on being someone you are not

Last night in a Spanish bar we watched Elvis sing almost all of his songs ranging from the Glory Glory of the Civil War to one of my favourites The Wonder of You.  As a singer he wasn’t too bad, the backing music was way to loud and he struggled with some of the notes but he did ok.The thing that transfixed me was the audience.

I have seen lots of bands and singers, from those at the top of their game to those slipping down the ladder of success. I have seen lookalikes, singalikes and nothing alikes, and every Elvis I have ever seen was just like this one.   This Elvis had brought his audience with him.  Really, there was 30 odd people of a certain age, who generally thought he was the best thing ever.  Sadly, he seemed to believe them.  He strutted around the bar, his white suit tight in places it really shouldn’t have been.  He crooned, he wooed and he pretty much lived the part. In his head. Holding hands with women gazing into their eyes, it was hard to tell who was loving it more.  Once he had finished he offered his audience the chance to be photographed with Elvis.  A clever trick indeed seeing the King has been dead since 1977.

There was no harm in any of it, he revelled in the attention, the audience lapped up the music, all was well.  After he had finished he went off to get changed and appeared later in shorts and a t shirt. It made me wonder what it must be like to be someone you’re not every night.  Unlike actors playing one role and then another, this man was always Elvis.  Night after night, bar after bar.  I guess is it one way to make a living.

Elvis without his white suit was just a bloke, I wonder how he adjusts from adulation to invisibility every evening. He still strutted around, but no one noticed him anymore. He seemed smaller and somewhat diminished.   He packed his life size posters of himself being Elvis into the cardboard box and settled at the bar to no doubt spend his earnings.

So the question is, is it better to be Elvis some of the time, to taste the adulation and the glory, or is it too difficult to turn back?

I guess we have all pretended to be things we are not at times.  We have exaggerated ourselves, made more of us or less depending on what was necessary at the time.  To do this every night must be a challenge.

We are off to see a Rod Stewart tribute tomorrow, it is all the rage here, Stars in the Their Eyes in the sunshine, I wonder how he will compare to Elvis?

on preparing to holiday

This weekend I am going to be taking off for a week in the sunshine visiting my darling daughter who is living and working on an island far from home.

As is usual when planning a trip I have managed to complete all the tasks the airline used to do for us, I have checked in on line, printed my boarding pass and am packing my suitcase,not that the airline ever did this for us, pack a suitcase, but you get my drift..  This trip I am making alone, my lovely hubby is staying at home, he has to work and of course the cat needs someone to love her if I am not here.

I was chatting with a friend and explaining all these exciting plans.  She asked me if I had done all the washing and ironing for hubby while I am away.  If his shirts are all ready for the week at work, if I had made him some food for him to warm up when I am not here to serve it to him.  I explained that no, we didn’t really do things like that, my hubby is a man all grown up and more than capable of washing his own shirts.  I admit he is challenged on the cookery front, but he knows where the chip shop is, and I suspect he is secretly excited about all those fish suppers he can eat in front of the football on the t.v.

It made me think again about the gender roles I was so strident about back the heady 1980’s, a time when we once complained (and this is completely true) about a conference venue labelling the toilets Ladies and Gents, we wanted it to say Women.  While I think I have mellowed since those days, and now will happily use a toilet without actually thinking about the sign on the door, I do think we did have a point.  When I was first married it was expected that I would provide all the nuturing in the family home while my husband went out to earn the money.  Soon I was also earning money, did that change the dynamic?  Not much, I was now doing everything.

These days I live a much more equal life.  Yes, my hubby does lots of the traditional male roles, he will change light bulbs, fix things and generally I do the cooking, the difference now is that we do this because it suits us not because it is expected. I can change lightbulbs, he could at a push cook something to eat.  We also talk and discuss things in a different way.   Maybe this is because I am different.  The twenty something me was quite angry a lot of the time, she often felt suppressed and frequently blamed this on her gender.  I think she was right to do so.  The fifty something me has grown into herself and is comfortable in her own skin.  This means I see the world as a different place.

Meanwhile back to the packing, as ever the only things I really need are my passport, the tickets and some money, it doesn’t stop me worrying about how many shoes should I take?  As it happens Hubby does have clean shirts, whether they will be ironed or not is up to him, he is all grown up and can sort himself out.  Going to miss him though.

on choosing happy

It is interesting how quickly we forget really good things.  How having made a connection with a philosophy that carried you through the worst of bad times, once in the good times, we forget how we got there.

Eight years or so ago I was not in a good place.  I was at the end of a relationship, which, in truth had already ended long before I had admitted this was so.  Having spent over a quarter of my life with the wrong person, letting go came slowly and took a lot of courage and self reflection.  So there I was, alone again, naturally.  Well as alone as you can be with a 10 year old daughter for whom the world has slipped on its axis, with sons coming and going and some great and amazing friends.  Picking up the phone to one, all I had to say was ‘I need to leave, and I have no money’ within 24 hours the deposit on my new house was paid, no questions asked, and a promise to refund it when I could.  Another call and a team of strong and beautiful women, well actually there was just two of us, with a car each and a fine temper, we soon shifted all the worldly goods needed to make a new house a home.  Through it all I could have been sad, or mad or tearful or all three, except I had been on a trip to Madrid.

The trip to Madrid, which is one of my very favourite cities in the whole world, was lovely.  Spending time with our Spanish friends was the tonic I needed before the big change in my life.  I was full of mixed emotions, fear, excitement, sadness and anxiety all at the same time,  We boarded the flight home, my daughter and I and settled in for the couple of hours of Easyplane comfort.  Daughter has magazine, puzzle book and other things to occupy her.  I have nothing.  I root around in the seat pocket in front of me and find, bizarrely, because this has never happened to me before, a copy of the Readers Digest magazine.   I have always secretly loved these small pockets of stories, facts and jokes, and so I started to flick through.  I came across an article about the power of being positive.  Now, given the chaos I was going through, this seemed to be a good thing to read.

The article it talked of a clinical trial, done by doctors to measure the effects on the body of seeing the good, rather than the bad in life.  Three groups of volunteers were weighed and measured, interviewed and examined and then the trial began.  Group 1 were given a book and told to write every day about what they had done in the day, just facts, notes about what they had been up to.  Group 2 were given a similar book and asked to record the things that made them cross, the niggles and the frustrations during each day.  Group 3 were asked to record the things that made them happy, small moments of fun, laughter or when things worked out just fine.

At the end of the trial the groups were weighed, measured and assessed again.  Group 1 were much the same, no real changes in measurements.  Group 2 had by and large gained weight, raised blood pressure and generally in a worse state than at the start.  Group 3 were the opposite.  Slimmer, fitter and lower blood pressure throughout the group.

I was amazed.  Can it be so?  Just by reflecting each day on good things, you can make such a change.  Once back and moved into our new home I spoke to my daughter about this.  I wondered if we could ‘choose happy’.  She made a poster for the kitchen wall and we looked at it every day.  In a time when things were possibly going very wrong, choosing happy saved us.  No question about it.  We started to smile, to look for the good in everything, and every day we looked for the happy.  We became happy.  We are still happy now.

Before I left my job I went on a staff health and well being course, and joined 11 other employees for a day of reflection and focus on being well.   I thought about all the rubbish that was happening at work, I thought about my sore legs, my aching joints and my worries.  I remembered about choosing happy.  As part of the group I worked in a pair with a woman I had never met.  When she told me her story I realised that I have absolutely nothing to be unhappy about.  I told her the Choose Happy story and she loved it.  She went away thinking I had inspired her, in truth it was the other way around.

I wrote the bulk of this blog almost a year ago, never published it and it has been sitting in my draft pile.  In the year we have had since I first put this together, many many things have happened we have had illness and sadness, lost people we love and fabulously welcomed a gorgeous baby girl to our family. Throughout it all we have remembered to chose happy.  It works, it really works.  Try it, what do you have to lose?

on a piece of driftwood, pirates and magic

Most people walk along a beach and see the sand and the sea, they pick up shells, maybe throw a ball for the dog or help a child build a castle.  Some people walk along a beach and see a pirate ship.  Ok, at the time the pirate ship isn’t actually on the beach, but in the eye of the artist, the piece of driftwood becomes a deck, seaweed a garland and the Black Pearl is born.

This is a real story.  The Black Pearl is a  wooden ship, that sits on the shore on the banks of the Mersey.  It just happens that it has been built on my childhood playground. Oh to be a child there now.  When the artists first started building the ship no one really could have seen what was beginning.  Made entirely from material found on the beach the ship became a focal point for local people.  I first visited in the Autumn and was entranced by the detail, the passion and the fun in every part of the boat.

It has, as all good pirate ships should, had a few misadventures.  The first a fire, perhaps started in jest maybe in mischief, which damaged the deck, and what happened next?  The community came together to rebuild it.  A working party of Mums, Dads and children plus more than a few doggies. Working together with the artists now turned pirates, the ship was repaired.  Once again proud, and surrounded by more good spirits the Spring tides brought the next adventure, much feared by ships and sailors alike.  The storms and waves, the wind driving the power of water as it broke against the wooden deck and carried almost all of the good ship away on the tide. Surely this must be the end.

The pirates were not to be defeated.  The community brought wood, once again people helped to rebuild. The river settled, down the winds ceased and bit by bit wood and decking from all parts of the ship washed up along either side of the river where they were found and returned.  A fabulous effort saw the Black Pearl rise again onto the shore. bigger and better than before.

The story isn’t over.  I could tell you about the hundreds of school children who have had fun on her decks, the celebration of a little pirate’s life, who is sadly no longer with us, and the families who regard her as their own. The art exhibition celebrating the journey, the Bonfire party on the beach.  How wonderful this is.

To my knowledge there is no government department involved in this project, no taxpayers money has been spent, no local authority has submitted plans and set admission charges.  This is what happens when a couple of artists decide to build what is in their minds, and the community understands and supports the magic.

I am a big fan of the Black Pearl, and its community, but it is important to look beyond the physical structure and to begin to understand what is really going on down on the beach.  The community of support, the smiles and laughter, all together has created the ownership of something that at once belongs to nobody and to everyone. How much better would life be in every community if a artists magic can be captured and even grown ups can live their dreams?

If you can get to the beach do so, better still if you can take children if not no matter, awake the child within, embrace your inner pirate, delight in playing on the shore.  Be Peter Pan, take part in Treasure Island, on the Black Pearl, it is all for the doing.

on having a heart

Today I visited a friend who has been poorly.  Her heart was not working properly, thankfully all is well now, but it made me think about this amazing pump keeping our life blood flowing, every minute of every day.

Some people will know that I was born with a heart problem, and back in the late 1950’s it was not routine for babies to be treated or have heart surgery.  Lots of babies with my problem died.  I didn’t because Mum wouldn’t stop trying to get me treated and eventually she succeeded.  The person who operated on me was at the hospital teaching surgeons how to fix babies with holes in their hearts.  Mum and Dad were told if I had been born a year earlier they wouldn’t have been able to treat me at all,

I have grown up with the knowledge that by an accident of birth I got lucky.  It was entirely conceivable I could have died before my 2nd birthday. I have no memories of the operation or the hospital, but clearer recollection of the after care, being seen every six months until the age of five when I was discharged from the hospital. I have never looked back.  I have also never taken life for granted.  It was a hard day when we learned of the early death of my doctor, he had a heart attack.

This has made me reflect on the importance of the heart as a symbol of life, of love and of friendship.  It is part of our vocabulary, we are heart broken, we can be heart sore, we take heart when we are down, to pick up and start over again.  Hearts and flowers, forever linked with good times and love.  The connections are there always. You find your sweetheart, you follow your heart and you love from the bottom of your heart.  Our language, our culture and our lives revolve around this pump in our chests, the secret of life.

Other organs are just as vital to life.  We don’t invest the same emotional language with them.  No one gets cards with brains on, calls their soul mate their sweetliver, or follow their intestines to find dreams.  It is the heart with its emotional connection with life that represents life and love itself.

So today I am celebrating the amazing doctors who have pioneered heart surgery,  a Mum who didn’t give up on her baby,  my friends and family, lots of whom know what fear heart problems bring.  I am thinking of love and life and the connections between the two.

May we take heart from our friendships, set our hearts on our dreams and never give up.

on Guy Fawkes, Johnny Rotten, Russell Brand, and a world upside down

How has it come about that Johnny Rotten is advocating for participation and Russell Brand for revolution? Anyone looking at Russell knows that there is a hippy within.  In our day the hippies were for love and peace and a wonderful world and the punks, Mr Rotten et all were all for revolution.  The world is surely upside down.

We have working class people being fooled by the single issue politics of UKIP,  while  the Labour Party sits on the fence.  We have the LibDems falling out with the Tories, who knew they wouldn’t get along?  In the middle are people just like me.  People who believe in fairness, in equality and in justice.  People who are not afraid to embrace other cultures, who welcome immigrants to our country and who have always trusted in the system.  No more trust.  From Scottish devolution to Mayors for the North (as if it is another world beyond Watford) things are going from bad to worse.

I have always believed in the political system even though I know there is much wrong with the way we go about it. The first passed the post system used in the UK fails to deliver the government most people want, time after time, but at least it is a democratic system and should allow everyone to have their say.  As a woman I understand how important it is to use my vote, I know my history and know that women before me fought long and hard for me to enter the ballot box.  However the same is true for working class man.  They too were disenfranchised and at one time the vote was only extended to those with power and money.  I think we forget this at our peril.

History tells us that in 1867 the Conservative government introduced the Parliamentary Reform Act which increased the electorate to almost 2.5 million. The Conservative leader, Benjamin Disraeli, persuaded his supporters that the English working man would make limited demands on politicians – keep him housed, fed and clothed and he would vote Conservative for ever. This gamble (“The Leap in the Dark”) gave most skilled working class men in the towns the vote.  It would be fifty plus years on before women were also included in the process.

A hundred and fifty years on we have all forgotten this.  When we see news footage from countries far away, people walking for days and queueing in the sun to register their votes, do we recognise ourselves at all?  Many working people are struggling to house, feed and clothe themselves,  the rise of food banks becoming an essential tool in the fight against poverty.

I can understand why many people do not think it is worth voting.  ‘They are all the same’  ‘It means nothing to me’  ‘I don’t have time, can’t be bothered’  many comments told to me when discussing politics and elections.  It is very difficult to argue that you can make a difference when the results seem to tell you otherwise.

Young people in particular have been treated disgustingly in my opinion. The rules for minimum wage means those under 21 are paid much less than those older for doing exactly the same job. If they study and go on to university they are left in huge debt and mostly the media portrays them as lazy layabouts and thugs in hoodies. I don’t think the Prime Minister is keen on hugging them anymore.  So we treat them differently and then expect them to engage with the system that has not shown an interest in them at all.

We have white working class people being whipped into a frenzy of fear, all to keep them scared and to encourage separation. Divide and rule is an age old tactic and is being employed by our politicians on a daily basis. While we are busy being scared of each other we are not noticing the changes to our society being made that will affect all of us

Those people who have chosen to come and live in work in our country, or those who’s parents answered the call to come in the 1950’s are also being marginalised.  Meanwhile we are all busy worrying about each other and not looking at the real problem.  Centralisation, oppression and general ignorance.  A media that invests in the lies to sell newspapers, and in turn influences many who are too tired or apathetic to read between the lines.

Four hundred years ago tonight there were plans afoot to rid the country of our parliament. It failed.  A thousand rockets will be fired tomorrow to celebrate this fact.  But, if we really think about it, is our parliament today fit for purpose?

We need to wake up before it is too late.

on when a smile from a stranger tells it’s own tale

So there I was dashing from shopping in town, my new phone in the bag on the car seat next to me, heading up the hill to see my friend who is feeling a bit down.  I am excited to have the phone, my old one, when bought was the bees knees, two years on is now sadly lacking in features.  Pretty much all it will do is make phone calls, imaging that!  Having spent an hour with the salesperson in the shop I have the exact lovely wonderful piece of kit I had viewed on line sitting next to me ready to play with.  I will be able to take photographs, to connect to social media, to instant message and text to my hearts delight, oh and I can also make phone calls too.

There is a lot of traffic about, I am following a learner driver, who is struggling to cope with the driver in front suddenly deciding to park on the High Street, just in front of the traffic lights.  It is rubbish learning to drive, I well remember feeling totally embarrassed and useless, the sense of dread heading towards traffic lights hoping against hope that they stay on green for me to drive on through.  I am always patient following learners, but the parking person is annoying me, clearly there is not enough space for him, but undeterred he holds us all up while he tries to fit a large car into a small space. When he eventually admits defeat and turns into a side road we crawl forward towards the lights, as they turn to red.  As I am waiting to move off I glance around and see a man standing on the pavement who is looking straight into my car.  He sees me as I see him, and he doesn’t do the ‘quickly look away’ move, no, he smiles.  It is wide open smile with friendly eyes.  I smile back, of course, and then we do the ‘I am still sitting here, he is still standing there’ fluster.

I think this is man is person who smiles at everyone.  He has face for it.  His is a face that doesn’t frown often. He seems to be at peace with his lot, and comfortable in his own skin.  His smile says this to me.  That might seem to be a leap of imagination but it is how it seemed to me. The reason he is standing looking at the traffic is that on his shoulder is a large cardboard advertising sign for a new restaurant in town. There are other people walking around town with identical boards on their shoulders, I have seen them at the roundabout, on the market place and down in the town.  I haven’t seen any of the others smiling.

The lights change and we all move off, up the hill, leaving the smiling man and his sandwich board at the bottom. I am thinking about how I might feel if that was my job, would I be the smiling man or less happy with my lot?  I am thinking about my lovely friend who has had a fair share of troubles recently, and how I wish that she, and all the people I love, could be happy and without pain and worry.  I start thinking of jobs I have had, some I have loved and others less so, I am thinking of what the smiling man saw when he saw me.  Did he see a happy face, or did he notice the invisible marks left by tough times  Was he surprised I smiled back at him?  I doubt it, I think everyone does,  He has that sort of face.

Of course I don’t know anything about him, I don’t know where he comes from, who his family is or how he got the job, but I feel I have been lucky to have seen him.  If the driver hadn’t wanted to park, if the learner hadn’t been cautious to overtake, the lights would have been on green, I would only have seen the sandwich board and not the face above it.  I would have missed the smile, and been the worse off for doing so.

I read once that a smile is a smile in every language, easily shared and worth much.  I am sure this is true, no matter who you are, what you do and where you go, share your smile it will pretty much always come straight back to you.

on being grandparents

this weekend we were so lucky to have been trusted by our lovely son and daughter in law to take care of their very new, very beautiful little girl, our first ever grandchild.

She arrived to stay and with her came an vast array of equipment, clothes, nappies and the like.  The Moses basket, the pram, the wet wipes and the toys, a tiny bundle of gorgeousness amidst a mountain of stuff.  She is a smiling girl.  Mum and Dad, reluctant to leave her eventually went off to have a bit of fun and celebrate a special occasion

I simply cannot believe my luck.  After years of stress, long nights waiting for toddlers to sleep and later teens to come home, I had begun to forget the fierce love a baby can evoke.  It is true that the years fly past, one day you are waiting at the school gate, the next they are all grown up, married and parents themselves.

Looking a the darling girl, asleep in her cot, I did this a lot, at one point hubby woke up and asked why I was staring at a sleeping baby in the middle of the night ‘just watching her being her’ was the best answer I could give.  In truth I was scared to close my eyes in case she needed me.  I do not remember this feeling with my own babies.

I remembered the feeling of hope and love and pride and fear and excitement and joyfulness that each new baby brought with them.  I also remembered writing a poem for my daughter, then aged 3 and it seems apt to revisit it, the words still hold true and now we have the next generation to include.

For My Daughter

She looks around her and knows

That she is in command

For now at least her world is clear

and she knows not of difficulties to come

I hope her path will be forever smooth

and that

she will be brave and true

a child of the 20th century

and a woman of the 21st

What ways will she find, and who will

she become

Will she ever think, as I do now

of the women from our mutual past and

how they made us both

who we are to be

my world in a month

Today is the 1st of November and I am going to try something different with my blog.  Each day in November I am going to post a blog, some will be short, some will be long, hope you enjoy them.

1st November 2014

Sunny Saturday morning in the peaks, it is a washing on the line sort of day, with not a lot I have to do today I can chose how to spend my time

This time last week I was heading out on a journey by train which ended up taking twice the time it should have done. There were leaves on the line, the problem being these leaves were still attached to the tree!  In the midst of the Cheshire countryside the way was blocked.  What happened next was amazing. Without fuss, without drama the driver and the guard between them shifted the tree an.  The guard walked back through the carriage smiling ans whistling and we carried on our journey.

I want to spend my life being the driver and guard on that train.  When confronted with obstacles I want to find a way around, over or under then, and if that is not possible I want to move them myself.  I have lots of experience, I have dealt with many things that have threaten to block my way,  So now, when faced with pain, with sadness or with difficulty I will think about that train, and will find my way through.

In the meantime I will get on with my washing, it really is a lovely day here in the Peaks.