Shame on you Rotherham

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I don’t often return home to Rotherham and I rarely go into the heart of the town, so I was looking forward to seeing Bailey House where the registry office wedding of my cousin was to take place.

Some madness must have befuddled the thinking of the Rotherham town planners. They must have thought that people would love to marry in a building that lies in the middle of a dual carriage way, with cars and filthy lorries racing by.

They no doubt realised that guests, often strangers to the town, would be thrilled by the challenge of attempting to reach this building. And so to make the journey even more exciting these planners added one way systems, fly-overs, a bus station and roundabouts.

They realised that guests in their flimsy wedding apparel and newly bought heeled shoes would like nothing better than to park in the nearby multi-story car-park and then face a long walk to the building.

What joy these new visitors to the town would experience, they thought, as they negotiated the pedestrian exit of the car-park, the dingy steps, the walk of death past the bus station, the bridge over the filthy River Don, and the underpass below the dual carriageway, which acts as a wind tunnel, in order to reach Bailey House.

Then why not, they thought, why not close and lock the main doors to the building so that visitors don’t get a grand and comfortable entrance but instead have to go around to a side entrance where in a dismal corner the previous bride and groom are battling with the wind and rain to have their photos taken. And why not have the guests for the next wedding squeeze through these shivering guests, they thought.

Worse than all of this though was the actual room set aside for the wedding service.

Some bright spark in Rotherham Planning must have thought that a room devoid of windows and natural light is ideal for a wedding. A room devoid of any decorative features would have a certain je ne sais quoi they must have mused. A room as bland and as functional as a cardboard box they thought would serve the citizens of Rotherham well. Let’s light it with artificial lights that will light the bride with ugly yellow hues and make the guests look purple and garish they must have thought, for that is what happened.

And why not design the room so that the poor bride can only have two bars of her entrance music played before she is facing the registrar, after taking only five steps into the room.

And why not add extra pressure… the service has to be short because of the next couple’s imminent arrival…conveyer belt weddings!

Outside with the sound of racing traffic the photographer takes his pictures as the wind blows dust into the bride’s hair. The next bride struggles to push through the watching guests and everyone shivers.

Is it too much to ask for a beautiful carefully thought out purpose built place to be built and designed for the good people of Rotherham to be married in; something wonderful with delicate glass windows, subtle lighting and furnishings to awe and delight the eye? A building that could anticipate England’s intemperate climate and offer shelter should the wind decide to howl and the rain decide to pour when it is time for photographs to be taken? A place where the bride and groom can step into a rose garden instead of a road?

Shame on you Rotherham!

What chance have newly married couples got in Rotherham when their start in married live is so shabby and grubby? Don’t they deserve just one day when they can forget Rotherham’s bleakness and drabness? Just one day when they step into something special and magical?

And as for these insane planners, where do they marry? I bet not one of them ever chooses Bailey House!


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Ballooning Buttucks

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My Great Auntie Phoebe was great in every sense of the word. As a former cook to a Great House she specialised in recipes demanding dollops of lard, butter and dripping. She presided over steaming cauldrons of glutinous soups and great steaming thick crusty tarts that were skilfully lifted from great black ovens.

The members of this once Great House are all now of course deceased; no doubt their deaths were due to high levels of cholesterol, furred up coronary arteries and bilious attacks; and the Great House is reduced to a shadow of its former glory as a venue to be hired for corporate events.

As a child Auntie Phoebe’s biscuit tin was a delight. It was full to the brink of delicious mouth watering biscuits. She gloried in the extra wide cups she presented us with, in which an ocean of tea could be poured. Dunked biscuits that fell to pieces would be lost for days in these swamps of tea, surfacing like weird fascinating crocodiles with strangely rigged soggy backs. Auntie Phoebe discovered our weakness for Kit Kits and her walk-in larder was never ever short of them.

Auntie Phoebe long ago joined fellow smokers puffing away outside Heaven’s Gate. Her white curly hair is no doubt still stained yellow at the front from her smoking habit and her fingers will still have their yellowy-brown nicotine stain. I hope that the cloud she is standing on has been reinforced to cope with her ethereal mass as she makes new clouds.

I took warning from Great Auntie Phoebe I don’t use lard or dripping when I cook. As a vegetarian it’s olive oil that I use. I’ve munched this year on nasturtiums and home ground lettuce leaves and cress. I’ve swum, done yoga, cycled for miles, walked for miles, gardened, walked to train stations, and rarely touched a Kit Kat or a biscuit.

And yet despite all this, I am ballooning! Trousers bought only two weeks ago do not fit. I am reduced to just one pair. I fear that dear Great Auntie Phoebe has passed onto me the inheritance treasured by all the Great Cooks who once worked in the Great Houses of England. A gift that was a mark of their skill and prowess…

…the gift of ballooning buttocks!

The Urge to Stomp

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I don’t do well with glasses!

There’s been a complaint.

Apparently a GIRL in my class asked if she could wear her glasses, and I apparently said, ‘No.’

As you do!

(sigh)

I had absolutely no recollection of her ever asking me such a question; and I began a mental recall of the previous day and the myriad of questions and conversations that occur naturally within a primary classroom. Had I misheard her? Had she really asked? Had she asked while I was busy replying to someone else’s question?

It’s a dreadful worry to discover that after just a few days there is already a parent baying for blood.

I’m told not to worry. Someone ‘consoles’ me with the comment that the same parent reported a teacher to the educational authorities for mis-conduct for not allowing her child to do PE wearing earrings!

Suitably ‘cheered’ I continued with that day’s lessons.

The GIRL siddles up to me in the afternoon, there is a mischievous calculating look on her face.

‘Can I get my glasses?’ she asks.

‘Sure,’ I reply.

I’m aware of the tension in this loaded question. I can sense the history behind it, but I act as if I know nothing about any complaint.

The GIRL glutinously flops away disappointed at my complete lack of interest, she was obviously armed for a show down.

The GIRL gets her glasses, puts them on her desk, and continues ‘to work’ without bothering to put them on.

I wonder about her.

I have an unfortunate history with glasses.

A large clumsy CHILD’s father once complained at my last school that his daughter’s glasses had been deliberately stomped on during the swimming lesson.

‘But nobody would do that.’ I explained. ‘The changing rooms open onto the side of the pool and the children sit on the side when they come out waiting for their lesson to being. Nobody would be able to do that. They would be seen.’

The father was not at all appeased. The CHILD had already got an accused in mind: a thin weedy looking boy that the girl despised. He was the culprit they’d already decided, despite there being no witnesses, and a complete lack of evidence.

‘Perhaps the glasses fell to the floor and were accidentally stepped upon by her changing room partner.’ I’d suggested, thinking of the elephantine girl that squeezed into the small cubicle with her.

The father wouldn’t hear of it. I could see he now had the beginning of a suspicion that perhaps I had stomped on his precious CHILD’s glasses too.

He complained to the Head teacher.

It was agreed that the CHILD would leave her glasses with me instead.

The next swimming lesson I was already teaching the top group when the CHILD remembered her glasses and brought them to me. I was unable to leave my swimmers, who were in the middle of the deep end and was thus unable to place them in the small office at the other end of the pool, so instead I slipped them into my pocket.

All would have been well had I not been crouching down and explaining some complicated aspect of the crawl to my group, with flailing arms.

The glasses case went flying out of my pocket as I stood up; the case opened on its first bounce on the floor sending the glasses flying through the air, together with their tiny cloth. The glasses smashed onto the hard tiled floor and the cloth landed in a puddle of chlorinated-urinated water that had just been splashed up onto the side.

I scooped them up; thankful that they weren’t broken, and replaced them back in the case. The wipe was wet, but I’d have a chance to explain later, or so I thought.

There was not an opportunity to do so. There was a mix-up with jumpers, a shoe to find, a costume to reunite with its owner, and a pair of ghastly undies that no one would admit to having worn down to the pool. I forgot all about the wet cloth in the glasses case. The CHILD took the case from my hand as I fumbled with a knot that needed to be untied on somebody else’s swim bag.

The next day a furious parent had once again been in to see the Head teacher. I was informed that the glasses now had to be left with the Head and not taken down to the pool at all.

I imagine that her father must have thought that I’d deliberately thrown the CHILD’s specs to the floor, stomped on them, and wet the cloth on purpose; and no doubt the Head had shared this opinion for I was never asked for my version of events. The Head’s cold looks said it all when we next walked down to the swimming pool and the glasses’ case was ceremoniously handed over with the CHILD giving both me and the weedy boy venomous looks.

I wondered if the GIRL in this new school was some distant relative of the CHILD.

Perhaps not, as GIRL smiled at me a few days later and presented me with a skilfully made paper card during a recent wet lunch break.

A peace offering?

Perhaps.

Though … will it work?

I must admit… the urge to stomp on glasses is now very strong!

Fallen Leaves

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There was soft warm-scented air as we across walked the grounds of Hever Castle.

The place is a delight.

There were no guides to harry you through the rooms and you could walk and stand and stare at whatever caught your eye until you had seen it for what it was.

A musician played a variety of ancient songs on a lute guitar, his notes falling down into the Great Hall, and later as we reached the upper rooms his melodies chased down long corridors where children once ran.

He played, ‘She Moves through the Fair,’ and it seemed all the more poignant in such a place.

We were lucky. The weather was warm and mild, and the day was sunny.

Outside, there were ducks and fish to feed, mazes to explore, and finally we took the last boat out onto the boating lake.

A grebe vanished into the depths of the waters, and a heron stretched its neck in the reeds. The setting sun was dazzling and a fat white moon rose above the autumnal trees like a child’s grotesque paper lantern.

We were the last boat on the stillness of the lake, as the shadows fell upon the pavilion, circling and circling a fallen leaf floating on the water.



The Leaf

An oak leaf cast down from the lofty king of trees,
Discarded,
Stained,
Red in colour from its beheading;
Floats.
Momentarily caught on the meniscus.

Just a leaf floating,
Like Anne Bullen’s memory;
Held by faint report,
Of slander and flattery
By the water's bond.

Sailing above
The drowning depths,
Of mud and oblivion.
Under rising mists,
A pocked-white-faced paper moon,
And a setting sun.

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Skeletal Leaves and Fat Caterpillars

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The veg plot has been a disaster.


There’s no veg to eat!

First the tiny rows of plants struggled towards the light and the slugs and snails from next door crept over the low wall at night and ate them up.

The lettuce went first, then the peas. The carrots were carefully weeded and then disappeared. The spring onions I had such high hopes for grew beautifully then vanished. The marigolds never managed more than a few leaves before they too disappeared. I was hopeful for the cabbage and the sprouts, but then the caterpillars came, destroyed the cabbage and munched through the sprouts’ leaves. I hadn’t the heart to harm the caterpillars, as butterfly numbers are in decline, and hoped that once they earned their wings the plants would recover. The sprout plants did, but their sprout offerings grown in the armpits of their leaves are either tiny or blown.

Still I had high hopes for blackberries from the wild savage briars next door, that I am continually hacking back. Then the bindweed came and suffocated the blackberry leaves. Any fruit left then went musty in the rain.

The only ‘success’ were the nasturtiums. I thought on finding only twelve seeds in the packet that I was being diddled. I did not realise that really twelve seeds was an act of kindness. Only five grew…thank goodness the others didn’t.

These nasturtiums are rampant! I obviously bought the wrong kind. They are spreading beasts. They have set off on a campaign of world domination, clambering over even next door’s bind weed. The tiny brick path into the heart of the veg patch is now inaccessible. Monet apparently grew this plant and also allowed it to trail down paths so he could paint the trailing flowers. I just have the leaves down my path the flowers have gone next door!

Still, I have ‘feasted’ upon the leaves and flowers. I now have orange nasturtiums in every vase inside the house. They are sunny and cheering.



But even more cheering is what’s lurking in my cupboard ready for next year’s attempt at a veg patch, my secret weapon: organic slug pellets!