It wasn’t in the Plan (inspired by Feb26 theme: Not the Plan)
 
My grandma kept an immaculate house
On the doorstep of the steelworks.
The air was different there, a soup of chemicals and sulphur
That you drank as well as breathed.

Grandad said he could live nowhere else.
He never settled by the sea, although his father was a sailor.
The air was too thin, he said,
As if thick air contained nutrients for people like him.

For her it was friendships – Lily and Louie and Daisy and Maude,
People at church, meeting her sisters,
She made a life far from her Whitby beginnings.

But it wasn’t in the plan.
She was meant to marry a farmer, a wealthy man,
And live high up on the heathered moors.
She didn’t want that life.  She didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife.

She became a lady’s maid, then housekeeper to a clergyman.
Met my grandad at a dance, was whisked away
To steel river, fires and furnaces and lifelong friends.

Twice, she lost almost everything.
Bombed out in the war, her sister welcomed the family in.
And they rebuilt their lives together.

Grandad gone too soon.  That rebuilding done alone.

I can remember meeting her off the bus in windy Marske by Sea.
A hug, a smile, a bundle of sweets.  Helping my mum.
Proud of us.

You might say she only lived a very small life.
But she never wanted to be a lonely farmer’s wife.



LIFE IS A LEMON
            

 If the Middlesbrough department stores didn’t quite save my mum and me, they definitely
helped us to get along together and have a bit of fun along the way.

We were both, in our own ways, on the outskirts of life, not so secretly a little bit in love with shops and shopping.

To me, shops are important as a destination, a meeting place, a job provider, helping conversations to flow and enabling people to relax and unwind.  That was certainly the case  
for Mum and me.  We went shopping regularly between 2011 and 2014, and I still remember some of the fashions that were around then. 
     
So, the expedition went like this.  First, travelling in style by taxi.
Speeding up the Trunk Road, we would pass an eatery called the Sizzling Griddle.  This was 
a caravan parked in a layby, providing refreshment for tired lorry drivers.
I would tease Mum a little, saying that we could have our lunch there.  I think she was quite worried that one day I would insist on it.

The Middlesbrough experience begun at the House of Fraser, but we didn’t usually go in there first.  We would cross over the road like stragglers from a hen party.  All we needed was a fairy
wings and shiny pink streamers to complete the look.

We then processed through Debenham’s makeup department, clean-smelling and antiseptic, like a magical hospital.  Retail therapy for injured souls.  We would try on about half a dozen 
perfumes each.   Some of them were awful.

Monsoon was like a 1970’s hippy paradise, all jewel bright colours, textures and more sparkle.
One day, Marks and Spencer’s was awash with animal prints – scarves, blouses, skirts, jackets, all in an array of autumnal or caramel colours.

Dinner was at the House of Fraser restaurant.  Lemon meringue pie was a must.  I wish I had taken photographs of the wonderful rooftop views, but photography wasn’t for me then.
It is now.

Mum would look at, and sometimes buy, quite high fashion items. In the House of Fraser and Debenham’s, there were small outlets from bigger brands, Oasis, Warehouse, Kaliko, Yumi, 
all stocked with beautiful, feminine clothes and accessories.

Mum had a total dread of anything “frumpy” and had very good taste in fashion, design and 
Interior decoration.

She also had an interesting taste in music.  She was an avid follower of “Strictly” and the
X Factor.  She enjoyed many kinds of music, light classics, Andrea Bocelli, Russell Watson,
Queen, Andre Rieu waltzes and Robbie Williams.

We bought endless compilation CDs from a kind of HMV seconds shop.  Some items only
cost around £3.  I cannot listen to “Girl, put your records on” by Corrine Bailey Rae without 
thinking back to these times.

But her longstanding favourite of all favourites was, rather bizarrely, Meatloaf. She
particularly liked the song, “Life is a Lemon (and I want my Money back) “  Strident metal 
music with a particularly nihilistic message.

So, back to the shopping trip.  When the day was over, we would head for home in
a gridlocked taxi.  We would unpack a huge haul of goodies, then eat too many cheese scones and too much family sized M and S trifle.

We would watch “Deal or No Deal.”  She liked Noel Edmonds.  I also remember an advert in 
which Ronnie Corbett extolled the virtues of Wiltshire Farm Foods, or “Woot-Shire Farm Foods” as he pronounced it.

Two rather amateurish actors impersonated a mother and daughter.  The “mother” made a
mildly amusing comment, to which Ronnie Corbett replied, “I do the jokes, Dorothy.”

For some reason, we found this to be wildly hilarious and ended up literally on the floor 
laughing.  I’ve absolutely no idea why.

Eventually, though, all things come to an end, and sadly, Mum spent her last few months in
A care home. I’m sure she went out shopping in her dreams.

She once asked me, semi-seriously, if I would have them play “Life is a Lemon” at her funeral.
I bottled out and chose “All Things Bright and Beautiful” instead.

Today, I might just reconsider.


The Whisperers

(inspired by the poem “The Listeners” by Walter De La Mare)

    The man had ridden deep into the forest on horseback, where no vehicle could pass. He dismounted, and his horse was at peace, cropping the luxuriant grasses, tail twitching in appreciation.

     The house in the twilight was as impressive as ever. The clearing in which it stood was wildly overgrown. Tussocky grass grew where there had once been a well-tended lawn. Saplings planted years ago were now tall trees. Bluebells and wood anemones scrambled over mounds and ditches. Nettles and brambles sprang like barbed wire all over the terrace.

     The man’s father had built the house largely by himself. He had once been a well-respected builder earning a generous income. There had even been talk of contracts in Australia. But then, sadly, the drinking had taken over. The man remembered seemingly endless fights, sometimes resulting in physical violence. It was only mitigated for him by the magical nurturing he took from the woodland.

   A late 1970s/80s childhood held a lot of freedom. He and his brother had trailed through bluebells, caught minnows in the stream and fallen in the beck countless times. They would watch electric dragonflies in the long hot summers. The man had also truanted from school, filling many empty hours with endless reading and cheap cigarettes.

    He wondered where he would have been if he had not met Eleanor. She and her parents had encouraged his every step, applauding his triumphs and picking up the pieces after his inevitable crashes.

    The man qualified in California, first as a doctor, then as a highly skilled neurosurgeon. Book deals followed, and soon he had a flourishing medical practice and a growing reputation as an author. He had a straightforward and friendly manner, and people loved him for it.

   Jealousy is a terrible thing. One by one, family members went to the press to say that the great neurosurgeon was a charlatan and a thief. The newspapers, of course, lapped it up.  

   The man tried unsuccessfully to reason with his family, but by now, he was busy bringing up his own young children in America. So he cut off contact with his parents, and at last the whispering died down, the media finding other victims to bully. It didn’t even do his family any good. His father drank himself to death, and his brother followed not long after. His mother, the brightest of all of them, finally succumbed to an array of illnesses that would have destroyed anyone.

   The man had just turned 55, a joyous celebration with his created family. Soon afterwards, his legal team had told him that he could take possession of the house. Did he even want to? What would he find there?

   The house had stood empty for several years, and ivy and brambles were snaking into the very fabric of it. He saw a ruined outbuilding and looked through the house windows. He suspected the place had been broken into and looted a long time ago. Maybe squatters had already been living there.

   He heard an owl hooting somewhere in the distance and felt something move beneath his feet. He shivered.

   What to do about the house? The roof had fallen in, a sure sign of unimpeded decay. So, he decided, a demolition job for certain.

    It was 7pm, around 11 in the morning in California. Once he could get a signal he would phone Eleanor. He saddled up his horse and began his journey out of the forest.

    And, in the house, the whispering continued, even when he was many miles away.