What I Could See

 

There was a line of trees I could see from the train window. I admired their different shapes, and the spacing between them. Someone had carefully planted them between those two fields, with thought for not how they would appear in their own lifetime, but for how they would appear in someone else’s. Perhaps they’d also had a passing thought too for the pleasure they might occasion someone from the valley below, who just happened to look up from the book they were reading and gaze out of a passing train window.

We are a light-hearted pair when we travel, my son and I. I’m always trying to think of witty and insightful things to say whenever we journey anywhere. This line of trees fleetingly seen had impressed me, and I commented on them, saying that whoever had planted them most certainly deserved their place in heaven. Then I added provocatively that I thought that entry into heaven should be solely reserved for people who had planted trees in their lifetime.

Our subsequent discussion, as I defended this extreme position, culminated as usual in laughter; and upon seeing a wood, as the train sped through a railway station, it was no surprise when we declared it to be The Great Rain Forest of Tring.

I had never been to St Martin’s in the Fields before. The church was on the other side of Trafalgar Square from where I’d expected it to be. I must have walked past it many, many times without ever ‘seeing’ it. Suddenly, there it was, and I wondered why I had never noticed it before. Perhaps it was because my eyes had always been drawn towards Nelson’s column, or that my feet had generally been taking me in the direction of the National Gallery: a place I’d once known like the back of my hand.

As I tried to re-orientate myself and comprehend St Martin’s in the Fields’ stout white lines, I was put in mind of a story I’d once heard about perception. How natives standing upon a shore could not ‘see’ the first wooden ships that had just appeared upon their horizon. Apparently, they couldn’t see the tall masts and billowing sails for they were beyond their visual experience. All they could see was an empty ocean. I felt like such a native as I gazed towards St Martin’s in the Fields, whilst behind me upon the fourth plinth was a ship in a bottle set with African cloth sails.

“How long has that been there?”

There were groups of people standing just outside the church. My son, in a whisper informed me that he’d just glimpsed the actors who play the parts of Pat and Tony Archer.

“Don’t look,” he hissed, after I’d just paused in my step to scan faces with the embarrassing squinting slowness of myopia and astigmatism. Perhaps similar poor eyesight had prevented those natives from seeing tall sailing ships all those years ago. Or, more likely, they too had a teenager standing next to them whose heightened sensitivity forbade their parents from staring out to sea for too long.

“Don’t look!”

Thus chastised, I entered the church.

Our tickets were labelled SS, and I had earlier joked that this meant that we’d be sat on a row of seats reserved for Nazi posters on the web board. We were surprised and delighted to discover that ‘SS’ demarked not a pew but a box set against the wall, or a ‘booth’, as the usher called it. There was plenty of room for others to have joined us, but nobody did in the end. Which I guess indicated that I was the only Nazi poster on the board.

This rectangular-shaped booth was slightly elevated, and faced the pews in the main body of the church. To my great delight we discovered we had an excellent view, and I could now gaze at the incoming congregation with impunity. I’d hoped to see the faces of fellow addicts; though I must admit to being slightly distracted by an urgent need to eat a cheese sandwich.

As the church filled, I could recognise no one in the sea of faces, though I had been wondering if one kindly looking old man with white hair and beguiling warm smile might actually be Bert Fry escorting his wife Freda to her seat. He seemed familiar.

“That’s John Major, and his wife Norma,” my son proclaimed with the delight of a politics student.

And there I’d been for a fraction of a second, imagining John Major driving that old tractor of Bert’s, having just given Freda Fry a face!

Other heads were now turning in John Major’s direction and I realised what a curse it must be to be so easily recognised, and how lucky the Archers actors were to have such precious anonymity, so that even an addict like me could not easily distinguish their sails no matter how hard they stared.

St Martins in the Fields has a light and airy feel. The walls are painted white and the windows have clear transparent glass. The curves and gentle arches near the ceiling are gilded with gold from which hang grand golden chandeliers.

The dark wooden pews, devoid of kneelers, creaked. It seemed there was no row I or O and the usher upon discovering that the church was a couple of vowels short of an alphabet was having to reseat people.

Then when all were settled it began: I was in tears as soon as the choir began to sing. I found the readings describing a hall in which a sparrow flew and the poem by Thomas Hardy hauntingly moving and beautiful, especially the line, 'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'.

The highlight for me was ‘The Lark Ascending’. Which I expected would reach yet one more note higher towards the end; and when it didn’t, I had to realise that the lark had done enough, and it was unfair to expect more of it.

There was a touch of humour amongst the reminiscences; and also a moment of realisation when clips were played from The Archers. How old-fashioned and quirky some of them sounded with their stilted voices and background music. They were extracts from scenes I remembered well: such as Jill challenging Phil’s love for Grace’s ‘ghost’ and asserting that he could love her too.

Most poignant for me was the final extract featuring Norman Painting’s last words as Phil Archer during the ‘Stir-up Sunday’ episode. We had sat there that evening on our settee with our stir-up bowl in hand taking turns to stir up the mixture as we’d listened, inevitably adding the extra ingredient of a tear or two.

Even when different actors stood up and spoke in the church, I barely knew them by their appearance. Even their voices sounded different in that emotionally charged setting, with the exception of Alison Dowling.

At the end of the service, as the congregation exited the organist played Barwick Green which was rounded with applause.

As we left a tall woman approached us like a tall ship and said, ‘Hello’.

“Hello,” I replied, wondering in her wake who she was. I hadn’t noticed her approach upon my horizon.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Only Linda Snell,” my son replied, amused by my lack of vision.

We did manage to see Hedli outside the church, and were able to thank her for our tickets, and then worry a little about her Alta ego Kathy.

On the train going back we passed once again, ‘The Great Rain Forest of Tring’, having just discovered that Norman Painting also loved trees, and had helped to plant many in his lifetime, thus undoubtedly assuring his place in heaven. And I’m guessing that before his tall ship sailed beyond the horizon that he also saw things ever so slightly differently.

The Norman Painting memorial service can hopefully be found at the link below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/backstage/painting_celebration_audio.shtml

Should I catch a Falling Star

 

I slipped on the dress and knew instantly there was a going to be a problem. The dress was floral and silky and just the thing for the first warm day of the year and that promising blue sky. It fitted me perfectly despite my podgy pasta protuberances and my carrot cake wing flaps. But then as I slipped my hands over the area where my waist and hips were last reputed to be, I realised that the dress, a Laura Ashley, was ideal except for one thing: there were no pockets.

For a woman such as me a lack of pockets is a disaster.

Pockets are the lungs of clothing. They are for the oxygen of modern life when  a hanky, car keys and a five pound note are probably all you need. 

I usually wear The Teenager’s jeans which have  wonderful deep strong male pockets of an incredible depth and into which I can almost sink my entire arms. Pockets are wonderful. They mean you don’t need to carry a cumbersome bag or fret about where it is. Pockets free your hands so you can touch the flower petals and feel the wild grass beneath your fingertips. Having pockets of your own means you don’t need a man by your side with pockets in his jackets for you to slip a few things in. Pockets are liberating.

For me an item of clothing without pockets is a deformed and dead thing. Worse it is ultimately a liability. The trend in women’s clothing over the years has been to reduce pockets in size until they have become vestigial, degenerate and atrophied things. I have trousers where the site of a pocket is marked by a button and a loop of fabric, but there is no pocket hidden beneath. My winter coat has ‘pockets’ in which I can shelter only one finger on each hand. A few items of clothing have ‘pockets’ that have little depth, so that you fear that should you suddenly feel the urge to jump that your ‘pockets’ would instantly silently empty.

I think that the diminution of pockets is a diminution of the power of women. Everyone needs pockets. To deny them to one sex is sexist. Women without pockets may well look decorative, in their figure hugging clothing that hasn’t been bulked out with Lego pieces or seed heads, but they have also been made vulnerable. Hasn’t anyone heard of bag snatchers and muggings?

Still the day called for a dress and I protested to The Teenager about its lack of pockets. I would have liked deep pockets into which I could have slipped a digital camera, a hanky, a couple of notes and my car keys and maybe a pen and a notebook too.

And in the event…

After meeting up with my friends and sitting at a table in the sunshine and drinking a hot chocolate we entered the delightful Coton Manor Gardens. An hour later that I realised my car keys were missing.

We trailed back, and yes! I’d left them on the table where we’d been sitting.

What an idiot.

At the end of our day we sat again at the same table.

Later in the grassy car park we said our goodbyes. When we noticed one of the people from the gardens  walking towards us. She was holding out my Shaun the Sheep purse on its long black string at arm’s length as if it was a despicable thing. It had obviously slipped off my shoulders whilst we’d drunk lemonade and I hadn’t even noticed. I thanked her gratefully.

I had no problem with the hilarity this gave my friends. In fact I delighted in their laughter. However, I could see that I was now regarded by them as being only a few shades away from Doo Lally Land, and a few shakes away from an empty pepper pot. And all because my dress did not have pockets.

I think from now on I shall protest in shops any item’s lack of pockets, and endeavour to only buy and wear items that do have pockets.

Pockets are empowering and should be reinstated in women’s clothing. Signs should proclaim, ‘And it has pockets too!’ Songs should be sung about them. Well, perhaps we don’t need to go as far as that. But for the sake of my sanity alone please, please, fashion designers won’t someone think of the pockets? For if ever I catch a falling star I would need some place to put it.

Blades of Grass

 

Having had the teaching door slammed in my face thanks to the GTC and my local authority I have tried to go on as many walks as possible. The hope is that I will beat the stress of it all while the computers work with the lightning speed of ten days to reinstate me as a teacher and I'm left biting my nails.

I was telephoned out of the blue by Harrold Country Park. They had a health walk planned for the next day. Would I like to join them? I had signed up to one of these walks last year while house sitting my friend’s cottage in the village. After filling in the long form we had set off, and I had been terribly disappointed to discover that we just walked around the lake, and that nothing of interest was pointed out to us.

I never went back.

However, it seemed there was going to be a walk the following day, and in my bid to keep depression at bay, I said that I would join them.

I expected another short boring walk around the lake, and afterwards I planned to sit and read a book before going on to meet up with my friend in Olney. That was the plan. The reality was something quite different.

Our walk leader was Richard Dowsett and we were in for a treat. He led up away from the park and beyond the village of Harrold towards the woods where last summer I had walked my friends’ dog. The sun was shining. The other walkers were welcoming and friendly and Mr Dowsett was utterly brilliant. What an utter delight it was to be in such company.

He bounded over ditches in search of badger latrines as we watched with bemused eyes; he had us stroking grass blades to feel the barbs on the side; he had us crouching down low so that we could work out whether the woods had been grazed by rabbits, muntjac or fallow deer; he pointed out usual species trees thoughtfully planted at the intersections of paths; he named bobbing seed heads, and had us scrambling over tree wrack and through hawthorn hedges.

All absolutely thrilling.

The only downside was that it had all gone on a little too long and I had to run away literally to get back to the Country Park so that I could drive on to Olney. Oh, and I also lost my necklace somewhere on the walk: a pearl and diamond on a silver chain.

However, the walk was wonderful!

Many thanks to our guide: Richard Dowsett.

Happy? Can’t have that!

 

 

I shouldn’t have even thought it. There I was enjoying the morning feeling happy. Things were at last going well. I had had time to write undisturbed. I was about to drive to work shortly and enjoy listening to the Woman’s Hour Drama on the radio, then once at school in the car park where squirrels peeked at me from behind a tree I would have time to read a chapter of a book before going into the school to teach. That’s when I thought it: something that I should not have dared to think: I’m happy!

Big mistake!

The cogs of the universe were already turning no doubt with precognition that I would soon have such a thought. It lost no time in putting its machinations into action.

Happy? Can’t have that!

As I went downstairs a letter popped onto the mat. I had a sense of foreboding as I picked it up. Followed by utter shock as I read its contents.

“With immediate effect you must not work as a Supply Teacher or any other teaching role until the General Teaching Council have confirmed to us that you are registered.”

Teachers have to pay the GTC every year to remain on their lists. I thought I had done so. I had sent them a direct debit instruction. When this was returned to me I sent them a cheque. I thought I had paid months ago.

A phone call revealed that at the time when my direct debit instruction had not been processed due to a problem with the sort code unbeknown to me I had been de-registered. My cheque which had then arrived could not be processed as it needed to have been accompanied with a fresh application form. I had known nothing about this until the County Council had sent me their letter.

“you must not work”

I downloaded a fresh form carefully filling it in noticing for the first time that such forms are read by computers. It would have been a computer that had not read my previous direct debit instruction and deactivated my registration.

The GTC were quite happy for me to continue working and gave me 28 days grace to get the matter sorted out.

But the County Council despite being informed of this refused to budge. Their computer screens showed that I was not on the register. The twenty-eight days grace was meaningless to them.

“you must not work” The Human Resources lady, the one who had deactivated my employment at the beginning of the school year informed me.

Apparently, it takes between seven and ten days to process an application at the GTC and then following on from that I have to wait for the council to be informed before they in their turn can send me a letter to say I that I can work. So I guess that means two weeks.

When you only get paid by the session and have no resources to fall back onto this is harsh indeed.

So my good name at the school where I’m working is besmirched. I’m now letting down the kids I tutor.

All because a computer could not the read digits I’d written with a cheap biro pen, I’m surmising, for my sort code.

Nightmare.

I rang them, pleaded, spoke to line managers.

“We have to protect the children,” I’m told.

They were intransigent. Until the fee is paid I can not work.

And once the computers whirl and finally sort it out, giving me the green light, will there still be a job for me?

So despite working for them for thirty-three years I am regarded as a danger because a computer glitch could not read my digits, and no human could be bothered to ring up and say,

“Sorry about this, could you please just give us your sort code again please?”

How long would that have taken them?

Seconds!

Instead, I am now having to wait days to be reinstated. While the mis-named ‘Human Resources’ team in County Hall play with their computers and stare at their screens like brainwashed zombies.

“Can’t I pay by credit card? Debit card? Fill the form on line?” I asked the lady at the GTC.

“No, you have to send it in by post,” she answered.

Why, oh why, do they even bother to have computers? I wonder. They were supposed to make our lives easier. Their inflexibility and lack of initiative make them a poor substitute for humans. If indeed there are any humans left out there.

I feel that the GTC is ripe for the chop, and as one of it’s victims I would be more than happy to swing the axe!

The sound of Banshees

 

It is a fact universally acknowledged that as soon as water begins to drip from pipes plumbers can not be found.

It was a steady drip from the toilet cistern. The water was trickling down from the top of the pipe and then onto the carpet.

I hadn’t noticed it.

I had earlier noticed an odd smell rather like damp plaster, but had not been able to account for it.

I returned home from work to be told by The Teenager that there was a leak and that water was dripping into the kitchen. He did not know where the leak was. When I went to look. I could see immediately the wet patch beneath the pipe, and placed a plastic tub underneath it to catch the drip, wondering as I did so why The Teenager could not have noticed it too, having been alerted to the problem, and done the same.

I read through yellow pages looking for a plumber. I was looking for a lady plumber who worked in the area, having previously been let down with my usual plumber.

I read through all the entries, but not knowing her name I could not work out which one was her. In the end I telephoned my original plumber thinking: better the devil you know.

I assumed that the woman I spoke to was his wife. She said he would call me back.

In the meantime, there was a knock on the door. A woman had found some keys. ‘Were they mine?’ she asked. They weren’t. But my neighbour’s builder was also on his front doorstep listening to the exchange.

The house next door has been generating enough dust to fill the American dust bowl as they’ve renovated the property. Most of this dust has been seeping into my house.

I asked if there was a plumber still on the premises next door. ‘Yes,’ the man replied. ‘That’s me.’

Now in an ideal world he would have fixed the leaking pipe there and then.

But no.

‘Is it a big drip?’ he asks.

Honesty has always been my downfall. Why didn’t I choose words such as deluge, flood, swamp, tsunami is beyond me.

‘No,’ I confessed.

‘Could it wait until tomorrow morning?’ he asks.

I think. He is obviously tired. I know he has been working hard. The skip piled high behind him is testament to his hard work. I feel sorry for him. I guess he’s weary.

‘Yes,’ I say.

I now have two plumbers alerted to my dripping pipe. My thinking being that if one turns up, then I could easily cancel the other.

But we are speaking plumbers here.

I get up early in the morning, but by the time I have to leave to go to work there is no sign of next door’s plumber. Just before I leave  the house my usual plumber finally calls me back.

‘What time shall I call around?’ he asks laconically.

I do a quick calculation.

‘Four?’ I suggest.

‘Four it is,’ he says.

I leave for work. There is no still sign of next door’s plumber.

When I get home from work the leak has intensified. I wait for my usual plumber.

At five I think he’s probably still working on a very tricky job somewhere.

At six I think perhaps he’s now on his way and stuck in traffic.

At seven I ring.

He is full of excuses. His wife had a headache. He had to do the school run.

I know that he simply forgot.

He says he’ll turn up tomorrow morning.

By this time the drip has intensified. Overnight the bowl overflows. The carpet is now soaked. The smell of damp plaster, and likely rotten flooring is unmistakable. My socks quickly feel cold and wet when I stand by the sink.

My usual plumber turns up.

He fixes the problem.

I pay.

He leaves.

I look.

The once straight pipe has been replaced by a pipe that loops like a roller coaster. Part of the loop is pinched and the water squeezing through this constriction makes a sound like a dying Banshee’s wail.

A sound somewhat akin to the sound I make upon seeing it.

Later, much much later, I see next door’s plumber in the street.

‘Shall I come now and fix your leak?’ he asks, like an after thought.

He’s only fifty hours late.

I fix him with an inward glare that I reserve solely for plumbers, but on the outside I thank him politely and tell him that the problem is now solved.

I know that my neighbour’s plumbing will be immaculate.  That it will have exquisite piping and neat joins.

Whereas from my house comes the screech of some demonic woman.

He looks at me quizzically.

I shrug and leave for work.