One Foot in Front of the Other

Today

On Tuesday Paul was clearing up the last remnants from Silver Street. He said it would take him a few hours so I said I would walk the 8 miles to Wells and meet him. The autumn sun was shining and I enjoyed my walk, taking pictures of autumn berries. Stopped at the little garden centre cafe, conveniently half way, for tea and facilities.

Just got going again when Paul rang. "Where are you? I've finished early and am getting bored just sitting around waiting," he said. "Well, I've still about an hour and a quarter to go", said I, "unless you want to pick me up." "Seems a bit silly to collect you just to come back into Wells," said my spouse.

"In that case", I said " I can't do anything else than just put one foot in front of the other till I get there".

In My Day

In the early days of our marriage, especially when Lizzie was little, walking was the only way to get places. I used to walk her from Seven Dials in Brighton to her childminders in Preston Road and back every day. (I remember the chip shop on the corner where I used to buy chips to share on cold evenings.)

When we moved to Rowan Avenue I had an even longer walk to the childminders, along an unmade-up road and over a railway line. Then the walk to station to get to work. I do remember rather enjoying those walks with Lizzie: I'd tell her stories and we'd pick flowers that grew out of the cracks in the path.

In about 1978, my sister lived with us at Rowan Avenue. We both worked in the same office and sometimes, on dark nights, when we got off the train, the long walk home seemed impossible. Beatrice would look along the road in despair. "It's alright," I'd say "We'll get there. All we have to do is put one foot in front of the other." And it worked; suddenly we'd be home, with warmth and love awaiting us.

Anyway, in the end, Paul did come and collect me, in his beautiful Humber Super Snipe.

Freedom Child

Today

I've been down in Brighton this weekend for a singing workshop on Bach's B Minor Mass. About 100 of us collected in the village Hall at Alfriston and worked hard to bring some shape to the piece.

One of my neighbours, a thin, jumpy woman of about 70, asked us if we could give her a lift on the Sunday as the trains weren't running. She'd cycle to the flat from Hove, she said, if we could take her from there. No problem.

Once in the car she had much to say about the modern trend to over-protect our children. "Children need freedom more than they need protecting from - what are they called? -paedophiles" she proclaimed. "Why, when I was a child my mother never worried if I was camping in the woods. And we didn't even have a tent." Liberal or culpably negligent? Hard to say.

In My Day

I was brought up in London which, to an extent, automatically curtailed freedom. We lived on a main road and our large garden that provided most of what we needed in the way of a play environment. However, Mamma and Daddy did take a relaxed attitude over many things, allowing us to walk or bus to school unattended, for example, from the age of about 7.

The most memorable occasion was during the Summer of 1954 when I was about 6 and my brother about 9. Mamma was away all day at the Proms and Daddy gave Chris the wherewithal to take me to Hastings. Why he did this I've no idea. Perhaps we were nagging for a seaside trip or maybe he was trying a social experiment.

Anyway, off we went. Chris had return tickets and we caught the train from East Croydon to Hastings. I remember only a few things: that the weather was rather dampish and sitting on the beach not as much fun as I'd hoped. That Chris bought as a bag of plums to share and I didn't want any more after I discovered a maggot in one of mine.

And finally, that, somehow, the return tickets fell out of my brother's pocket and were lost. And he didn't have enough money for any more. Talking this over with him the other day he said he thought that we must have been older, but I don't think so because the impossible then happened: Chris burst into tears and my security was shattered. Some kind person took pity and bought us the tickets we needed. (Why should she have believed us? we must have looked trustworthy).

Was my father culpably negligent? Or did we learn some self-reliance from the episode? Who knows? Perhaps all we learnt was to burst into tears when all else fails.

Anyway, I think that our car passenger must have been so restless as a child that her mother let her go just to preserve her sanity.

Fluff

Today

Don't know where it all comes from. The dirt, that is.

Yesterday I fitted some new doorknobs on the kitchen cupboards. Very nice they look, too. But I also got close up to the cupboards and could see all the sticky, grimy marks around the door handles and on the shelves.

So today thought I'd do a clean up. First the bathroom. Exactly why we need 15 bottle of shampoo & conditioner, 3 tubes of identical shaving gel and enough pain killers and plasters to set up in business as a pharmacy I don't know. And I suppose 3 hot water bottles might come in handy sometime. Cleaning the shower screen is a task never done to my satisfaction. The top of the cupboard was covered in thick, soft, white dust and little balls of grey fluff rolled across the floor like tumbleweed

Then the bedroom. Disposed of all the odd socks and unwanted, unused cosmetics, 12 makeup pencil sharpeners and so on.

Finally the kitchen. Why do we have a caddy of Lapsang Souchong? We absolutely hate it. 8 jars/cans of olives, some chestnut jam bought in Corsica in 2004, never opened and 18 months by its use-by date. I could go on.

In My Day

As Paul's Mum got older she became less and less able to keep her little flat clean. Paul used to visit her often, but as they were usually flying visits he was reluctant to spend them cleaning. His sister was always on call and kept things ticking over, but she had many other demands on her time.

So, in December 2002, I suggested that we took a few days off specifically for a cleanup. We booked ourselves into a little holiday flat on the seafront (freezing, it was, with heating not designed for the winter months) went over to Mum's and got cracking.

Given that Mum's cooking was by now limited to making tea and popping ready-made macaroni cheese into the oven, it was amazing what she had. Saucepans of every size, baking tins, ancient jars of spices & herbs. Tins of this and that (raspberries dated 1984 are one example). All the paraphernalia of a long life. Most of it was dirty and old beyond redemption and we chucked it all out.

And the fluff! On top of the cupboards, behind the cupboards, everywhere. Handfuls of dusty fluff. I stuffed it all into rubbish sacks. It got up my nose, ingrained into my fingernails, into my hair. The vacuum cleaner died as soon as we asked it to do any work so we bought a new one. The hall carpet disintegrated under the strain of being cleaned and had to be replaced. We swabbed and disinfected and organised a home help.

Mum was very happy because, when all was clean we bought and decorated a fibre-optics Christmas tree which changed colour continuously, and she couldn't take her eyes off it.