Berlin, Warsaw, and Krakow, part 4 - the Jewish quarter

The Jews had a long history in Krakow. They came in 1380-ish and through the early modern period they had a small area with a synagogue and a wall around it. After a couple of hundred years the wall came down and they were allowed to expand their area. Gradually they acquired more synagogues and more businesses and graveyards.

Then the Nazis... In Krakow the Jews amounted to up to 25% of the citizens! according to the museum in one of the old synagogues. This means that they had deep roots here and considered themselves Polish, and contributed to political and military life. They weren't in danger until the Nazis occupied ... and then the Poles seemed to have been "enforcers" of the Nazi rules... You need to come and see the old pictures and photographs to see how strange it was. It was the same in the Czech Republic. For example, Franz Kafka was a Jew and he lived a very integrated life in Prague, utterly unremarkable. Had he lived any longer, the Nazis would have murdered him and his family nevertheless.

When Spielberg wanted to film the story that became Schindler's List, he came to the original Jewish quarter, which was run down. Well, it isn't now. After the famous film, with its final captions saying that fewer than 400 Jews live in Poland today, Jews came back to Krakow, to start again in the Jewish Quarter. Some came from Israel. Hebrew is spoken here (I heard a waiter). I don't know what the Poles think about the Jews coming back. It is bizarre that this tragic area should be a magnet to tourists. But in the evenings the restaurants put on Klezmer bands,  and the music gives the place atmosphere. They do great trade. Our room is three floors up from a restaurant in this quarter. The tree outside our room is a willow, blowing in the breeze. Cars and mini-buses are parked down there on the cobbles. Tours come to visit the memorial to the Jewish community. Tourists come in little private taxis, like milk floats.

Outside the violinist and a cellist are playing "if I were a rich man". They vary the speed of the verses. I can hear the sound of cutlery on plates. A little tiny bit of applause for the musicians. Earlier they played the theme from "Schindler" and it was beautiful, but got no applause. None for "Air on a G string" either. The musicians have a very large repertoire and are very talented - I hope the restaurant owners pay them well.

One night we heard the theme from Schindler's List 4 times.

Schindler's factory building survives, and is a tourist attraction - a long queue for it. We nearly went  - then decided to go to the art gallery next door, because it is weird to go on holiday and visit a site of mass murder as though it was just another thing. "So! That was Auschwitz? Bad! Let's have lunch!" No. These places need more thought, formal clothing, special trips as pilgrims, more respect.

Synagogue

Jewish quarter, morning, synagogue at the end.

Berlin, Warsaw and Krakow - part 3, Krakow - folk dancing

We felt more at home in Krakow straight away. This is because most of the city stayed intact in the war, and it feels right; it feels like a liveable, cultured, parks-and-libraries kind of environment. For example, all around the old town, the walled city, there is a park. We had a picnic lunch there one day and then stayed for a beer. There are so many people about! Mums' groups with toddlers and pushchairs, old ladies walking and chatting, people reading books and magazines, young people texting away and meeting their friends - it seems to be a happy city. In the park there are statues and flowers and fountains and loads of benches. There is a big display about Pope Francis' visit to Poland.

While we were walking to get to our hotel, we stopped to hear a concert in the park - some sort of competition - and we realised that something Warsaw lacks, in our experience, is music - street music.

We have noticed Poles reading in cafes and pubs. I always notice people reading. It seems to be quite usual to go out and read in public - nobody thinks it is somehow sad - (except A.).

We gate-crashed a folk festival in Krakow - went past a big hall and heard the music, so we went to see what was happening. I took some notes.  - "One act follows another. The current troop is children dressed in shades of beige - girls in dirndl skirts and beige blouses, boys in beige waistcoats and trousers. Lots of twirling and running on the spot. Next lot - girls in red bodices, circlets of flowers and plaits. Pairing off and rushing about in a circle. Clapping in pairs. My ex boyfriend would have called it an "effing FERTILITY rite" in a particularly revolted way. The beige troop is a bit more go-ahead - different music and more original moves. However, it looks a bit bonkers. They are like "little primitives" - imagine the Rite of Spring to bagpipe music.

"Lady in flowered blouse, on stage with a mic, announcing the scores? The next act? lots of applause for the kids and their dancing instructor. A boy on his own! Mad leaping and slapping of legs. Kicking legs up and clapping (men). Looking on (women). Slight twirling of dirndls. Then two young men, leaping and slapping and twisting around like you would NOT BELIEVE. They go past us later, heads dripping with sweat.

"The communists kept all this folk culture alive - made it compulsory, probably, and it is really lovely to see it continue of its own volition. But the audience is not as interested as it might be.

"This must be the way farmers showed they were "fit" for courting purposes. The women have a more passive role in the dances. The female role is - serene. A man would value a correctly twirling, serene woman wearing neat plaits and nicely-made skirts and aprons.

"Flowery lady is making more announcements. We don't know what it's about. It's ten to ten. Is it time to go? No! Here comes a traditional band from another region. Blue and white flag this time. It's Greece! with live music! Accordion and clarinet. Drum. Loads of dancers. Dancers in lines. End dancers twirling hankies. Men wear white trousers with SKIRTS and red cummerbunds - black waistcoats, white shirts, black small hats. Men have some sort of gartered socks. The women wear white petticoats with fancy grey coat dresses. on top. They have gold patterns marking their haunches from behind. They wear white hair-coverings and black hats. They twist gaily and uniformly to and fro. I think this is meant to be a round dance but they have to squash it into a long, thin circle because they are on a long, thin stage. The music is absolutely dreadful. (I have a sound file.) In this dance the man on the end of the line does all the dancing - very complicated steps. Now the girls hold hands in a line and do the same dance - End girls have extra moves - hankie twirling. It reminds me of those flamingos which make lines in which to perform stylised "dances". This group has a few screamy fans.



"Somebody has won a trophy! Much applause. More prizes. More applause! We think EVERYBODY is going to win a prize! The announcer is speaking English - a prize for Estonia! Lithuania has a prize! So has Hungary! All prize winners are now lined up across the stage. Some are in national costume, some are not. It looks like a scene from "Shrek". Or Jack and the Beanstalk. The Greeks are back on stage! The kids are on stage! The Greeks teach everybody their slow "Zorba" dance. Back to the audience. The pace is mounting. boys and girls jostling and not getting the hang of it."

Good fun!

Berlin, Warsaw and Kracow - part 2, Warsaw

 

I think I had trouble coping with Warsaw because we didn't buy tickets for the public transport and we should have done. The distances between the areas you want to see are deceptive and the walking is very uncomfortable. We stayed in a famous Communist-built hotel called the MDM. This is the view from our fifth floor room. Alas, the hotel has swapped its long-standing sign, MDM, for SAMSUNG and stands opposite a building called ZTE.

The hotel inside was modern and very smartly furnished, and the breakfast was wonderful. We could have had breakfast all day. The trouble was that the room was very very hot and I couldn't sleep at all, which made me feel increasingly unhappy. We went to see some old churches in the hotel district, and then we went to see the old town. The Old Town is a marvellous tourist attraction and is only about 20 years old. We were not fooled by the Old Town. It has been built on the footprint of the old town and it may look very similar, the churches and sculptures and quaint old inns are a marvellous piece of work, but we didn't buy it. We didn't visit the castle because it was quaintly new and again, we weren't fooled and felt it was like Epcot, the Disney version of Europe. We went to the new town which was also destroyed in the war and has been recently rebuilt. We enjoyed an ice cream. We were pleased to see where Marie Curie was born, or a reconstruction of the house where she was born.

Churches seem to have survived the war.

This is the square in the new town. Which is quite new.



A square in the "old town" - with carriage ride for the tourists.

As we walked around we did sort-of admire the Soviet style architecture and many sculptures showing the heroic workers.

The People's Palace - town hall with exhibition centre. It
is the most peculiar style.

Soviet -era building alongside modern capitalist buildings in Warsaw. We went to the national museum and admired some art, and found a great place to have coffee - the café even supplied double hammocks for lazing in!  but more popular with the Polish public was the army museum, and the poor Soviet-era Poles had spent a large proportion of their GDP on all this old rubbish.

There were loads of these machines standing around in rows.

The roads were very busy and there seemed to be a lot of work involved in finding underpasses where we could cross. We seemed to walk such a long way. Nothing was as cheap as we had been led to expect. Many Polish people had enough money to splash out in the few interesting venues and there were "butiks" with luxury goods in. I found as we walked around and looked at information boards about the history of Warsaw I just felt incredibly sad. Hitler wanted Poland as Lebensraum for his people. He despised the Poles. He always intended to kill them. After the Warsaw uprising in which only a handful of people, really, rose up against the Germans, Hitler ordered that Warsaw be razed to the ground and that all the people should be killed. The SS were sent in with orders to kill men, women and children. They killed 200,000 and destroyed the whole city. I feel as though no-one has recovered from the shock and the blow, except the very young people who possibly don't know about it or can't relate to it. They are happy dressing up and going out to be seen, and quite right, of course. It's time to get over it. But the current city of Warsaw doesn't work as a city. It hasn't been planned to the right scale. If you look at the top photograph again, and wonder what was that like before WWII, you can see the problem of Warsaw.

But finally, on our last evening in Warsaw, we found one thing that's lovely and has been well-restored. It's a royal park. It was a magical place to spend an evening and we even ate in a café /restaurant there. There were a lot of people there (Poles) enjoying the memorial to Chopin and the lakes and woodland walks.



Memorial to Chopin

 



Evening peace and calm.



Berlin, Warsaw and Kracow - part 1, Berlin

Our holiday was a quite spontaneous choice. Suddenly, we wanted to go to Berlin, and then catch trains to Poland, because you can. The novelty of catching trains to other countries hasn't worn off, in spite of having done this a few years ago in Germany, Austria, CzechRep, Slovakia and Hungary.

We stayed in the dreariest hotel in Berlin. It was in a good area, but Oh, there was no attempt at decor, there was no personality in evidence as the receptionists spoke no English and had nothing to say. The breakfast was served in a small room and seemed to be the least the hotel could get away with - you could have scrambled egg and frankfurter, or cheese and ham and tomato and cucumber. I became used to the cheese salad breakfast. I chose the hotel because it was in an old building with very high ceilings in the commercial district. The stair case was impressive (there was no lift) and the doors were very tall and solid.

The place next door had the distinction of being a Jewish hotel with signs in Hebrew. (The Jewish history was to become the theme of our holiday and this wasn't a conscious choice; it's just inevitable) The ground floor of our hotel housed a restaurant - quite a nice one.

We bought 3 days of metro tickets, which turned out to be a really good idea, as we used the metro (and the S-bahn) a lot. From the airport we went to the Hauptbahnhof which was quite exciting in itself as it is on 5 levels.

On our first day we walked to town through the Tiergarten, which A kept calling the tea gardens although it actually means animal garden, and was a hunting park. It is the loveliest inner city park I have experienced, as it is very shady and quiet. Good for cycling and jogging. Mainly trees, and guess what? They are all quite new. The Berliners tore up the Tiergarten for firewood after WWII. All the decorative features which had been spoilt are being restored and replaced, with no expense spared. Good to see.

On the other side of the Tiergarten is an important monument - The Siegessaule - a gilded angel of Victory on a column. You can cross over the road and head to the Bundestag. My guide book calls it the Reichstag and perhaps the Germans do too? The Reichstag was hardly used from 1933 to 1999. It was the scene of the Nazi's last battle - 1,500 Nazi soldiers made their last stand here against the Soviet troops - extending WWII by 2 days. In 1995 rebuilding by British architect Sir Norman Foster commenced. In 1999 the German parliament convened here for the first time in 66 years. It must have been such a happy day. We made an appointment via the internet before we left England so we could go up to the dome and see the view. There are two ramps - one to go up and one to go down. Inside the dome a come of 360 mirrors reflects natural light into the chamber below. There is also a ventilation hole which allows the hot air from the chamber below to escape but the rain can't get in. Very clever - the commentary through the audio guide is very congratulatory of Sir Norman Foster which makes one wonder if he wrote it himself. Most of all we admired the view of the city.

Ventilation

Light reflector



Revolving sunshade

The Brandenburg gate was the grandest of 14 gates in Berlin's old city wall. It is a monumental size but was designed as an arch of peace, crowned by the Goddess of Peace and showing Mars sheathing his sword. Knowing that it used to be walled up, knowing its history, is incredibly important and there are information boards all around it with photographs showing how it used to look at different times. The line of the wall is also incised into the pavement - one looks at it and marvels at how profoundly it ruined the city of Berlin. The Gate represents struggles for freedom, past and present. There is a room built into the gate called the Room of Silence, where you may contemplate the idea of peace on the planet.

Through the wall is the Pariser Platz. After Napoleon this square was full of important government buildings all bombed to smithereens in WWII. For decades, it was an unrecognisable, deserted no-man's land. But now it has been rebuilt with prestigious embassies, fountains and flower gardens. Unfortunately these come with a large branch of Starbucks and the scary face of Colonel Sanders. There is also a reconstruction of the Hotel Adlon, which was famous between the wars, and more recently it was here on the second floor that Michael Jackson dangled his baby from the balcony.

Across the square is a historic street called Unter den Linden. Sadly, the trees are rather small - perhaps a small variety of lime, but in the good old days, this was one of Europe's grand boulevards. It stretches towards Alexanderplatz with its TV tower. Down here we realised we wanted a refresher in German history and went into the Deutsches Historical Museum. This is a large, well-planned and well-stocked narrative of German history. I particularly loved some of the paintings. A family portrait showed the rise of the educated middle class in 19th century Germany - and this in spite of the fact that Germany was late to industrialise and yet! the education system seems to have been good. Then I was also most impressed by a picture of King Wilhelm 1 on his horse, looking down at the potatoes some peasants are digging up. He is very interested in the size of their potatoes. No wonder they loved him. The history of Germany mirrors our own - Germany seems to be our annoying younger brother in Europe up until, and during, WWI. After the first World War their history, of a country broken up between the victors and heavily in debt, becomes very black, and Germans were clearly looking for ways out of the mess and the humiliation. Looking for a new beginning - Someone who will stand up for them. Someone who doesn't believe they lost a war. Step forward, A Hitler. This part was very well-explained.

Further on up the road there is a group of museums long-established, on an island, and a cathedral. It is pleasant to lie on the grass outside the cathedral and have a rest. Eventually we dragged ourselves around the buildings but none of the museums appealed very much - full of antiquities. Another time, perhaps, because I would like to go back to Berlin.

Outside the Cathedral

The next day we went on the S-bahn to the Berlin Wall Museum. We got off at Nordbahnhof, which was one of the "ghost stations" of  Cold War Berlin. It was built in 1926, closed in 1961, and open again in 1989. As it was a dogleg of the East mostly surrounded by the West, Western subway trains had permission to go through this station without stopping. The station steps were bricked up with two walls but at street level they were still visible. Guards surveyed the tunnels to make sure no-one got on or off,  - but in case they were tempted to abscond they were locked into a little room and watched the tracks through small windows. Down there the original wall tiles and the old German script survive, which is rather wonderful to see. We rose to the street rather stunned that the station stairs had been bricked up for so long. Almost immediately you come across the Wall park - the museum is outside where the wall used to be - a wide strip of grass with metal posts and pictures of the wall. Here the Berlin Wall, which was erected virtually overnight in 1961, ran right along Bernauer Strasse. People were suddenly separated from their neighbours across the street. I bought a postcard of bricklayers making the wall under armed guard. At gunpoint. It is the oddest thing.



Section of wall at the wall museum

There is a section of wall to look at from above, exactly where it used to be. Two walls, with no-man's land in between, and a watchtower. Apparently the watchtower was brought from elsewhere. The gravel in between meant that anyone trying to escape would leave footprints. A church, which had been in use since the late 19th century, ended up between the walls, and was torn down in 1985.

We didn't visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (something for next time) as we were a bit fed up with the wall after this, and we were disappointed with Checkpoint Charlie as it is only a reconstruction for tourists, a photo opportunity with flags and signs.



This is all very silly

We did stumble upon the Topography of Terror. This is an exhibit called Berlin 1933-45: Between Propaganda and Terror displayed outside behind a surviving stretch of wall - here are the ruins of the Gestapo headquarters and of the Nazi government. It's a museum of sorts - there are few artefacts; it's mostly written explanations and photos, like reading a good textbook standing up. You read about how the SS, the Gestapo (the secret police), and the SD (the Nazi intelligence agency) became a state within and state, with talons in every corner of German society. Here the Nazi machine planned the "racial purification" and the concentration camp system. The building was also equipped with dungeons, where the Gestapo detained and tortured thousands of prisoners. I thought about the characters in "Alone in Berlin". Poor old man, who ended up here, beaten up and playing chess while waiting for the death sentence to be carried out.

You have to hand it to the Germans, they aren't hiding anything. What happened is out there in the open, not hidden in a museum. There are photographs and documents.

The memorial to the murdered Jews is also outside in a prime position - it is an extraordinary maze of blocks which you walk up and down amongst without really understanding what it means. But this is lazy of me! What can I find out?

Rows of plain blocks, path goes up and down.

 Here is more information from Wikipedia:

According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.^[11] The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe official English website^[2] states that the design represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman said the number and design of the monument had no symbolic significance.^[12][13] However, observers have noted the memorial's resemblance to a cemetery.^[14][15][16] The abstract installation leaves room for interpretation. The most common being that of a graveyard. “The memorial evokes a graveyard for those who were unburied or thrown into unmarked pits, and several uneasily tilting stelae suggest an old, untended, or even desecrated cemetery^[17]”. The memorial's grid can be read as both an extension of the streets that surround the site and an unnerving evocation of the rigid discipline and bureaucratic order that kept the killing machine grinding along^[3]”. Wolfgang Thierse, the president of Germany's parliament described the piece as a place where people can grasp "what loneliness, powerlessness and despair mean".^[18] Mr. Thierse talked about the memorial as creating a type of mortal fear in the visitor. Visitors have described the monument as isolating, triggered by the massive blocks of concrete, barricading the visitor from street noise and sights of Berlin.^[18]

Ariel view of the memorial which was built on area previously occupied by the Wall.

Here is a review of the memorial from a recent visitor:

“Powerful Museum Underground ”

Reviewed 2 days ago

NEW

 via mobile

We initially went to just the above ground area only, which I did not find terribly compelling. However, we returned and went to the underground museum. I think the only way horrific events like the Holocaust don't get repeated is by making sure they are never forgotten. The museum begins with the broad strokes of how the concentration camps started and how widespread the crisis was. But the real impact of the exhibits is when they become personal. Pictures, diaries and personal accounts give a deeper meaning to the sheer numbers of people murdered. I can't say it's a pleasant museum, but I am very glad we went. Also, when you exit, the above ground area is more relatable.

Visited August 2017

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d617423-r520342475-The_Holocaust_Memorial_Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe-Berlin.html#

Potsdamer Platz used to be partly in East Berlin and now it is a dazzling commercial square with busy roads, and some exciting cinemas and new buildings for Sony and Daimler - it celebrates the triumph of capitalism, if you like. We went there a few times as we were looking for an English film to see - but alas, English films are badly dubbed and unpleasant to watch.



Inside the Sony Centre - the dome

Inside the Sony Centre - whopping great mall

You have to walk a bit from Potsdamer Platz to get to the Kulturforum, where some major NEW art galleries and the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall is sited. This is the strangest part, because it isn't a popular place in spite of having those attractions. The spaces outside the galleries are desolate areas of concrete and the verges are full of weeds. The Gemaldegalerie houses great painting by Durer, Holbein, Brueghel, van Dyck, Vermeer, Giotto, Botticelli and a good number of Rembrandts. The collection is chronologically arranged in a purpose-built gallery, and is it popular? Really, no. So strange. It even has a good café with nice food and a good vibe. I took a photo of the basement because it is so extraordinarily empty.

I had the feeling that the Berliners themselves had somehow rejected this area, and I'd be interested to know why. I felt that it must have been very difficult, if you were about my age and had got used to the city the way it was with the wall in it, to have all the building work and the transformations of spaces into new spaces which reflect a mode of thought which you don't feel comfortable with. I mean, the dominance of the globalised corporations. I sympathised.

One space that hasn't been transformed, but which will be soon, is Alexanderplatz. This is a place that Berliners do enjoy. It is very concrete and East German, the buildings are very sixties and seventies, but the people go there in droves to hear buskers and buy crafts from stalls and see street entertainers and play with games and toys. It's great fun. But I think there are plans to improve it and perhaps this is something the Berliners don't really want. I think they might like more affordable rents and less glamourous rebuilding.


Alexanderplatz with communist buildings probably to be demolished - but should they be??

Famous 1960s clock



TV tower built by the communists - next time
we will go up!

Fountain outside the Rathaus - building works going on in front of the Rathaus.

Cambridge Folk Festival

For some reason the organisers thought it would be a good idea to assign one day (yesterday) to female performers. It was so annoying. All the voices were high and harmonising. We were quite disappointed with the line up. We enjoyed the day anyway. When I go to the Cambridge Folk Fest I think - "Here are my people". They are getting to be rather elderly - were they always?  those who look quite relaxed and into the liberal arts. People who like camping and reading and music. Men in shorts and T-shirts and leather hats.

I saw someone I used to know, who now has a little boy, a lovely bright-looking little boy. How strange to see someone when you never expected to! and feel ashamed and embarrassed, and what a sad business to have that history that makes you feel ashamed of yourself, like me. But it is all in the past now. And on the top deck of the bus, too, there he was. How very strange. It was always like that, with he and I.

Picture Archive, Stockton-on-Tees

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.

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!