Disowning your own.

I don’t like driving to strange places, especially in the dark.

When my son asked me to take him to a theatre in Surrey for a pre-production photo shoot, I panicked.’ I can’t do it and your father’s in China this week! ’’ But you must, that’s what mothers are for’.

Although Hollywood sadly never beckoned, I always loved treading the boards and I knew I had to get him there somehow. Then I remembered my Welsh friend C lived nearby. She volunteered to sit with me in the car and give directions, so I calmed down and off we went. We got there without crashing and I asked my 17 year old’ Can I meet the producer then’. ‘No, I’d rather you sat in the car and not show your face’.

‘What a dammed cheek’ I fumed in the cafe with C.’’ How dare he disown me like that’. (I’m translating here because when we’re together C and I always speak Welsh).’ Well, you did it to him when he was 2 years old, don’t you remember? I was there.’

The incident in Fleet library came back to me. We, being middle class, pushy ,Welsh mothers  had just taken our two year olds to the tiny tots music school.C’s son Jac had a habit of trying to escape through the door when he’d had enough, with my son hot on his heels. Many times the teacher had to haul them both back into the room under her arms. One day I even stood guard, blocking the door and their escape efforts.

After a particularly trying lesson we went to the library cafe for our usual coffee, and juice and a cake for the kids. My son, for some unfathomable reason, started to crumble the cake in his hands and then attempted to grind the mess into the carpet. C took one look at my darkening puce face and sent me off with her son Jac to look at the trombone hanging up in a display case. 

Two elderly, scandalised, ladies told C ‘Your son is the most appallingly behaved child we’ve ever seen.’’ My son is over there, looking at the trombone’ she replied. ‘This is my friend’s boy. I had to separate them because she was about to kill him’. C then, happily, persuaded my son to clear up his mess with a pan and brush and he made it home in one piece.

Welsh children, as soon as they can walk, talk etc, are often made to perform in public, singing or reciting at our Eisteddfodau, which are the  premier artistic events in Wales and one of Europe's largest and oldest cultural festivals. We both recalled Max Boyce’s tale of when, at the age of 12, he had to recite ‘The Squirrel’ and fluffed his lines. In the audience someone asked his mother ‘isn’t that your boy up there Mrs B?’ ‘No, I’ve never seen him before in my life! ‘she replied.

I hope my son’s performance goes well. If it doesn’t, although I might be tempted to respond as Max Boyce’s mother did, I wouldn’t. You can’t really disown your own, even though you’d like to at times. 

You’re stuck with them for life

Stage Fright in Chapel

We were reading a sonnet last night about one student’s memory of her confirmation day.

I hadn’t eaten any Proustian madeleines but suddenly the Remembrance of Things Past came back to me, vividly.

I found myself back in chapel again in south Wales. It had lots of family connections.

My grandfather was the chapel treasurer and my grandmother used to house and feed visiting preachers. My mother played the organ occasionally when the regular organist, Jack the Organ, couldn’t.

There she was again – Matilda (I’ll call her that in case her descendants track me down and excommunicate me), sitting in front of me in her regular spot in the pew. Matilda was the incarnation of that awful demonic Granny in Giles’ cartoons. But, instead of the scarf, a hideous fox stole was forever wrapped around her neck, always miraculously placed so that the fox’s head and its desiccated beady eyes stared right back at me. I prayed the House of God would offer some protection from its evil glare.

Now, Wales being a musical nation, most people can hold a note. Matilda, however, must have had some non- Welsh blood because she definitely could not. Her loud, horrible, off-key wailings and prolonged strangulated Amens would have been better employed as a soundtrack to The Omen. I wanted to prod her and tell her she was ruining my mother’s playing of the organ, but those evil fox eyes always warded me off.

At times I could be a rather, um, assertive teenager, (well let’s be honest, a total pain in the neck) and I still cringe at the memory of the time when the preacher and his wife came to tea. My mother went out of the room to sort out the cakes and I was left alone with the couple. They politely asked how my B.A. in French was going. And so, insufferable wretch that I was, I airily informed them that I was enjoying Sartre and had become an atheist Existentialist as a result. 

I can’t quite remember the stitch-up which involved me agreeing to recite some Welsh poetry in chapel the next Sunday. The chance to show off by declaiming a poem off by heart was just too good to miss.

Come the day, I went up to the preacher’s podium, smugly surveyed the congregation, opened my mouth and froze! I couldn’t remember a damn word and had to read it off from the sheet I’d luckily brought with me.

Oh, the humiliation!

In the audience I spotted Matilda facing me, looking grimly on and wearing her usual stole. 

Although I couldn’t see it from the front, I’m sure, to this day, that that fox, behind her back, was laughing its desiccated head off.

Selling your soul.

When I started this blog back in October I didn’t have a clue how to go about it. 

Our lecturer told us to get on with it, so I solved the problem by finding a friend who could. He set it all up, I thought of the name, I write the stuff (which my husband checks for spelling/ grammar/possible libel actions) that he showed me how to put on and that’s about it really. Things come into my head in the early hours of the morning and I just write them up hoping that someone, somewhere, might get a bit of enjoyment out of it.

Now I go into something called Overview which shows I have 637 page views to date. Now that could be lies, damned lies, or dodgy statistics as far as I’m concerned and I certainly don’t click on links I don’t know in case they’re unexploded bombs. Grandpa used to say, ‘Neither a sucker nor a sapper be’. 

I’m currently getting messages about how to earn money by attaching adverts to my blog. I discussed this with my lecturer and we are of the same opinion, i.e. adverts would detract from and diminish the message, if there is one, in the writing.

 So thank you for your valuable marketing advice Dr Faustus but I think I’ll pass on it and no, there’s no need to call us...we’ll call you.

Now, having got that off my chest I think I’ll go for a walk. Looks sunny outside but it might be a bit boggy underfoot so I’ll just get out my Hunter wellington boots, pinch my husband’s Barbour,’cos it makes me look slimmer, pass my Fiat Punto and his Audi on my way out, pack a Mars bar in case I get peckish and a bottle of Evian water in case I get thirsty, and off I go.

Coming back we have a lovely Waitrose ready meal, (I have, yet again, failed to cook anything all day) accompanied by a nice bottle of red from Berry Bros and Rudd. We watch the ITN news at ten, or, if we’ve missed that, then the news on Sky, and may have a mug of Cadbury’s hot chocolate made with Tesco’s organic semi-skinned milk. God, isn’t life exciting!  I hunt for my Givenchy glasses and take the Sunday Times Review upstairs as I haven’t got round to finishing it yet. 

Holding my Wisdom toothbrush in a hand that is as smooth as my face( I don’t do dishes) I clean my teeth with Colgate toothpaste and go to bed with that ring of confidence which comes from a clear conscience. As my head hits the Dunlopillow the aforesaid ring hovers in a golden halo above me as I smugly contemplate my soul, whiter than Persil white, indeed as blameless and pure as the driven snow.

Goodnight.