Today
The broken slabs on the patio and steps at Spencer House have now been repaired. The builder left strict instructions about which ones we can walk on for the next twenty-fours hours.
"Like playing Hopscotch" we said.
In My Day
In 1955, as has been previously blogged, Daddy took us on our near-disastrous caravan journey to North Wales. As the car had broken its silencer on a slate quarry railway line, we couldn't go on any trips anywhere until it was repaired. We were parked up in the tiny village of Talysarn, in the heart of Snowdonia.
That first morning we children peeked out the of the caravan to find that a bunch of local children were peeking at us. In 1955 Snowdonia wasn't so developed for tourism and these children must have been surprised by the sight of a caravan with its ancient car.
We stepped out to greet them and discovered, a little to our consternation, that they spoke foreign. They did also speak some English, but continued to speak Welsh amongst themselves which I, for one, found rather intimidating.
But they were children and we played together as the week progressed. And they taught us their version of Hopscotch. They used slate (there was plenty of that lying around) to mark out the pavement thus:
You threw another piece of slate onto the diagram and had to hop and jump to pick it up, moving up the pattern. Where there was only one square you had to stand on one leg; where there were two you could use both legs. This made the final three fiendishly hard for seven-year old me. although Chris quickly mastered the game, as he mastered everything. The Welsh kids were all experts.
We took this version home with us, marking the back garden paths with chalk and practising over and over again.
It was only much later that I discovered that there are other, easier forms of Hopscotch, but we clung tenaciously to our version, pouring scorn on all others.
I'm less confident about my abilities to hop these days, but have managed to traverse the steps so far without incident.
Today
I was reading an article which talked about the lazy work culture of Britain today and how much harder immigrant employees often work and how much "lazy" Brits resent this.
While I think that this view is exaggerated, I do think that there are many British people who are reluctant to put in the hours and cavil at the success of those who do.
In My Day
I never really imagined that I would be a stay-at-home wife and mother. When we wanted to start a family, I said to Paul "If we wait until we can afford it we'll wait the rest of our lives". So we went ahead and had Lizzie, followed five years later by Becky, at a time when having children seemed right for us.
There was no reasonable choice, so it seemed to me, but to continue working. We found a child minder we could trust and learnt how to balance tiredness, work demands and family life.
Many people simply didn't understand or accept that it was OK for both me and Paul to work hard and threatened the collapse of family life and predicted estrangement from and dire ends for the girls.
When I joined Flare in 1986, the grumbles got worse in proportion to how well the company was doing. The fact that I drove thousands of miles every year flogging the product, set up effective support and training operations and was instrumental in growing the company to over ninety staff, was no justification.
When I eventually sold the company people's attitude to me was often grudging. Someone even said to Paul "Now that Julia's come into all that money..." "She didn't come into it," replied Paul with some heat "She earned every penny."
Now, I understand that many people work hard all their lives and end up with barely a pension and others really, really try and can't get work. But to treat me as though I have had some outlandish luck which will surely spell disaster is mean-minded to say the least. What's more, I don't think that this attitude is prevalent in other countries. And my family is just fine with two daughters who work hard and love and support each other and their parents.
People would generally, I think, be less outraged if I won the lottery, because it's a level playing field and doesn't involve taking risks, missing out on leisure and pleasure. If immigrants do a better job than we do, good luck to them, I say, and shame on us for not following the example.
But they were children and we played together as the week progressed. And they taught us their version of Hopscotch. They used slate (there was plenty of that lying around) to mark out the pavement thus:
