onto Facebook and posted a crying face and a heart and wrote about how much she missed him and it was all very mysterious to me. How often did she actually see him? She was a busy woman with two children to ferry around to their karate and their dancing, and she has a job herself, how often did she make the eighty mile round trip to see her parents, and now she misses him so much? I do believe she had a good relationship with my father. He was actually my father. Not hers. She is no relation. I should explain that my father chose to live 380 miles away from my brother and I, in the wilds of Scotland, and only in latter years did he welcome visits.
Another thing that happened last week, on Wednesday was that my daughter phoned and said that as well as the throat infection that she had had since Tuesday, she had an allergic reaction and her tongue had swollen up. She was on her own in her friend's house in Nottingham, and her phone was dead. I phoned her other friend, whose number I had on my wall, and said "Get a taxi, go to Maddie's house, get Florence, take her to A & E at the biggest hospital in town". In the morning I read all the texts and messages, they had both been up all night and Flo had had loads of medical tests and had been admitted. Poor Flo, by the time she got back to Birmingham it was too late to vote, and she had been so keen!
When you feel tired it's very tempting to eat sugar. I looked in the biscuit tin and I saw Mint Club biscuits and Orange Kitkats but it's too early to eat biscuits. Coffee - with thin milk. One day I'll be slim again.
Yesterday was one of those days when you can't help but eat. First, I ate a banana that was speckled and needed eating, and some yoghurt, and I walked down to the shops for a First Holy Communion card. I needed it urgently, and while I was looking I remembered my friend whose husband died last week, and I bought a With Sympathy card. It was difficult knowing which kind of With Sympathy card to get, but in the end I bought one with a cross on it and a promise of eternal life. I thought, I don't think Caroline believes in Christianity and eternal life, but it might comfort her to know that other people do. Am I one of them? I think it is the best myth on offer, and I believe in it but at the same time I know it is a myth. A lot of people think you can't do both simultaneously but their minds are not subtle. They have an equals sign.(=) They have a does-not-equal sign. They don't use both at the same time. But when we think, we sometimes use both.
For example, a man looking back at his marriage; he might think: "She loved me, we were happy," but in the next second he thinks: "She didn't love me, we weren't happy." and he worries and worries, trying to know the truth until perhaps at last he thinks: "She did and didn't love me, we were and weren't happy".
Anyway, yesterday I bought these cards in Smiths. Then I had to find a present for the First Holy Communion child. I wanted a beautiful book of prayers. My favourite one is by Sister Wendy and it's called "A Child's book of Prayer in Art" and it seems to teach that God is always there if you look, always has something to tell us. Of course, my town, my little town sells nothing like that, even in the busy charity bookshop that's run for the hospice, by volunteers. It was there I bought a children's Bible. I checked it for scribbles and so forth and it was pristine - but the illustrations were twee rather than dramatic. I was sorry about that. In our children's Bible at home, the pictures were very dramatic and realistic. The home I am referring to is Rivermount. I remember the Bible in my brothers' bedroom, in Rivermount.
After I came out of Smiths I remembered to turn on my pedometer. I had walked to the shops, so walking back, I thought, would take the same number of steps, so I could double the total. Now I can't remember how many steps it took to get back from the shops but I think it was a couple of thousand.
Tim was there when I got back from the shops and he was pleased that I had bought the card and the Bible. We wrapped the Bible in tissue paper with stars on and we both took one end each to wrap and sellotape down. We worked perfectly as a team, wrapping the parcel. I looked at myself in the mirror and I wasn't happy. Middle age has gone to my hips and I hate the way my skirts stick out. I changed my skirt but it wasn't much better. I wore jewelled sandals. I put make up on in the car and Tim held the mirror for me. He was pleased when I put on my make up; the shiny lipstick.
At the Church I felt underdressed: so many women had worn their party dresses, and particularly, their high-heeled shoes. I have not worn these for years. But it was lovely to look at women wearing their very best clothes; things they had bought for weddings. We were in the second pew from the front because our friend's child had been allocated that pew. Our friend has just separated from his wife but they were acting as if they hadn't separated at all. It was very odd. How much time do people spend, pretending? How often are we taken in?
Our hostess, who had never been friendly to me while she and her husband were actually together, (the men are friends) was very friendly to me and invited me Wild Swimming next Wednesday. It is something I have longed to try. I hope I can get into a swimming costume. I think I have one I bought for our cruise last year. I don't think I wore it - I was too embarrassed.
Anyway, they had prepared a cold buffet which was a mixture of children's food and adult's food, and we had nothing to do but sit in the sun and eat it from paper plates. When we had talked with the people who seemed to want to speak to us, we had to talk to each other, and after a while of this we decided to leave. We were then promised cake. Amy, the elder daughter who was with her teenage friends, came down and spread lemon drizzle on the lemon drizzle cake, and we ate slabs of cake, told Amy it was delicious - it really was - and off we went.
We changed and spent a couple of hours at the allotment watering and weeding and picking strawberries and digging potatoes, and I felt happy. I always feel happy when I am wearing my Wellington boots.
I remember getting those boots. It was when we moved to Ampleforth. The church held a fundraiser - a bring and buy sale. For weeks people brought all their strange stuff - not just toys and not clothes, but more practical things, like chimney pots and old radios and garden tools - to the church hall, and then there was a great sale and you could buy practically anything there. I was beginning to realise that there was plenty of mud in country life and the fact that the boots were in my size was a stroke of luck. I wore them outside for eleven months of the year, those two years we lived in Ampleforth.
In the evening the three of us - Tim, our son Ethan and I, went out to the Old Barn Arts centre. I had bought the tickets to something called Pop-up Vegetarian Soul Food Cafe with Acoustic Music. Catchy title. The reason we were there was to see what the acoustic music was like, because Ethan plays the guitar in his bedroom, and he sings. He has a nice voice. I think people would like to listen to Ethan's voice. He needs a gateway from the bedroom to a place with people who might want to listen. The acoustic act consisted of two guitarists, possibly related, a girl who sang and a boy who looked shy and just played. Ethan thought he was probably the better guitarist. Anyway, it turned out the girl worked in the cafe at the weekends, so the staff had turned out to hear her play. I don't know how many of the audience knew her - I think quite a few. Some of them were quite elderly, and the music probably wasn't their thing. But who can really dislike a sweet voice and an acoustic guitar? You might call it "unchallenging" or "inoffensive" but it won't put you off your spicy vegetarian Jambalaya, which was what we had. At the end of the evening Ethan went up to the cafe lady and introduced himself and said he thought he would like to play at the next Soul Food evening, but he could only play about 7 songs, and she said that would be alright, he could share the evening with another musician, And that will be fine.
So that's why I had so much to eat yesterday.
One thing that happened last week was the election, which resulted, as we all know, in a hung parliament, which made me feel better. I feel happier to know that some of Theresa May's horrible plan to sell off and privatise the NHS will be effectively opposed. But the future looks awful, economically. I can't see how Brexit will benefit anyone who makes money in this country. I wish we could all just forget about it.
Another think that happened was that it was my father's birthday, he would have been 85, and I thought about him. My step-sister got onto Facebook and posted a crying face and a heart and wrote about how much she missed him and it was all very mysterious to me. How often did she actually see him? She was a busy woman with two children to ferry around to their karate and their dancing, and she has a job herself, how often did she make the eighty mile round trip to see her parents, and now she misses him so much? I do believe she had a good relationship with my father. He was actually my father. Not hers. She is no relation. I should explain that my father chose to live 380 miles away from my brother and I, in the wilds of Scotland, and only in latter years did he welcome visits.
Another thing that happened last week, on Wednesday was that my daughter phoned and said that as well as the throat infection that she had had since Tuesday, she had an allergic reaction and her tongue had swollen up. She was on her own in her friend's house in Nottingham, and her phone was dead. I phoned her other friend, whose number I had on my wall, and said "Get a taxi, go to Maddie's house, get Florence, take her to A & E at the biggest hospital in town". In the morning I read all the texts and messages, they had both been up all night and Flo had had loads of medical tests and had been admitted. Poor Flo, by the time she got back to Birmingham it was too late to vote, and she had been so keen!
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